Chapter 34
JENNIFER
This morning, I woke up knowing I could go into labor any day, but I didn't expect it to be today. I felt the urge to bake bread, she felt the urge to leave my body.
I'm in the middle of the second prove, both hands on the counter, flour on my forearms, watching the dough do its quiet patient thing under the cloth, when she kicks.
Not the afternoon library kick or the this-food-is-right kick or the one she does when she has opinions about my posture.
This one is different. Lower. It arrives alongside something that starts in my lower back and moves forward with the particular quality of something beginning rather than something simply happening.
I put both hands flat on the counter.
I breathe.
"All right," I say, to the kitchen, to the bread, to her. "All right then."
Carmen appears in the doorway in approximately four seconds with her phone already to her ear and her bergamot and clove scent sharp with the efficiency of someone who has had a plan ready for several weeks and is now executing it.
"Doctor is on her way," she says, and then, looking at my face: "Breathe, Jennifer."
"I am breathing," I say.
"But slower," she says, and disappears.
I stand at the counter and breathe slower and look at the bread and think about the fact that I have a birth plan.
I wrote it three weeks ago with Tomas. It is laminated.
Carmen has a copy. The doctor has a copy.
There is a copy in the medical room. Tomas has the digital version in three separate locations because Tomas does not leave results to chance.
Yet, I can't remember a thing about it. Pregnancy brain, Anna warned me about this, it comes at any moment. I didn't think it would come just as I was ready to give birth.
No. This is a disaster. Everyone's here and all I'm doing is panicking.
All three of my alphas.
Tomas is already moving, crossing the kitchen. Matteo is in the doorway with his phone in his hand and his pale eyes taking in everything at once.
"The bread," I say to Santos as he looks just as shocked as I feel with his mouth wide open.
"It's in the second prove," I say. "It needs to go in the oven in twenty minutes. Two hundred degrees. Thirty minutes. Don't open the door."
Santos looks at the cloth on the bench. Then at me. Then back at the cloth. Something in his expression does the thing it does when he has stopped performing entirely and the real version of him comes through.
"I'll do it," he says.
"Twenty minutes," I say. "Two hundred. Thirty minutes. Timer on."
"I know," he says.
"You don't know," I say. "But I am choosing to trust you and I need you to earn that."
"Noted," he says, and goes back to the dough.
Tomas has my hand. "How far apart?"
"Just started," I say. "I think. I don't know. What and where is the birth plan, so I can read it?"
"You wanted low lighting in the first stage, and you didn't want anyone to count aloud at you." He looks at me, continuing to walk me through the plan, which I knew by heart up until yesterday. But now, everything feels too real. This is really happening.
Matteo has finished his call. He comes to my other side.
Carmen takes my other arm. The walk from the kitchen to the medical room is five minutes down the shell path in the dark, the water just audible below the hill, the yellow flowers doing their warm sweet thing in the air despite the hour.
Tomas is on one side of me and Carmen on the other, and Matteo is ahead of us already on the phone again, and Santos catches up before we reach the door.
"Oven is on," he says, falling into step.
"Two hundred," I say.
"Two hundred," he confirms. "Timer set. Thirty minutes. Door stays closed."
"Good," I say, and breathe through another one and hold Tomas's hand and look at the path ahead.
Ready to give birth to our daughter. How would I have done it alone? It doesn't matter, because I don't have to.
The doctor arrives within the hour. I've been meeting with her every week, but with this pregnancy brain, I can't even remember her name.
"Right then. Let's go through the plan again, just to make sure you haven't changed it again."
She checks me over. Answers my questions in order. Tells me what is happening and what comes next and what is normal and what she is watching for, and she does it in the plain straightforward voice of someone who respects that I would rather know than not know, which is the right call.
"Everything looks good," she says. "You're doing exactly what you should be. This is going to take some time."
"How much time?" I ask, while still thinking about the damn bread in the oven. What's wrong with me? I can't even ask Santos why he's here, because no doubt he probably told someone to take over. Miss out on the birth of your child, to watch the bread? Not likely.
"When you're ten centimeters," she says.
"Okay so how many am I now?"
"Two."
Sigh. This means it's a long wait, and I need to stop panicking and just accept it for what it is. When she's ready to come, she'll come.
"I think it's time you went into the birthing pool," Tomas says. He's right. I nod my head. I need a distraction, because we have a long wait, and I'm not going to help the baby nor myself if I stress myself out too much.
Fourteen hours is a long time.
It is also no time at all when something this big is happening. The clock moves strangely. Minutes drag, then vanish.
Santos talks through most of it. This is useful. His voice is warm, his stories outrageous, and at one point he gives me a detailed account of a restaurant in Milan that serves six kinds of pasta from a wheel of cheese. During a contraction, he makes me laugh.
Tomas reads to me. First from the herb book, bay laurel and rosemary and sage, then whatever he can reach from the shelf beside him. Latin names, old remedies, stories of roots and bark. His voice is low and steady. I close my eyes and breathe to the rhythm of it.
Matteo stays close. He does not fill silence for the sake of it.
He rubs my back when I lean forward. He presses his thumbs into the arches of my feet.
He brings water before I ask. When the pain climbs too high, he takes my hand and kisses my knuckles one by one as if each finger deserves personal attention.
They all try.
Yet, I’m still scared.
Santos kneels in front of me and cups my face. "You are safe," he says, serious for once. "You are not doing this alone." He kisses my forehead.
Tomas brushes my hair back and kisses my temple. "You know how to do this," he says softly. "Your body knows."
Matteo says nothing at first. He puts his palm over the center of my chest, waits until I meet his eyes, then kisses me slow and certain. "I'm here," he says. "Every second of it."
I believe him.
Another contraction comes. I curse in three languages, none of them elegantly.
Carmen checks me again, calm as weather.
"Ten centimeters," she says. "Jennifer, this is happening now."
The room changes.
Everyone straightens. Breath gathers. My own body takes over with a force that is ancient and startling.
There is no room left for fear, only effort.
Push. Breathe. Again. Hands on me. Voices around me.
Sweat at my neck. Matteo counting. Santos telling me I am magnificent.
Tomas holding my shoulders when I shake.
Carmen directing the whole world with two quiet sentences at a time.
Then pressure. Fire. One last impossible push.
And then…
A cry. Sharp, furious, alive.
"It's a girl," Carmen says.
The words break something open inside me.
She is lifted to my chest, warm and slippery and perfect with outrage. Small fists, wet dark hair, a mouth already prepared to argue policy. I stare at her as if I have never seen anything before.
She has green eyes.
They blink up at me, unfocused and dark and still somehow unmistakably hers. The sight of them goes through me so hard I start crying before I know I am doing it.
"Hi," I whisper. My voice shakes. "I've been talking to you for thirty-six weeks."
She quiets against me. Just looks.
Taking inventory already.
Santos is openly crying in the chair by the bed, face in his hands, making no effort to hide it.
Tomas stands beside me and touches one careful finger to her tiny fist. She grabs him immediately. Whatever moves across his face then is so tender it nearly finishes me off.
Matteo is very still at the foot of the bed. Pale eyes fixed on her. Fixed on me. Fixed on all of it.
She lets out a short, indignant sound.
Something in him gives way all at once. He sits down abruptly, as if his knees made the decision for him.
I hold her toward him.
He looks at his hands first, then takes her with care. She settles in his arms as though she has been expected there all along. They look at one another. Neither blinks.
"Ciao," Santos says thickly.
I laugh through tears. Tomas makes a strangled sound that may also be laughter. Even Matteo's mouth curves.
Carmen stands in the doorway with her clipboard, looking like a woman who has successfully managed chaos once again.
I look at my daughter in Matteo's arms.
She looks back with those green eyes, alert and unimpressed.
Entirely herself already.
"Welcome to the island," I tell her.
Then I cry harder, because the little person I spoke to in the dark, the one I greeted every morning with a hand on my stomach, is here. In the room. In our arms.
She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
My heart sings.
My omega sings louder.