Chapter 24 #2
"Hamish." Her voice is wrecked. Breathing hard, almost choking out the air, then sucking it in with great pain. So much pain at the surface, but under it, the steel.
"I'm here, pet. Tell me everything."
"This wasn't the plan. Having her come at thirty-six weeks wasn't—oh, Hamish, you just left!
We were still in the safe zone. I did everything right.
I did the exercises and the yoga and the hydration and we got her head down and I was so careful, and I keep running through everything I've done to see where I made the mistake—" She starts to sob.
"She's your daughter and I did something wrong and I don't know what I did to make this happen early—"
"Amy. Stop."
She sniffs.
"Ye didna do anything wrong. D'ye hear me? Babies come when they come and our wee one decided today's the day and that's okay. Ye're perfect. Put it right out of yer head that ye caused this. No one created this. It just happened."
"It hurts so much. My back. Fiona says the baby's posterior—'sunny-side up'—so her head is against my spine, and every contraction feels like my sacrum is being..." She breaks off, and I hear the moan. Low, guttural, the sound of a body in the grip of something bigger than itself.
Then Mum's voice, steady as stone. "Breathe, Amy. In through the nose. Good girl. Ye've got this."
And Marie in the background: "WHERE IS THE AMBULANCE? I CALLED TWENTY MINUTES AGO."
Amy lets out a whoosh of air.
"Hamish, please come home. Please. I can't do this without you." Her voice is tiny.
My eyes burn.
"Amy, I canna make it in time. Even if I leave right now, the flight's eight hours, plus transit.
And if I leave, Malcolm considers it breach of contract.
I tried ta leave, and I'll do it right now if ye say so.
I will. But if I'm in breach, I'll owe the network millions.
Ma career in broadcasting is done. No' just at Str1kecast, everywhere.
I'll fail ye as a husband, fail the bairn, willna be able ta - ta provide fer - " My voice catches in my throat, tight and frozen.
Silence. Then a sob from Amy. Then another contraction. I am standing at the edge of the pod, gripping my phone, listening to my wife labor three thousand miles away.
I have never felt so bloody useless in my entire life.
"Give me the phone." Mum's voice comes on the line, firm. It's the voice that raised eight children, held a family together through redundancy and debt, and a husband who once tried to fix the boiler himself because "any bampot can do it" and flooded the kitchen until the floor gave way.
"Hamish. Listen ta me."
"Mum, I dinna ken what ta do—"
"Think of it like a match, son. Ye're two-nil down wi' ten minutes left and the ref's against ye. There's nae good option. If ye leave, ye lose the contract and ye still dinna make it in time. If ye stay, Amy labors without ye and it breaks yer heart. Either way, ye take a hit."
"Mum, I should be there—"
"Aye, ye should. But I'm here, and Marie is.
And Dr. Biswas is waiting. Yer wife is the strongest woman I've ever met—and I include maself in that, which is sayin' somethin'.
Dinna leave now out of panic. Yer woman is too close.
I give it an hour, tops. Ye stay in that chair and ye do yer job and ye get on the first plane after.
Sometimes life hands ye an impossible double bind and all ye can do is play through it. "
"Tell Amy I love her."
"She kens, son."
Amy comes back on. Her breathing has steadied, slightly.
"I love you. I understand. I'm sorry I scared you."
"Dinna apologize ta me, fer God's sake. Ye're doin' the hardest thing in the world right now and I'm stuck here in a suit watching football and saying words about it that are trivial and bollocks while ma daughter is comin' into the world, failin' ye and her and —"
"You're not failing anyone, Hamish. Can we just let go of whatever guilt we're feeling and get through the next few hours? You do the stupid match and I'll split my asshole in half and we can process it all later."
"Yer arsehole? Ye ken that's no' where the baby comes out."
"I know, but they aren't letting me go to the bathroom."
"WHAT?"
A flash of the Amy I know comes through, sharp through the pain.
"You need to yell at Fiona! I need to poop and she's blocked the door like a security guard."
"AMY'S FEELING THE HEAD COMIN' OUT, HAMISH! I WILLNA LET MA FIRST GRANCHILD BE BORN IN A TOILET!" Mum bellows.
"Amy, that's the bairn's head pressing—"
"I know my body better than anyone else, and she's being a nasty old twatwaffle right now!"
"What did ye call Mum?"
"She's an assclown. Who blocks a laboring woman from going to the bathroom in dignity?"
"I DO!" Mum yells. "AND I DINNA KEN WHAT A TWATWAFFLE OR AN ASSCLOWN IS, BUT I'LL GIVE THOSE A PASS BECAUSE YER IN LABOR. BUT YE ONLY GET TWO INSULTS. DINNA TRY ME WITH A THIRD."
"Ye'll thank Mum later, pet."
"Oh, now you take HER side?"
I hear myself laugh, which is insane, laughing an ocean away while my wife is in labor and my mother is defending a toilet like it's Hadrian's Wall.
"Amy, pet, please dinna go ta the toilet. Trust Mum on this."
"Hamish!" Malcolm's voice slices through the IFB. "SIXTY SECONDS."
"Amy, I have ta go live. But I'm no' abandonin' ye. I'm gonna find a way ta stay wi' ye."
"How?"
"I'll figure it out. Give me a minute. Stay put."
"Where the hell would I go?"
"I love ye. Breathe."
I end the call and run a shaking hand through my hair. It's wrecked. The styling that wardrobe spent twenty minutes perfecting is now a crime scene of stress and fingers.
Two wardrobe staffers sprint onto the floor like a Formula One pit crew.
One has a comb and hairspray. The other has a powder compact and a lint roller.
They descend on me without speaking—comb through the left side, powder across the forehead, lint roll the shoulder, one spritz of hairspray—and they're gone in ten seconds flat, vanishing behind the cameras like they were never there.
"I heard everything." Gemma appears at my elbow. "I can rig a second earpiece. Your phone in one ear, Malcolm's feed in the other. Video call so you can see her."
"Ye can do that?"
"I've been in television for eight years. I can do anything with a cable and a splitter." She's already pulling equipment from a production drawer. "Give me your phone."
She works fast, threading a secondary earpiece through a splitter, pairing it to my phone via Bluetooth. In thirty seconds, I have two IFBs: Malcolm in the left ear, Amy in the right. My phone sits under the desk on my thigh, screen angled up, video call connecting.
"Gemma. Thank ye."
She clips the earpiece behind my ear and straightens my collar.
"You're the one who got away, Hamish McCormick. Amy's a very lucky woman. And you've turned into a proper grown-up, which I never would've predicted in Bristol." She steps back. "Also, Malcolm is an utter arsehole and I'm delighted to help you work around him."
The video call connects. Amy's face fills my phone screen—flushed, sweating, hair plastered to her forehead. Mum's hands are on her shoulders. Marie somewhere in the background. Amy's on her hands and knees on what appears to be a shower curtain on our living room floor.
"I'm here," I say.
"I can see you." She manages a smile that cracks my heart down the middle. "You look terrible."
"Ye should see the other guy."
"Breathe with me," she says. "Please. I need you to breathe with me."
"Ten seconds," the floor director calls.
I take a breath. Left ear: Malcolm. Right ear: Amy. Camera two in front of me. My wife in labour beneath the desk.
Red light. Live.
"Welcome back," Roshani says. "Second half well under way and the all-stars are pushing hard. Hamish, what's your read on the pressure?"
I look at the camera. I try not to look at my phone. I breathe.
"When the pressure builds," I say, "the best dinna panic. They breathe. They find their centre. They let the wave flow through them."
Under the desk, Amy is breathing with me. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. I can see her ribs expand and contract on the tiny screen.
"The key ta handling pressure is knowin' it's temporary. Every wave crests. Every contrac—every contest has a peak, and once ye ride it out, there's space on the other side."
"The all-stars' midfield is struggling to hold shape," Roshani says.
"Aye, they need ta spread wide. When ye're that exposed, ye're vulnerable. Sometimes ye have ta tighten up. Squeeze. Close the gaps and support the centre. But other times ye need ta open and take space."
In my right ear, Mum's voice: "Marie, squeeze her hips. Harder. Aye, like that."
"That one there needs ta stay low," I say, watching a striker receive the ball. "Grounded. All the power comes from the core. That's where the real work happens—deep, low, everything ye've got, right from the middle."
"Beautiful delivery," Roshani agrees, watching the cross.
"Aye, what ye want is that beautiful delivery," I repeat. On my phone screen, Amy is gripping Mum's hand through a contraction and I watch her face contort and release, contort and release.
I am commentating two events at once and one audience cannot know about the other. The phrases flow out of me:
"Ye have ta commit. Halfway doesna work. Either ye're all in or ye're not."
"Brilliant positioning. Exactly where it needs ta be."
"Steady. Dinna rush it. Hold. Let it come ta ye."
"And... brEATHE. Look at that, timed it perfectly."
A camera op exchanges a glance with the floor director.
"The support is making all the difference," I say. "When ye feel that behind ye—people who believe in ye, who've got yer back—ye can push harder. Go longer. The pain doesna disappear but it stops mattering."
In my right ear, Amy moans. I grip the desk and keep my face perfectly still.
"Sometimes the best results come from the ugliest, messiest, most chaotic work ye've ever done. Nobody kens what's happening. It's raw and loud and nothing about it is pretty. And then, suddenly, clarity. And everyone's screaming and it all makes sense."
"He's very philosophical today," Roshani says to the camera, smiling.
In my left ear, Malcolm: "What is going on? Why is he talking like a motivational speaker at a women's retreat?"
The analytics staffer appears at the edge of the set.
"Females twenty-five to fifty-four is now sixty-one percent above average. Massive spike the network's never seen."
Malcolm goes quiet.
"Keep doing whatever you're doing," he mutters. "It's shite, but I don't understand women, so..."
I keep doing what I'm doing.
"Ye canna force the moment. The moment comes when it comes and yer job is ta be ready. Open. Breathin'. Present."
"Present," Roshani repeats, giving me a look that says What the hell? but keeping it professional.
In my right ear, Mum: "She's fully dilated. The head's right there. I can see yer baby, Hamish. Oh, what a beaut."
"He's bearing down now—the defender canna hold—and YES, he's THROUGH—"
Roshani openly gawks at me.
"That's a transitional moment," I say, my voice rock steady while my hands shake under the desk. "Everything changes from here. Ye can feel it. The energy in the room just shifted."
A sound engineer turns to his colleague and mouths: What is he talking about?
"Ye need ta stay open. Dinna tense up. Let yer body do what it knows how ta do. Trust it."
"This is the part where ye dig deep. Where everything ye've got left goes inta one moment. One push."
"PUSH," Mum says in my right ear. "Push, Amy, now, PUSH—"
"And he PUSHES forward—look at that, the determination, the raw power, he will NO' be stopped—"
The floor director leans to a camera op: "Is he okay? He's said 'push' four times."
"The numbers are through the roof," the analytics staffer whispers. "Whatever he's doing is phenomenal. Don't touch him."
"Almost there," I say. "Almost there. One more. Give it everything. Every single thing ye have, right from the centre, and dinna hold back—"
I look down at my phone.
Amy's face. Red. Straining. Tears and sweat and the most ferocious concentration I've ever seen on a human being.
Mum's hands. Marie's hands. The living room of our condo in Boston, three thousand miles from this studio, and my wife is about to bring our child into the world on a shower curtain while I sit in a slim-fit suit talking to a camera about a football match that means nothing compared to what is happening on the four-inch screen under this desk.
"When ye're all in," I say, looking into the camera with everything I have, every ounce of love and terror and pride and helplessness pouring through, "there's no room fer doubt.
Ye commit, ye trust, and ye dinna look back.
And the rush that comes from finishing—ach, it's so fine.
So good. Ye ken ye can do it. And ye do. "
"That's quite a statement for an exhibition match," Roshani says.
I hold the camera's gaze.
"Some matches," I say, "mean more than others."