Chapter 25 #2
"Amy." Fiona's voice drops to bedrock. "Ye dinna need a plan. Ye need ta push."
From the phone: "... bearing down now... canna hold... YES, he's THROUGH—"
"Tell your son that I appreciate the commentary but if he says 'bearing down' one more time, I'm feeding his foreskin into a wood chipper."
"Yer body kens what ta do," Fiona says, though she shakes her head sharply. "When the next one comes, bear down."
"You said the thing I told him not to say!"
"Aye, but I've earned it. And I've no foreskin fer ye ta threaten wi' yer sadistic intentions."
The contraction comes. It gathers in my core and pushes downward with a force I have no control over. My body bears down, whether I consent or not.
I push.
The sound I make is not human. It fills the living room and I can feel Fiona's hands, steady, guiding, and Mom's hands on my hips, and through the phone I hear Hamish say something about giving it everything, right from the center, and I push again, harder, and the pressure is unbearable, splitting, and how can the baby's head break through bone and what is this ring of fire that makes me scream—
"Good," Fiona says. "That's the head. I can see the head, Amy. Dinna stop."
How could I stop? There is no Amy. I have no control now. My body just... does.
"Ye can do it, pet!" Hamish's voice comes through the phone, and it's cracking. The broadcast polish, the smooth commentary—all of it breaks. "I ken ye can! I love ye so much and ye're bringing me the world wi' what yer doin' right now."
I push. Three. Four.
The fifth push—the last one—tears through me with everything I have left. I feel the stuckness, then the slide, the release, the sudden emptiness, something close to relief while Fiona's hands are moving, catching, and there's a second of silence that lasts the rest of my life.
Fiona rubs the baby's chest. Quick, firm circles. One second. Two.
A cry.
Thin and furious and perfect, filling my living room, filling my chest, filling the blank spaces of a plan that went completely wrong but somehow ended up here.
Mom kisses my forehead. Her lips are trembling.
She brushes the hair off my face with fingers shaking so hard, they're about to break off and roll under the couch, and she's crying, the silent kind, tears running down her cheeks without sound.
Her palm is dry and cool against my flushed cheek and it makes the skin on my legs tingle.
"Is the baby healthy?" I gasp, reaching. "Is the baby too small? We need an ambulance NOW, we need a NICU. The baby's only thirty-six weeks—"
Fiona looks at the baby. Looks at me. Her face does something I've never seen it do. It softens into wonder, a dreamlike quality making her glow as she smiles. Are those tears in her eyes? Is - is Fiona happy?
"He's perfect."
"What?"
"He's perfect, Amy."
"What do you mean, he?"
Fiona wraps the baby—my baby, my son—in the cleanest towel and tilts him toward me. He is small and red and squalling, his fists are tight, and his face is scrunched into an expression of pure outrage at being evicted from the only home he's ever known.
He's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Every part of me is him.
"The McCormick ultrasound curse has held, hen," Fiona says, and her eyes are wet. "Ye canna name this beautiful wee boy Bronwyn."
A boy.
I was carrying a boy this entire time. Every pink onesie. Every discussion about Bronwyn Marie McCormick or Bronwyn Fiona McCormick. Every quiet moment with my hand on my belly talking to my daughter, and it was a son.
My son.
Mom is sobbing now. Full, open, heaving sobs, her hand covering her mouth, her bright blonde hair a tangled mess, mascara running, dark smudges under eyes that do nothing but love.
The cursed plush is still visible over her shoulder, staring at us with its marble orbs as if to say, I tried to tell you.
Fiona is holding him. She was the first to hold him, and Mom—who has competed with this woman over every milestone since the moment I got serious with Hamish—lets her.
She steps back. She puts her hand on Fiona's arm, and Fiona puts one hand over Mom's, and they stand there for a moment that is so quiet and so full and kind, I can barely breathe.
The most generous thing my mother has ever done is let Fiona McCormick hold their shared grandson first.
The grands, united. Over a baby boy nobody expected, on a shower curtain nobody anticipated, in a living room where two women who have spent years competing for the same love discovered they were fighting for the same thing all along.
Because there is always more than enough love. Always.
And then I take him. He weighs almost nothing yet he's so present.
His body is warm against my chest and his cry stutters into a hiccup and then into silence as he finds my skin.
Something in me that has been clenched since the morning I saw those two lines in the bathroom on a plastic stick and started building spreadsheets and contingency plans for a life I thought I could control, releases.
Through the phone on the floor, there's a sound.
Hamish.
He heard the cry. Through the video call under the desk, through the earpiece someone rigged for him, he heard his son's first breath. On the TV across the room, I watch Hamish McCormick's eyes fill with tears on live television, and the audience doesn't know why.
But they're about to.
On screen, he turns away from the match, facing the camera dead on. His voice goes serious and quiet.
"I need ta tell viewers the truth. I have two earpieces in.
For the last hour, I've been commentating on this match wi' one ear while my wife was in labour on a video call in the other.
A colleague rigged the connection so I could be there.
Ma dear wife Amy just delivered our first child on the floor of our living room in Boston.
It's an emergency birth, the paramedics blocked by traffic.
The bairn is four weeks early, and thanks be to God, he's screaming and crying so far.
Ma mum and ma mother-in-law happened ta be there when ma wife's water broke.
They delivered him. Two grandmothers, no medical team, on a shower curtain on the floor.
They're waitin' fer an ambulance right now, seconds ticking by. "
The silence on the broadcast is total. Stadium audio has been muted.
"I tried ta leave when I found out she was in labor.
Ma producer, Malcolm Rees, told me I'd be in breach of contract if I left, that I'd owe the network millions.
That my career would be over and he'd ruin me in the industry forever.
" A pause. "I have responsibilities now, ye ken?
I'm no longer the striker who played the pitch and the field, so ta speak.
I'm a husband and now a father. So I stayed, and I tried ta do both. "
On the television, a hand enters the frame from the right, making a chopping motion to cut the feed. Hamish's jaw tightens and oh, I know that look.
The world is about to get a very big dose of Unhappy Hamish.
"And I want everyone watching ta know what that cost is, and who made me pay it."
I pull our son closer. He's found my heartbeat and gone quiet, his tiny hand curled against my chest.
"That's yer da," I whisper to him. "He's on the telly."
A knock at the door, hard and professional. Mom opens it, and two paramedics are standing there with a stretcher and equipment bags and the organized urgency of people who are accustomed to arriving at exactly the moment everything is already over.
"Your neighbor let us in. We got a call about a—oh," the first one says, taking in the scene: me on the floor, legs covered in pink slime, holding a newborn, flanked by two grandmothers who just delivered a baby on a sheet of plastic and towels with tennis balls and sheer McCormick-Jacoby stubbornness.
"You're a bit late," Mom says, smiling, wiping her eyes.
They come in. They're fast, efficient, kind. They clamp the cord, check vitals, assess breathing and color and cry and declare him strong for thirty-six weeks, good weight at five pounds two ounces, good tone, lungs working as they should. Yet he's small and early, and we need to go in.
But Hamish is still speaking, and we're all watching, even the paramedics.
"I grew up in Glasgow. One of eight. Ma mum, Fiona, is the toughest woman I've ever known. She raised all of us on no' enough money and too much love and the absolute conviction that every single one of her children was gonna amount to something, even when the evidence was no' exactly compelling."
Fiona stares at the screen, mouth open, cheeks turning a furious pink. Mom pats her on the shoulder and nods along.
"Ma da, Fergus, taught me the value of hard work. And how ta play darts. He honed that skill over many, many pints, and he'll tell ye it's a lifelong talent, more useful than anything I ever did on a pitch."
Fiona's laugh comes with a snort and a sniffle.
"Being good at football came easy ta me. But luck doesna take ye from good ta world-class. The support of people who love ye when ye're brilliant and love ye exactly the same when ye're rubbish—that's what took me from a lad kickin' a ball in a car park ta the pitch at Wembley."
"Oh, Hamish," Fiona gasps, and now she's just crying. "Yer more of a man than I'd ever hoped ta raise."
"I want ta continue that tradition. Ma own child—ma son—will carry that love inta the next generation.
And I want him ta ken that when the moment came, when the choice was between ma own instincts and a contract and a career—I chose ma family.
I chose them. If at all possible, I will always choose them. "
"I'm sorry," one of the paramedics says, catching the other's eye. "This is really interesting, but we need to get the baby to the—"
"SHHHH!" Fiona, Mom, and I all say in unison. Mom adds, "That's the baby's father."
"Hamish McCormick is the father?" the other paramedic squeaks. We shush them again.
"Do whatever needs to be done," I tell them. "We can go any time. Whatever's best for him."
I look down at my little boy. Eyes swollen, chest rising and falling, slick with the evidence of the journey he just made from inside me to the world.
The paramedics do their job around us—wrapping him properly, checking me for complications, taking my blood pressure—while on the television, my husband burns his career to the ground for us.
And suddenly, I'm on camera, and on the television screen.
Hamish's video call is still connected, angled up from under the desk, and somehow the feed has been picked up by the broadcast. For a split second, my face—flushed, wrecked, holding a newborn on a shower curtain—is on international television.
So is my body.
Fiona grabs a towel and throws it over my bare, bloody, exposed lap.
As if this day could get any worse.
"Hi, wee one," Hamish says, and his voice is so tender, my ovaries cry out in solidarity, and I just had a baby ten minutes ago. "I'm yer da. I'm comin' home ta ye as fast as I can."
"Hamish," I say.
"I'm here, pet."
"Come home now. Forget the job. Forget the breach of contract and the penalties. We can find a way to pay it all back, but we can't get these moments ever again. Please come home. We need you. We love you. You belong here."
The feed cuts. My phone has died, the battery depleted, just like me.
"We can watch that later," Fiona says, wiping her eyes. "There will be replays. I suspect ma son has triggered an international incident, which is verra much in line wi' his personality."
The paramedics prepare us for transfer.
I should be focused on the logistics. The transfer, the NICU check, the birth certificate that needs a name we haven't chosen because the name we chose belongs to a daughter we don't have.
But I can't focus on any of it because my mother has her arms around me and Fiona has joined her, and the three of us are huddled in a hug on my living room floor, holding a baby boy who was never part of the plan.
The television is still on in the background.
Three thousand miles away, my husband just told millions of people he chose us.
Mom squeezes me harder. Fiona presses her forehead against my temple.
"Ye did it, hen," Fiona whispers. "Ye brilliant, stubborn, magnificent girl. Ye did it."