7. Valentina
VALENTINA
My brother calls at nine forty-three on a Tuesday morning.
The moment I see his name on my screen my heart races. Leo calling me isn’t something out of the ordinary.
He will usually call or text me regularly to argue about something stupid. But Emma is four days past her due date and every phone call sets me on edge.
This time, when I see his name light up my phone, I know why he’s calling.
“Her water broke,” he says, and he sounds—I have never heard my brother sound like this. Not in all my years of knowing him. He sounds…frightened. “We’re on our way to Lenox Hill, Val, she’s—she says she’s fine, she keeps saying she’s fine—”
I can hear Emma yell in the background that she is fine.
“She’s fine,” I tell him, already running toward my bedroom to find shoes. “Is she having contractions?”
“Yes. Seven minutes apart. The hospital said to come in at five but she wanted to wait and I—I didn’t want to wait—”
“You did the right thing.” I find one shoe and start hunting for the other. “I’m coming.”
“You don’t have to—” but Emma shouts that yes, Valentina needs to come. I grin in triumph.
“I’m coming,” I repeat. I hang up before he can argue, because arguing is not what either of us needs right now.
I know him and he needs someone there who isn’t going to be swallowed alive by their own panic.
And Emma needs someone in her corner who isn’t my brother hovering three inches from her face asking questions.
I cannot find my other fucking shoe.
“Your shoe is by the door.” Cillian’s voice comes from the hallway, and I emerge from the bedroom in a state of considerable disorganization to find him in the kitchen with his coffee, already dressed.
He nods toward the front door. There’s my shoe. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Emma,” I tell him, grabbing the errant shoe and jamming it onto my foot.
Cillian stills, his skin growing sallow. “Is she alright?” he rasps, suddenly looking worried.
I glance up at him. “She will be,” I tell him as I tie the laces of my sneakers. I don’t think high heels are appropriate in a hospital. “She’s in labor.”
Cillian blinks. “Oh.” His brow furrows for a moment before it smooths out. “Go. She needs you.”
Something about the straightforwardness of that statement makes me pause for half a second. I look at him across the kitchen and he looks back, raising an eyebrow at my stare.
“Call me,” he says.
“Okay,” I respond, and I rush toward the elevator.
The car ride to Lenox Hill is twenty-three minutes that feel like an hour, sitting in the back of a cab watching midtown go by, turning my phone over and over in my hands.
I know, rationally, that everything is fine.
Emma is healthy and the pregnancy has been textbook. She has the best doctors in the city and my brother would personally fight the laws of biology if it would help.
I know all of this.
My heart is doing something unpleasant anyway, because Emma is my person—and has been my person since she and I verbally sparred when my idiot brother kidnapped her—and she is about to go through the hardest thing her body has ever done and I cannot do any of it for her.
I hate that.
I find Leo in the corridor outside Labor and Delivery and he looks terrible.
This is important to document because my brother is a handsome man.
Right now he’s in jeans and a wrinkled shirt.
His normally carefully styled hair is undone, and he’s pacing the width of the corridor with frenetic energy.
He sees me coming and the relief on his face is so raw that my throat tightens.
“She’s okay,” he says immediately. “They’ve got her settled, they said”—his voice catches slightly and he presses his mouth together—“they said she’s progressing well and she’s in good spirits.
She told the admissions nurse her contractions feel like being repeatedly stabbed, but she said it politely, so—”
“That’s Emma,” I manage, interrupting my brother’s ramble.
“She wants you in there.” He runs a hand through his dark hair. “She said, and I quote, if my husband doesn’t stop Googling fetal heart rate statistics you’re going to need your own hospital room. And also, please bring Valentina.”
I love her so much it’s insane. “I’m going,” I tell him, squeezing his arm. I start to walk forward before I stop. “Leo.”
My brother looks at me and I put both hands on his arms. “She is going to be absolutely fine. She is the strongest person either of us knows. You know this.”
He breathes out but the worry remains in his brown eyes. “I know.”
I quirk a brow at him. “Say it like you mean it.”
“I know,” he repeats, and this time it sounds convincing. He pulls me in for a quick, tight hug that is very un-Leo in its desperation and very him in how fast he releases it, because he doesn’t do things like this in public.
“Go be with her,” he tells me, brandishing his phone. “I’ll—I’m going to call Mamma.”
I don’t bother telling him I already called our mother in the car and she’s on her way.
He needs something to do and our mother will play along. “That’s a good idea.”
“I know it is,” he says slyly, becoming more recognizably my brother. “I thought of it.”
I roll my eyes. “You are so lucky your wife is in labor,” I tell him. “Now call our mother and tell her that her first grandchild is on her way. Have fun with the hearing loss.” With that, I clap Leo on the shoulder and walk into the birthing room.
Emma is in bed with the monitor doing its thing beside her, dark auburn hair already coming out of her sloppily-done braids.
She’s wearing a very unfashionable hospital gown and has a resigned expression.
She looks up when I come in and her face—oh, her face lights up in that particular Emma way that has always felt like sunlight and which I will never in my life take for granted.
“Oh thank god,” she breathes, clasping her hands together in delight. “Someone with actual social skills.”
A burst of laughter escapes me as I set down my purse on the uncomfortable looking sleeper sofa and draw my best friend into a hug. “How are you—”
“Don’t ask me that. I’m in labor, Val, obviously I’m not great.” She hugs me back but then squeezes me tightly. I’m not expecting it, wincing at how hard she’s grabbing me.
“Sorry,” Emma grunts. “Fucking—contraction.”
“Don’t apologize and stop talking,” I tell her. So what if I’m snapped in half? “Just get through it.”
Emma whimpers, her whole body shaking, and I bite my lip to stop crying out from how much her squeezing me hurts.
I can feel when the contraction ebbs because she finally releases me and takes a deep, shuddering breath.
I step back, wincing a bit at my sore stomach and back.
“Cool,” Emma says cheerfully, her cheeks flushed. “That’s a fun feeling. I’m really enjoying this.”
This is anything but fine. “You can say that it sucks,” I tell her, sitting down in the chair and grabbing her hand.
“I’m fine,” Emma says, plucking the thin blanket on the bed.
“I’m genuinely fine, I’ve just decided to be funny about it because if I’m not funny about it I’m going to cry.
I’ve got a very long day ahead of me and I need to conserve the crying.
” She squeezes my hand again and I wince, expecting it to suddenly be painful.
Emma laughs, her green eyes alight with laughter. “No contraction this time, I promise. You handled it better than your brother though.”
“Leo is such a baby,” I say dryly. “Why our father chose him over me is beyond my wildest imagination, considering Leo can’t handle any pain.”
Emma laughs again. “I’m really glad you’re here.”
I scoff and cross my legs. “As if I would be anywhere else,” I tell her, feeling a surge of affection for Emma.
Even if the way she came into our family was fucked up, Emma’s become completely irreplaceable.
“How is my husband?” she asks, eyeing the closed door.
“Pacing.”
She rolls her eyes. “He’s been pacing since my water first broke.
” She shifts slightly against the pillows.
“He asked the admitting nurse four questions about my cervical dilation. She was very professional about it.” Emma fixes me with a look.
“I, however, was not, and I told him that if he says the word effaced one more time I will divorce him.”
I bite back a laugh. “He told me about the fetal heart rate Googling—”
“Oh, that was hours ago.” She waves a hand dismissively.
“We’re way past that. Now he’s in a phase where he’s decided he needs to be touching me at all times, which is sweet but I cannot be touched between contractions because I need to, like, exist in my own body for a minute and he cannot seem to understand this, so I sent him out.
” She pauses. “Also he asked the nurse if there was a more efficient position for labor and she told him there wasn’t.
” She shakes her head. “And then, he decided to mansplain to a nurse. Can you imagine? He said he’d read something about that and she told him, very nicely, to put his phone away. I was so embarrassed for him.”
“Your husband is a disaster,” I inform her.
“Mmm, yes, your brother is,” she agrees, with great fondness. “He’s the most prepared and least equipped person I’ve ever met. He has read every book but has zero instincts.” Another contraction hits her and she crushes my hand.
I watch her face and I hold on, mourning the loss of my fingers.
Poor Emma.
There’s still hours left.
It passes and she exhales. “Tell me something normal,” she orders. “Talk about anything that isn’t happening in this room. How is the apartment? How are”—she gives me a sly look—“things.”
“Things,” I repeat, my heart stuttering.
Emma winks at me. “You know what I mean.”
I do, but I’m not going to make this easy on her. “I don’t know what you mean.”