14. Haley
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Haley
“Fuck, Megan.” I gripped the kitchen counter as another contraction tore through me. “This can’t be happening. I still have two weeks.”
“Yeah, well, babies don’t follow a schedule.” She was already moving across the kitchen, grabbing the hospital bag from where we’d stashed it by the door two weeks ago. “Come on. We need to go now.”
“I’m not ready.” I tried to straighten up and another wave of pain bent me back over the counter. “I haven’t finished the nursery. I haven’t figured out the car seat. I haven’t read the last three chapters of the baby book.”
“Haley, you can panic about the baby book later.” She appeared at my side, bag over her shoulder, her hand firm on my arm. “Right now we need to get you to a hospital before my kitchen becomes a delivery room, and I really don’t want to explain that to the cleaning service.”
The last few weeks had been a blur. Absolute torture. For some reason my morning sickness had come roaring back in the last trimester, and I’d lost almost all the baby weight I’d gained. Which sucked, because I’d finally started looking cute instead of just swollen and exhausted.
Now I was going to meet my daughter looking like I’d been living on saltines and regret.
“Daniel’s pulling the car around.” Megan guided me toward the door, her grip steady even when another contraction made me stumble. “Can you walk or do I need to get creative?”
“I can walk.” I took a breath and forced my legs to cooperate. “Just slowly.”
She kicked the door open with her foot. “Daniel! She’s coming out!”
Daniel was standing by the car looking like a man who had been given a task he was absolutely not qualified for. “Is she okay? What do I do? Should I carry her? I can carry her.”
“You should get in the car and drive.” Megan helped me into the backseat, adjusting my seatbelt with practiced efficiency. “That’s literally the only thing you need to do right now.”
“Right. Driving.” He scrambled around to the driver’s side. “I can do that. I’m good at driving. Where are we going?”
“The hospital, Daniel.”
He started the car, his hands shaking on the wheel. “I knew that. Obviously I knew that.”
I would have laughed if I wasn’t busy trying to breathe through the pain.
Another contraction was building, slower this time but deeper, and I grabbed the door handle and focused on the breathing exercises I’d learned in class.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
Don’t think about the pain. Think about the breath.
The pain didn’t give a damn what I thought about.
Megan turned around in the front seat to look at me. “Should I call him?”
I knew who she meant without asking. There was only one him that required that tone of voice.
“Yeah.” I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. “I’m legally required to update him. That was the whole point of the court’s bullshit communication clause.”
That was the fucking caveat they’d insisted on.
Despite Caleb signing away his parental rights without a second thought, the court had demanded an open line of communication be maintained.
In case the child wanted to know her father in the future, they’d said.
In case she had questions someday about where she came from.
Which hurt more than I wanted to admit. Why would my daughter ever want to know the man who abandoned her before she was even born?
But the court didn’t care about my feelings on the matter, so here we were.
Megan pulled out her phone and dialed, putting it on speaker so I could hear. It rang once. Twice. Three times. Then his voicemail picked up, smooth and professional, asking the caller to leave a message.
“He’s not answering.” Megan looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Should I try again or leave a message?”
“Leave it.” Another contraction was starting to build and I gripped the seat. “I did my part. I attempted contact. It’s not my fault he can’t be bothered to pick up his phone.”
“The court said we need to document-”
“I know what the court said, Meg.” I breathed through the pain, trying to keep my voice level. “You called. It went to voicemail. Document that and move on. I’m a little busy right now.”
She nodded and put the phone away, then reached back to squeeze my knee. “You’re doing great. Just keep breathing.”
“Everyone keeps telling me to breathe like I might forget.”
“You’d be surprised how many people forget.”
Daniel drove faster than he probably should have, running yellow lights and taking corners tight enough to make me slide across the backseat.
We pulled up to the emergency entrance in what felt like both an eternity and no time at all, and suddenly there were people everywhere, asking questions, taking my information, putting me in a wheelchair and pushing me down hallways I’d never seen before.
They got me into a room. Into a bed. Hooked me up to monitors and IVs and machines that beeped in patterns I couldn’t interpret. A nurse checked my vitals and told me the doctor would be there soon, and then it was just me and Megan and the steady sound of my daughter’s heartbeat filling the room.
“You’re doing great,” Megan said, holding my hand through another contraction. “Just keep breathing. The hard part hasn’t even started yet.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be comforting. It was supposed to be honest.”
I was about to respond when the door burst open hard enough to bounce off the wall.
James stood in the doorway looking like a man who had run through traffic to get there. His tie was loosened, his jacket was missing, his hair was sticking up in three different directions, and he was breathing so hard I thought he might actually collapse.
“You okay?” He was across the room before I could answer, his eyes scanning every monitor and machine like he knew what any of it meant. “Isn’t it too soon? Where’s the fucking doctor? Why is nobody doing anything? Why is she just lying here?”
“I’m lying here because that’s what you do when you’re in labor,” I said, watching him vibrate with barely contained panic. “It’s not a spectator sport.”
“She’s two weeks early.” He wasn’t listening to me. He was staring at the monitor showing the baby’s heartbeat like he could will the numbers to change. “That’s too early. That’s not supposed to happen. Is that number normal? That number looks low. Is that number low?”
“James.” Megan put a hand on his arm. “That number is her heart rate. It’s perfect. The baby is fine.”
“She’s two weeks early.” He said it again like repetition might change the facts. “Early is bad.”
“Early is fine,” I said, reaching for his hand. “Babies come early all the time. It’s not ideal but it’s not dangerous. Now will you please sit down before you give yourself a heart attack?”
He looked at my outstretched hand, then at my face, and some of the panic seemed to drain out of him. He sat down in the chair beside my bed and took my hand in both of his, holding on like I might float away if he let go.
“I ran here from where I parked.” His voice was steadier now but still not calm.
“There’s a parking garage right next to the building.”
“I didn’t see it.” He wiped his face with his free hand, still breathing hard. “I saw Daniel’s car and I just needed to get here. Nothing else mattered.”
Despite the pain, I laughed. It came out of me before I could stop it, a genuine sound of amusement at this ridiculous man who had sprinted six blocks because he couldn’t wait three extra minutes.
Ouch. Bad choice. Laughing during a contraction was a terrible idea and I immediately regretted it.
“I’m fine,” I managed through gritted teeth, squeezing his hand hard enough to leave marks. “I mean, as much as I can be, given that I’m in the middle of trying to bring a human into the world.”
“What can I do?” He was looking around the room like there might be instructions posted somewhere. “There has to be something I can do. I can’t just sit here.”
“You can sit there and hold my hand and not pass out.” I took a breath as the contraction eased.
He stayed. Through every contraction that followed, he stayed right there beside me, holding my hand, wiping my face with a cool towel when I was sweating, getting me ice chips when I was thirsty.
He talked me through the worst of the pain, his voice low and steady in my ear, telling me I was doing great even when I felt like I was falling apart.
“You’ve got this,” he said during a particularly bad one. “You’re the strongest person I know and you’ve absolutely got this.”
“I don’t feel strong.” I leaned into his hand as he brushed the hair from my face. “I feel like I’m dying.”
“You’re not dying. You’re doing the hardest thing a human body can do.” He adjusted my pillow, his movements gentle. “But you’re not dying. I won’t let you.”
“You can’t actually control that.”
“Watch me.”
Hours passed. The contractions kept coming but my labor refused to progress the way it was supposed to. The doctor came in, checked me, frowned at numbers I didn’t understand, and stepped outside to consult with another doctor in low voices I couldn’t hear.
When she came back, her face was neutral.
“The baby’s heart rate is strong and she’s not in any distress.” She pulled a chair up to my bedside so she could talk to me at eye level. “But your labor has stalled. She’s not descending the way we’d hope at this point.”
“What does that mean?” James asked before I could, his hand tightening on mine.
“It means we need to discuss a cesarean section.” She said it calmly, matter-of-factly. “It’s not an emergency situation. But continuing to wait isn’t the best option either.”
“A C-section.” I felt the words land in my chest. “I wasn’t planning on a C-section. That wasn’t in my birth plan.”
“I know. Birth rarely follows the plan we make for it.” She gave me a sympathetic smile. “But the goal is always the same. A healthy baby and a healthy mom. This is the safest way to achieve that right now.”
I looked at James. He was watching me with that steady gaze he had, the one that made me feel like whatever I decided would be the right choice simply because I was the one making it.
“What do you think?” I asked him.
“I think you should do whatever keeps you both safe.” His thumb traced circles on the back of my hand. “That’s the only thing that matters to me.”
I turned back to the doctor. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
She stood up briskly. “We’ll get the OR prepped. It shouldn’t take long.”
The room filled with activity after that. Nurses checking monitors, adjusting IVs, explaining procedures I only half understood. I felt like I was underwater, watching everything happen from a distance, until James’s voice cut through the noise.
“Hey.” He was right there, his face close to mine. “Look at me.”
I looked.
“You’re going to be okay.” He held my gaze with absolute certainty. “Your daughter is going to be okay. This is just a different path than you planned, that’s all. The destination is exactly the same.”
“I’m scared.” The admission came out small.
“I know you are.” He didn’t tell me not to be scared, didn’t offer empty reassurances. “Being scared makes sense. But you can be scared and still do this. You can be scared and still be brave.”
“Will you stay?”
The words came out before I could second-guess them, before I could worry about what they meant or whether I was asking too much.
“I’m not saying I need you.” I held his eyes, needing him to understand. “I’m saying don’t make me ask twice. Stay.”
He didn’t hesitate. Not even for a heartbeat.
“Wasn’t planning on it.” His voice was steady as bedrock. “I’m not going anywhere, Haley. Not now. Not ever.”
The nurses came to transfer me to a surgical bed, and James walked beside me as they wheeled me down the corridor toward the operating room. His hand rested on the rail near mine, close but not touching, present but not presuming.
When we reached the doors to the OR, they stopped. This was as far as he could go, and we both knew it.
“I’ll be right here when you come out.” He looked down at me, and I could see everything he wasn’t saying written across his face. “I’ll be right here the whole time.”
As they started to push me through the doors, his hand stayed on the rail near mine, his to offer and mine to take or leave.
I didn’t have to think about it. My hand found his on the rail and his fingers folded over mine, holding on with a gentleness that made my chest ache.