Chapter 56
AVA
I shake my head, tears streaming down my face.
I try to keep the sobs that threaten to escape while I listen to the doctor as she tells me the baby is in distress. We’ve waited as long as possible, but my labor isn’t progressing.
They need to do a C-section.
The nurses are wiping me down as an anesthesiologist adjusts my epidural. Nurses are coming in and out of my room as they wheel in equipment and escort Rumi, Emerson, and Georgie out, their eyes glassy and their features twisted with concern and confusion.
“But my husband,” I say, looking around as one of the nurses hands me a surgical cap to put on. “He’s not here yet.”
“I’m sorry, Ava,” the doctor says, her hand coming to settle on my forehead. With all the chaos happening around us, the doctors and the nurses remain calm, even as they move with a sense of urgency. “We can’t wait.”
It all happens so fast—in what feels like seconds, I’m being wheeled to the operating room.
Rumi and Emerson didn’t want me to be alone, so Rumi is going to be there in the operating room with me while Emerson stays with Georgie, but she can’t come in until I’m on the table and the doctors are ready to start the procedure.
I try to latch onto something—anything—that will steady me, but my thoughts scatter like broken glass.
Seventeen.
I need to count.
I squeeze my eyes shut and start, clinging to the numbers as if they can anchor me to something real.
It feels like I have nothing to hold on to—everything slipping through my fingers like sand.
And I’ve never felt so alone.
I’ve spent my whole life taking care of everything on my own, but I don’t want to do this by myself.
I can’t.
I’m surrounded by nurses and doctors as they move with precision that can only come from doing this enough times that it’s become second nature. They stay composed, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.
I count the beeps on one of the machines—I don’t know what it’s monitoring, me or maybe the baby, or maybe it’s not even connected to me.
I don’t care.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
My breaths hitch between each count, uneven and wrong. Making me lose count.
I start over
One.
Two.
Three.
My chest tightens when I lose track again, panic flaring sharp and hot in my chest.
If I don’t get to seventeen, something will go wrong—worse than this, worse than everything already spiraling out of control.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. There were no signs that I would need a C-section. I didn’t prepare for it. I don’t know what to expect or what will happen.
I don’t know what it’s going to feel like or what will happen after.
I was supposed to have a natural, vaginal birth.
Anderson was supposed to help me with my breathing while I pushed. The lights were supposed to be low. The playlist I made was supposed to be playing.
My daughter was supposed to be put on my chest right when she came out. We were supposed to have our Golden Hour, to bond, to melt into the skin-to-skin.
Now, we’re not going to have that opportunity. She’s going to come into this world by being pulled out and surrounded by bright lights, machines, and doctors poking and prodding her to make sure she’s no longer in distress.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
My arms are out, balancing on trays as they raise a cover to hide where they’re about to cut into me.
I press my fingers into the thin paper covering, trying again, silently begging my mind to stay still long enough to finish.
Or to take me out of this moment.
To take me somewhere deep in my mind where I can pretend I’m not here.
Terrified. Alone.
One.
Two.
Three.
The movement, the noise, the voices—they don’t stop. The clatter of instruments, the hum of machines, the doctors’ voices overlapping. It pulls me away from the numbers.
I try again, getting to twelve this time before my heart lurches and I lose track just as I think I hear the doctors and nurses verifying the patient and the procedure.
No.
They can’t start.
Not until I get to seventeen.
There are more voices, more shuffling, but I’m drowning deeper and deeper into my mind.
I don’t know how much time passes before I’m somewhere lost in a dream. One where Anderson is there. His steady presence grounds me, making me feel like everything will be okay.
“I’m right here, love,” I hear as a hand touches my head, the gentle touch opening my eyes, the bright lights causing a slight burn as my vision adjusts.
“I’m right here,” Anderson repeats, and a feeling more powerful than love, than relief, washes over me when I see those caramel eyes looking down at me between the surgical cap and mask.
“You’re here,” I whisper over the doctors and the nurses as they begin the C-section.
I feel the sensations of tugging and pulling through the numbness, but I get lost in Anderson’s eyes, focusing on him rather than what’s happening around me.
He’s here.
He didn’t miss it.
He’s here.
My body is shaking uncontrollably, and I feel cold and warm at the same time, but I find the strength, buried deep inside of me, to stay present, here in the moment, for the birth of our daughter.
“Okay, here she comes,” one of the doctors says just as the anesthesiologist begins to pull down the curtain hanging at my chest.
“Oh my god,” Anderson says, tears falling down in streams, soaking the top of the mask he’s wearing, and I turn my head just in time to see the doctor holding up the most beautiful baby I have ever seen. “You did it, love. You did it.”
I cry in a way I never have before, love so fierce overwhelming me as the doctor hands my daughter off to the nurses. One of them calls Anderson over, and he looks down at me, torment in his eyes, like he’s being pulled in two separate directions.
“Go,” I whisper through the tears. “She needs her Daddy.”
Anderson leans down, pressing a kiss to my forehead through his mask, just as we hear a cry.
The next few minutes happen in a blur—I stare up at the ceiling, feeling like my mind and body are on separate planes.
“There’s your Mommy,” I hear Anderson say, his voice cutting through the fog building around me.
I open my eyes, not even realizing they were closed, and Anderson holds our daughter, wrapped in a white blanket with blue and pink stripes, her little head covered with a pink hat. Her little hands are closed in fits, held close to her chest, her eyes closed as she makes little cries.
I’ve never seen something more terrifyingly beautiful.
Anderson lowers our daughter to my chest, holding her steady, and I know I will look back at this moment as the one that changed me forever.
The moment that completely rewired my brain, my soul, my entire being.