Chapter Twelve
Nobody had induced anything. Nobody had given me anything. My body woke me up in the dark, alone in our bed, and squeezed.
I lay there and breathed through it and thought, very clearly: Of course.
?
I called Jess. She was in the driveway in eleven minutes, with the hospital bag, a thermos, and her uniform still on from a night shift.
“Eleven minutes apart?” she said.
“Ten.”
“Then we have time. Breathe.”
?
I didn’t want time. I wanted one thing.
“Take me to the fifth floor first,” I said.
Jess’s hands tightened on the wheel.
“Wren.”
“He’s going under at six. I want to see him before he does. I want the letter. He promised.”
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Here’s my confession for this chapter.
It wasn’t only the letter. I wanted him to see me. In labor. Hand on my belly. I wanted him to look at me and look at the doors to the operating room and have to decide in front of me.
I wanted to be chosen out loud.
I’d told him go. I’d meant it. And I still wanted him to turn around.
Both of those things were true. I don’t know how to make them fit.
?
We parked at 5:44.
The contractions were eight minutes apart. Jess found a wheelchair. I refused it. I walked from the garage to the elevator with one hand on the wall, and when the next contraction came, I held on to a vending machine and swore at it.
“Fifth floor,” Jess told the elevator. “God help me.”
?
The pre-op doors were locked.
A nurse at the desk looked at me, looked at my stomach, and stood up very fast.
“Ma’am, labor and delivery is on three—”
“My husband is Elias Hale. He’s a donor. He’s back there. I need to see him.”
She checked her screen.
“Mrs. Hale, I’m so sorry. They’ve already started prepping him. He’s—”
?
Through the small window in the double doors, I saw him.
He was on a gurney, in a gown, a cap over his hair. An IV in his arm. Two nurses were wheeling him away from me, down a long white corridor, toward a second set of doors.
He turned his head.
He saw me.
?
I will remember that look for the rest of my life.
He saw the hand on my belly. He saw Jess holding my arm. He saw me bend, right there, as the next contraction hit.
He understood.
And his lips moved. I could read them through the glass.
Wren.
?
The gurney stopped.
One of the nurses bent over him. He was saying something to her, fast, urgent. His hand was up, lifting off the rail.
For one second—one—I thought he was getting up.
?
Then the nurse nodded, and straightened, and the gurney started moving again.
The second set of doors opened.
My husband went through them.
The doors swung shut behind him, and I stood in the hallway of the fifth floor at 5:51 a.m. with my water breaking onto the linoleum.