17. Heather
— ? —
Heather
Three weeks early.
The words loop through my head like a song I can’t stop hearing, playing on repeat as the wheelchair rushes down hospital corridors that all look the same, fluorescent lights blurring overhead into streaks of white.
Hands I don’t recognize guide me onto a bed that crinkles beneath me, and monitors attach to my skin with cold adhesive pads, and machines beep in rhythms I don’t understand, and through all of it, Grayson’s grip on my fingers threatens to crush the bones beneath my skin.
“It’s okay,” he keeps saying, over and over, the words tumbling out of him like he can’t stop them. “It’s okay, you’re okay, she’s okay-”
“Stop telling me what I am and hold my hand properly.” I glare at him through the sweat already beading on my forehead. “You’re cutting off my circulation.”
“Sorry, sorry-” He loosens his grip, then immediately tightens it again when another wave of pain starts building in my lower back.
“And breathe! You sound like you’re the one having the baby.”
He makes a strangled sound that might be a laugh. “I feel like I might pass out.”
“If you pass out, I will never forgive you.”
The contraction hits.
Everything else disappears. The room, the machines, Grayson’s panicked breathing, all of it fades to background noise as the pain consumes me, so intense it seems to have its own gravity, its own mass, a force that pulls everything else into its orbit.
I grip Grayson’s hand and bear down on a scream that wants to escape, my jaw clenched so tight I think my teeth might crack, and when it finally passes I’m panting, sweating, my hospital gown already damp against my back.
“You’re doing great,” the nurse says, checking the monitor beside my bed with practiced efficiency. Her voice is calm in a way that feels almost offensive given the circumstances. “Seven centimeters already. She’s in a hurry, this one.”
“She gets that from her mother,” Grayson says weakly.
“Shut up.”
“Shutting up.”
***
The birth plan is out the window.
I wrote it so carefully, spent hours researching and discussing options with my doctor, had it printed and tucked into my hospital bag like a talisman against chaos.
Epidural, yes. Skin-to-skin immediately after delivery.
Delayed cord clamping. Soft music playing in the background. Grayson cutting the cord.
None of it is happening.
“There’s no time for the epidural,” the doctor says, and I want to scream at her, want to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she understands that I need that epidural, that I’ve been counting on it, that the idea of doing this without pain medication is making me want to crawl out of my own body.
“She’s coming too fast. You’re already at nine centimeters, and she’s crowning. ”
“What do you mean there’s no time?” My voice comes out high and thin, panic threading through every word. “Make time. Slow her down.”
“Babies don’t work that way,” the doctor says, and there’s kindness in her voice, but also firmness. “I need you to focus now, Heather. Your daughter is almost here.”
Grayson is beside me, his face white as the hospital sheets, his hand gripping mine so hard I can feel the bones grinding together. His other hand is on my shoulder, steadying me, anchoring me, and I can feel him trembling.
“I can’t do this,” I gasp as another contraction starts building, the pressure low in my pelvis intensifying into something that feels like being split in half. “I can’t do this, Grayson.”
“Yes you can.”
“I can’t.” The contraction crests and I cry out, the sound ripping from my throat without my permission. “I can’t, I can’t, it’s too much, I’m not strong enough-”
“Heather.” He leans close, his forehead pressing against mine, his breath warm on my face.
His eyes fill my vision, gray-blue and steady, the only calm thing in a world that has become nothing but pain.
“Listen to me. You built an entire wedding while your marriage was burning down around you. You built a business from nothing while you were pregnant and alone. You walked away from me when I broke your heart, and you survived, and you let me come back when I didn’t deserve it. ”
“That’s not the same-”
“You can do anything.” His voice cracks with emotion, but his gaze doesn’t waver. “You can do absolutely anything. And our daughter is going to come into this world, and she’s going to be just as strong as you are, just as brave, just as incredible. Now push.”
I push.
I scream. I curse, words I don’t know I know, combinations of profanity that would make sailors blush.
I call Grayson names I’ll never remember and will probably never live down, threaten to divorce him again if he doesn’t stop telling me to breathe, demand to know why anyone in the history of humanity has ever done this voluntarily.
But I push.
“That’s it,” the doctor says, her voice cutting through the haze of pain and exhaustion. “That’s perfect, Heather. One more. One more big push and she’s here.”
I bear down with everything I have left, every ounce of strength I didn’t know I possessed, my whole body straining with the effort. Grayson is holding my hand, whispering words I can’t quite hear, and the pressure builds to something unbearable, something impossible, and then-
Release.
And then the sound fills the room.
Small and outraged and absolutely perfect. A cry that’s nothing like the sounds I’ve been making, thin and piercing and full of life.
Not mine. Not Grayson’s.
Eleanor Grace Hale, announcing her arrival to the world.
***
They place her on my chest, and the world stops.
Everything else falls away. The pain, the exhaustion, the fear that has been my constant companion for months. All of it dissolves into nothing as I look down at the tiny person lying against my skin.
She’s so small. Red and squalling, her face scrunched up with displeasure at being evicted from her warm, dark home, covered in things I don’t want to think about too closely.
Her fingers are impossibly delicate, each one perfect and complete, and her eyes are squeezed shut against the bright lights of the delivery room.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“Hey,” I whisper, tears streaming down my face, my voice breaking on the single syllable. “Hey, baby girl. We’ve been waiting for you.”
She stops crying at the sound of my voice. Her tiny body stills against my chest, and I feel her settle, feel her relax into the warmth of my skin like she recognizes me. Like she knows, somehow, that she’s safe.
Grayson is beside me, his whole body shaking with sobs he isn’t trying to control. Tears pour down his face, his breath coming in ragged gasps, and when he reaches out to touch one impossibly small hand, his own fingers are trembling so badly he can barely manage the movement.
Eleanor’s fingers curl around his. Instinct, maybe. Or maybe something more.
He makes a sound I’ve never heard from him before, something between a laugh and a sob, something that seems to come from the deepest part of him.
“She’s okay?” he manages, the words barely audible through his tears. “Is she okay? Is she healthy?”
“She’s perfect.” The doctor smiles, her face warm as she watches us. “Thirty-seven weeks, excellent size for early-term, and those lungs are definitely working.”
As if to prove the point, Eleanor lets out another cry, piercing and wonderful, filling the room with the sound of new life.
“She gets that from you,” Grayson tells me, his voice cracking with laughter and tears.
“Don’t make me laugh.” I’m laughing anyway, can’t help it, the joy bubbling up from somewhere deep inside me. “I just pushed a human out of my body.”
We’re both laughing then, crying and laughing at the same time, this messy tangle of emotion that I couldn’t control if I tried.
I look down at Eleanor, at her perfect face, at her tiny fingers still wrapped around her father’s hand, and I think: this is what it was all for.
Every moment of pain, every night of uncertainty, every tear I cried alone in Maya’s guest room.
All of it led here, to this moment, to this perfect, squalling, beautiful little person.
“I love you,” Grayson whispers, and I don’t know if he’s talking to me or to Eleanor. Maybe both. “I love you both so much.”
I pull him closer, as close as I can with Eleanor still on my chest, and press my forehead against his.
“We did it,” I say.
“You did it.” He kisses my temple, my cheek, the corner of my mouth. “You’re amazing. You’re incredible. You’re-”
“Exhausted,” I finish. “I’m exhausted.”
But I’m smiling. We both are.
***
The visitors come in waves.
Chris and Julian arrive first, bursting through the door still wearing the clothes they were in when Maya’s call came through.
Chris has a coffee stain on his shirt, and Julian’s hair is sticking up at odd angles, and they both look like they ran every red light between their apartment and the hospital.
“We broke several traffic laws to get here,” Julian announces, not sounding remotely sorry about it.
He crosses to the bed where I’m propped up against pillows, Eleanor bundled in my arms, and his whole face transforms when he sees her.
“Godfathers,” he says firmly, his voice brooking no argument. “Official status. Non-negotiable.”
“She’s not even five hours old-”
“Doesn’t matter. Godfathers. Done.” He reaches out, one finger gently stroking Eleanor’s cheek, and his eyes go suspiciously bright. “Look at her. She’s perfect. She needs godfathers, and we’re volunteering.”
Chris is already crying. He started the moment he walked through the door and saw Eleanor, tears streaming down his face as he approaches the bed like he’s approaching something sacred.
“Oh, God,” I say, feeling my own eyes fill. “Don’t cry, you’re going to make me cry.”
“Too late,” Grayson mutters, wiping at his eyes.
Soon the whole room is a disaster of happy people wiping their faces, passing tissues back and forth, laughing at themselves for being so emotional.