Epilogue #2
“I’m putting the blanket down under you, so you’re not touching car germs. I need you to lift up.
Just let me . . .” It’s awkward. This SUV has decent legroom, but it wasn’t intended for two fully grown adults to fit between the front and middle seats, let alone having one of them currently channeling Violet in her blue era from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the other a six-foot-two man.
I’ve barely got the blanket under her butt when another wave hits. I brush her hair from her sweaty forehead. “You’re doing great.”
The car crawls forward, trapped in a clogged stream of red taillights and honking horns, not the least of which is Dave, who also has his window down hollering at people to get out of the way.
“The baby is coming,” she says.
I shake my head. “That’s a terrible plan.”
“It’s not my plan. It’s what’s happening,” she hisses.
“Dave, pull over and call Josh on speakerphone,” I say.
“There’s nowhere to pull over to. We’re locked in. Best I can do is put it in park in the middle of the street,” he says.
A single ringtone, then Josh answers. “What’s going on?”
“She says the baby is coming. She needs to push. We’re stopping so you can get in here,” I say.
“I can’t. We’re blocks away. It took us a while to get into traffic, and an accident between us has us gridlocked. You have to keep moving.”
“Okay. Okay. Okay. You heard that, Dave?”
“I heard it,” Dave says grimly.
“You have at least an hour from the time she felt like she needed to push. You’ll make it to the hospital fine,” Josh says.
Sydney shakes her head, a wide and sweeping definitive no. “This isn’t going to take an hour.”
“Gabe, can you describe what you see?” Josh asks.
I stare at my wife, my mouth tight and eyes wide enough that there has to be a ring of white around the green. Sydney stares back the exact same way.
“Uh, she’s partially reclining. Has her feet on the seat next to her butt. Her face is red and sweaty. She looks annoyed as hell. Her belly keeps going hard as a rock and moving.”
“Between her legs, Gabriel, what do you see between her legs? Is the baby crowning?”
Sliding my hands under Sydney’s waistband, I tug the loose cotton pants down her belly and snag the giant underpants she’s got on with them.
She raises her butt awkwardly at the same time, and I expose my wife’s nether regions smack dab in the middle of a busy New York City street.
I can’t make myself think the words I usually use to describe her vagina when our kid is about to make her grand entrance through it. It feels disrespectful.
“Thank God for tinted windows,” Sydney grunts, her face turning even more red as she bears down again.
“That’s not a good idea. Could you . . . ? Listen, for the love of all that’s holy, would you please stop pushing?!” I ask in a perfectly reasonable and utterly calm voice.
“Stop yelling at me,” she growls.
“I’m not yelling. I wouldn’t. I’m enthusiastically encouraging.”
She locks eyes with me, and that’s when I see the fear behind the snarling and snapping.
I cup her face. “You’re doing amazing. No matter what happens here, you and our baby are going to be okay. We’re on the way to the hospital, and our little one is healthy. She’s just really anxious to meet her mama.”
Sydney nods.
I sit back on my heels and look. Holy fuck, that’s terrifying. I offer her a reassuring smile and a thumbs-up. “Looking great.”
She snarls. “You can shove that thumb up your a—”
“Can you see the head?” Josh asks.
“No.”
“Good. This is good,” Josh says. “Just offer support. Keep her comfortable.”
Sydney chokes, then glares in the general direction of the speakers. “You know what would keep me comfortable? An epidural, Josh.”
“How are you holding up?” I wipe her brow with my shirtsleeve.
“Like sunshine and rainbows,” she says.
I kiss her forehead, and she clings to my neck, holding me against her.
“Gabriel, I’m going to talk you through it. You give me the play-by-play. Tell me what’s happening,” Josh says.
Sydney takes a deep breath in through her nose and blows it out.
“She’s between contractions now. ETA, Dave?” I ask.
“Twenty more minutes,” he says.
We’ve already been driving that long.
“Clean your hands, Gabe. Do you have wet wipes and hand sanitizer in that diaper bag?” Josh asks.
“Yes.” I find what I need, fold my shirtsleeves back, and scrub all the way up my arms. Sydney makes grabby hands, and I clean her too. Then, I eye her vulva with trepidation and lift the bottle of sanitizer. “Uh, Josh, should I sanitize the, uh, external vaginal—”
She smacks the bottle out my hand so hard it hits the back windshield.
“Never mind.”
More contractions. Fast and hard. Minute after minute after minute passes, but I clock them in contractions. This one and this one and this one.
Sydney grunts and pushes.
“Five more minutes,” Dave says. “We’re going to make it.”
Dave is wrong.
“That’s our daughter’s head. That’s hair. She’s crowning, Sydney.”
Sydney doesn’t acknowledge my words, just labors, nearly silently, to bring our child into the world.
“Her head is out . . . holy . . . it’s rotating . . .”
“You have to catch her. Support the head and chest,” Josh says.
But my hands are already there, one of them guiding and supporting our baby’s head on my forearm, my pinkie and thumb hooking under her armpits to keep her steady and my other hand catching her body.
Our daughter comes fast and unstoppable, a perfect strike straight into the waiting net of my hands.
The noise, the city, and the panic fade. A sob chokes my words. “She’s beautiful, Sydney. She’s beautiful.”
I lift her carefully, cradling her in my arms, holding her against me.
She has a touch of blood on the top of her head, but not much.
There’s a little of the white stuff they call vernix on her.
Her red face scrunches up under a mass of dark hair, and she wails the high angry cry of newborn with fantastic lungs.
“The cord?” I ask, worried.
“You’re less than a minute from medical care. They’ll take care of it. Just get her warm. Skin-to-skin contact will help her regulate her respiration and heart rate,” Josh says.
Sydney pulls her shirt over her chest and unsnaps her nursing bra. I lay Peanut against her skin, settling her against her mother.
My throat closes. Through eyes blurred with tears, I locate another blanket from the diaper bag and cover them both, then layer my jacket over the blanket.
Pressing my lips to my wife’s forehead, I rest my palm on our daughter’s back.
“I know you hate hospitals, but your private room in the birthing center is a five-star hotel compared to this.”
She gurgles a wet laugh and finds my eyes. Then her face crumples, tears spilling for the first time as she holds our squirming bundle against her chest. “Gabriel,” she says, and it means “I love you.”
“Sydney.” I answer back, her name still and always a promise.
One sunny autumn day, I met a woman who knocked my cold, dying world on its axis. I didn’t know, then, that I could live a life that wasn’t pain. Had no clue of the stunning moments of joy waiting for me or that quiet contentment could be a peaceful hum in my soul.
I smile down at our daughter. “Hello, baby. Your name is Cordelia Rose McRae.”
She blinks, shocked and angry at her abrupt entry into the world.
A universe full of possibility stretches before her.
“You’re going to have such a life full of laughter, and learning, and joy, and striving, and fighting, and changing, and pain and grief and happiness that feels like river inside you.
And you’ll never for an instant not know what it is to be loved. ”