5. Heidi
HEIDI
He stands beside the bed at County Memorial with my hand around three of his fingers. He remembers the pressure at my back. He counts only when I ask. Between contractions, he brings the straw to my mouth and tells me our daughter will be here soon.
My brother Dash is downstairs with the second bag. The unit allows one support person during this stage, and Dash has been instructed to wait unless we call. He sent me a photograph of the vending-machine coffee with the caption LABOR SUPPORT REQUIRES SACRIFICE.
I laughed before the last contraction made laughing impossible.
Labor has been going since before dawn. At home, Beau timed the first contractions at the kitchen table while I walked circles around him and accused the clock of moving incorrectly.
He carried every bag to the car, returned for the pillow I had forgotten, and drove with both hands locked on the wheel while I told him to stop behaving as though speed limits were a personal attack.
At admission, he answered nothing that belonged to me. He held my coat, repeated my medication list when I asked, and stayed close while the nurse examined me.
He has been good.
That matters because I have spent three days wondering whether I can trust him. It matters because every time a contraction rises and his hand finds my back, my body believes in him before the rest of me can decide.
Between pains, he bends over the bed rail.
“Still here,” he says.
“Where else would you be?”
His eyes meet mine. We both hear the question beneath the joke.
“Nowhere,” he says.
I close my eyes and let myself believe him for the length of one breath.
The nurse checks the monitor. “Everything looks good. This can move quickly now.”
Beau kisses my damp forehead.
His phone begins to ring at 3:56.
Celeste.
“Don't answer,” I say.
It stops, then starts again.
Beau looks at the nurse. “What if something's wrong?”
“Something is happening here,” I tell him.
He answers on speaker. Celeste's voice fills the labor room.
Celeste is crying outside Saint Catherine's maternity entrance. She has contractions. At thirty-three weeks, she is afraid she is in preterm labor. The hospital is staffed. She is close enough to the doors that Beau can hear them opening behind her.
The next contraction begins while she is explaining. I reach for Beau. His free hand comes to mine, but part of his attention remains inside the phone.
“Turn it off,” I say when I can speak.
“I need to make sure she gets inside.”
“You need to be here.”
The nurse looks at the clock and records the contraction. Her face gives nothing away, but I see her glance at Beau's phone.
Celeste says his name again.
My grip tightens until his knuckles pale. He looks at me, finally, and for a second I see the husband who promised on the bathroom floor that he would stay.
“Hang up,” I whisper.
He tells Celeste he will call April, but keeps her on speaker.
I turn my face toward the wall. The paint is a dull blue. Someone has repaired a dent beside the oxygen outlet, and the patch catches the light differently. I fix my attention there because the pain is climbing and the man beside me has made me compete with a voice coming through a speaker.
“Go inside,” he tells her.
“I can't. I tried. I saw the lights and remembered Mom.”
“Call April,” I say.
Beau ends Celeste's call. April, Celeste's sister, answers his speakerphone from a car across town. She can reach Saint Catherine's in about twenty minutes.
“Did she call the doula?” April asks. “Or Mark?”
Mark is the baby's father. Both he and the doula are reachable. Neither is standing at the entrance yet.
Beau ends the call with April and rings Saint Catherine's on speaker. A staff member says someone can meet Celeste outside with a wheelchair and take her directly to assessment.
Every practical need has an answer.
The staff member at Saint Catherine's remains on the line long enough to confirm that a midwife is walking toward the entrance.
“Do you hear that?” I ask. “Someone is going to her.”
Beau nods, but he does not put down the phone.
After Beau ends the hospital call, April calls back. Traffic has slowed her, but she is moving. Mark texts that he is leaving work. The doula texts that she will meet them at assessment.
Names. Times. People with actual reasons to be beside Celeste.
I feel a pressure so deep that I cannot separate the baby from my fear.
“Beau.”
He comes close enough that I smell the coffee he drank hours ago.
“I'm here.”
“Then stay here.”
The monitor continues its quick, steady beat. Our daughter is coming. I want that sound to reach whatever part of him is still deciding.
Celeste calls back.
“I can't go in with a stranger. Beau, please. You know what hospitals do to me.”
He looks at me.
“No,” I say.
“Saint Catherine's is eleven minutes away.”
“Eleven there,” I say. “Eleven back. And her, in between.”
“I can do it.”
“You cannot promise that.”
“I promised I wouldn't leave you alone. You won't be alone.”
For a moment, the words do not make sense.
“That is not what you promised.”
He looks toward the door, toward the corridor where Dash waits several floors below.
“Heidi, she may be in labor too.”
“Then she is exactly where she needs to be.”
A contraction takes hold. I make a sound I do not recognize. Beau reaches for me, and I push his hand against my back because I still need it.
“There,” I say. “Do not move it.”
He holds the pressure while I breathe. I think the pain will force the choice out of him. Surely he can feel what is happening beneath his palm. Surely my body is argument enough.
When it passes, he removes his hand.
“I am nine centimeters.”
The nurse speaks from the monitor. “She could begin pushing very soon.”
“April is coming,” I say. “Her doula is coming. The baby's father is coming. Hospital staff are at the door.”
Celeste sobs through the phone.
Beau presses his lips together. “Dash is downstairs.”
“Dash is not my husband.”
“I can get Celeste through the doors and come straight back.”
“You promised.”
His face twists. He kisses my hand and tries to ease my fingers open.
I clamp my fingers harder.
“Beau, look at me.”
He does.
I can see only his face. Fear twists it, but not fear for me. He is afraid of being the man who refuses Celeste.
“If you walk out you're choosing her. Don't call it a hospital later.”
“That isn't fair.”
“Nine centimeters, Beau. Don't say fair to me.”
The nurse moves closer to the bed.
“Sir, your wife needs her support person now.”
Beau looks at her, then toward the door.
I feel his decision before he moves. His hand changes inside mine. The grip that has held me through hours of labor becomes something he is trying to escape.
“Please,” I say.
He bends and kisses my forehead.
I turn my face away before his mouth touches me.
“She could be losing the baby.”
“Don't leave me.”
He looks at the clock. 4:04.
Then he leaves.
I call his name before the latch catches.
The door keeps moving.
For one suspended second, the room is silent except for the monitor. Then the nurse is beside me, asking whether I want her to call Dash.
“He'll come,” I say.
I mean my brother. My body still expects my husband.
The nurse presses the call button and asks another nurse to find Dash downstairs. I stare at the closed door, waiting for Beau to come back through it and say he has lost his mind.
He does not.
The pressure returns. I grab the empty air where his hand was.
The room seems larger without him.