Chapter 31 Adam
ADAM
The stopwatch reads four minutes and twenty-seven seconds when Daisy grabs my hand hard enough to grind the bones together.
"Another one," she manages through clenched teeth.
"I'm timing it. You're doing amazing."
"I'm doing terrible. This is terrible. Your daughter is terrible."
"She's not even born yet." I keep my voice calm for both of us.
"She's already grounded."
Nell drives while Ruth watches us from the middle row. Daisy and I are belted into the back, her wet skirt gathered beneath her. Bev called ahead to the hospital before we left.
"How far apart?" Ruth asks.
"Four and a half minutes."
"Good. We've got time."
"Define time," Daisy says, breathing hard as the contraction eases. "Because I feel like we have negative time. I feel like time has ceased to exist and has been replaced by eternal suffering."
"You're doing great, sweetheart."
"I'm in a minivan in my wedding dress in a puddle of amniotic fluid."
"You're radiant." I say it partly to keep myself from panicking.
"I will murder you."
"Note taken."
My phone buzzes. Dale, texting from the truck behind us: Ingrid says breathe through it. Also she's crying. Happy tears.
I type back: Daisy says to tell her the breathing isn't helping.
Three dots. Then: Ingrid says it never does but keep doing it anyway.
Another contraction. Daisy's grip crushes my hand, and I click the stopwatch automatically, marking the start. Three minutes fifty seconds since the last one.
"Getting closer," Ruth says, satisfied. "Nell, how much longer?"
"Seven minutes if traffic cooperates."
"It's nine at night," Daisy pants. "What traffic?"
"There's always traffic."
"In what universe—" She breaks off, breathing through it, and I watch helplessly as she battles through the pain. In five years of marriage and months of rebuilding, I've never felt more useless.
"You're doing so well," I murmur, brushing her hair back from her face. "I'm so proud of you."
"I haven't done anything yet."
"You've done everything. You married me twice. You forgave me when I didn't deserve it. You're currently creating a human being with nothing but your body and sheer stubbornness."
"The stubbornness helps." The contraction fades, and she slumps against me. "Why do you have a highlighter in your wedding jacket?"
"Habit."
"You brought a highlighter to our vow renewal."
"I bring a highlighter everywhere. You know this."
"I do know this." She laughs weakly. "I married a man who can't leave the house without office supplies."
"And a stopwatch."
"The stopwatch is actually useful tonight."
"See? Preparedness."
Nell pulls into the hospital entrance, and everything happens very fast. A wheelchair appears.
Nurses take over. Someone says something about centimeters, and someone else pages a doctor, and suddenly Daisy is being wheeled away from me and I'm standing in the entrance in my wedding suit, holding a stopwatch and a highlighter, feeling like I've been hit by a train.
"Sir?" A nurse touches my arm. "Are you the father?"
"Yes. Yes, I'm the… yes."
"Follow me."
I follow. Through doors that say AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Into a room that's too bright and too clinical and too real. Daisy is already in a hospital gown, and I don't know how that happened so fast, and she's looking at me with an expression caught between terror and hilarity.
"Your pocket," she says.
I look down. The highlighter is crushed, leaking yellow ink onto my shirt.
"Perfect," I mutter, shoving it deeper into my pocket. "Absolutely perfect."
"Classic Adam."
"Are you really going to mock me right now?"
"I'm going to mock you forever." Another contraction starts, and she grabs for my hand. "But also, come here. Please. I need you to not leave."
"I'm not leaving."
"Promise."
"I promise." I take her hand, ink-stained fingers and all. "I'm showing up. That was my whole vow. I'm not going anywhere."
Ruth appears in the doorway, slightly breathless. "They checked that Daisy wanted me here before they let me through."
"Ruth, you can't—" Daisy starts.
"I'm not delivering anything, sweetheart. I'm moral support. The doctors will do the doctoring." She settles into a chair by the window, pulling out her knitting like she plans to wait all night. "Besides, someone needs to keep your husband from passing out."
"I'm not going to pass out."
"You're pale as a ghost and you have highlighter on your face."
I touch my cheek. My fingers come away yellow.
"Great," I say. "Fantastic. My daughter is going to be born while I look like a Minion."
Daisy laughs, then winces, then laughs again. "Oh my God. You do look like a Minion."
"This is the worst moment of my life."
"Liar. This is the best moment of your life."
"It can be both."
The door opens and a doctor enters: calm, efficient, clearly used to chaos. She introduces herself, examines Daisy, pronounces her progressing beautifully. The phrases wash over me like water. Dilated and effaced. Active labor, transition coming soon.
I keep holding Daisy's hand. The stopwatch clicks under my thumb every time a contraction hits. I keep murmuring things that probably don't help at all, but she hasn't told me to stop, so I keep going.
"Tell me something," Daisy says during a brief reprieve. "Distract me."
"What do you want to know?"
"Anything. Tell me about… I don't know." She squeezes my hand, another contraction building behind her eyes. "The first day. Our first day."
"The courthouse?"
"Yeah." She manages a smile that's half grimace. "Distract me."
I shift closer, keeping her hand in both of mine, and let myself go back. Almost six years ago. A different person wearing my face.
"You came into my conference room ready to commit murder."
"I was defending my dad."
"You called me cold. Dead inside." I can still see her face when she said it, furious and unafraid.
"You were suing him for something that wasn't his fault."
"I should have dropped that lawsuit before I ever asked you for anything—"
"Adam." She digs her nails into my palm. "Distraction, not litigation."
Right. "You brought a photograph of your mother. You made me look at what the lawsuit would take."
"I'd driven ninety minutes. I wasn't leaving without an answer."
"I offered you the deal," I continue. "Five years, public marriage, your father's debt cleared. You stared at me for about thirty seconds like I'd grown a second head."
"I thought it was a trap."
"It was an unfair bargain. I knew you were desperate."
"It was." Another contraction-grimace. "Keep going."
"You said yes. I had my lawyers draw up the paperwork in an hour, and we went straight to the courthouse." The memory sharpens: fluorescent lights, a bored clerk, the pen chained to the counter because apparently people steal courthouse pens. "The pen was on a chain."
Daisy laughs, breathy and pained. "The chain was like two feet long. You had to lean all the way across the counter."
"It was undignified."
"It was hilarious. You kept trying to sign with your normal signature and running out of chain."
"I have a complicated signature."
"You have an ego."
I smile, brush the damp hair back from her forehead. "After that—"
"After that you carried me over the threshold."
"You said you'd annul the whole thing if I dropped you," I say. "And then I hit my head."
"You looked so serious about it. Like threshold-carrying was a legal procedure."
"I didn't know what I was doing."
"Neither did I."
"I should have been better," I say quietly. "From the beginning."
"You're better now." She brings my hand to her lips, kisses my knuckles. "That's what matters."
The contraction hits, and she stops laughing. Her grip on my hand goes vice-tight. Ruth sets down her knitting and moves to Daisy's other side, murmuring quiet encouragement that somehow cuts through the pain better than anything I've said all night.
"Breathe through it, sweetheart. That's right. You're doing beautifully."
"I'm doing terribly."
"You're doing exactly right."
The hours blur together after that. Nurses come and go. The doctor checks in periodically. Dale and Ingrid arrive at some point, hovering in the hallway until Ruth sends them to the waiting room with strict instructions to "sit down, drink coffee, and stop looking so panicked."
A nurse slips in to check a monitor, and on her way out she pauses at the door with a bemused look. "The older gentleman in the waiting room, the one in the bow tie? He keeps stopping us to ask if this is normal. The waiting. He wants to know if it's an American thing."
"That's Klaus," I say. "Tell him yes. It's very normal."
She smiles. "I did. He said then he would wait normally."
Midnight comes and goes. Daisy curses, then apologizes, then curses again. I lose feeling in my right hand just before midnight but don't mention it because she needs something to squeeze and I can provide that, at least.
"I want to push," she says suddenly.
The doctor checks. Nods. "You can push."
And then it's happening, really happening, and I'm holding Daisy's hand while she does the hardest work I've ever witnessed, and Ruth is counting, and the doctor is encouraging, and somewhere in the chaos I hear a sound that stops my heart. A cry. Small and furious and absolutely perfect.
"It's a girl," the doctor says, like we didn't already know. "A beautiful, healthy girl."
They place her on Daisy's chest (tiny and red and screaming, so angry at being evicted from her warm home) and Daisy is laughing and crying and I'm definitely crying, no point pretending otherwise, and Ruth is crying, and somewhere in the hallway I hear Ingrid shriek with joy.
"Hi," Daisy whispers to the baby. "Hi, tiny person. I'm your mom."
The baby stops screaming. Blinks up at us with dark eyes (my eyes, maybe, though newborns' colors can change) and makes a small noise that sounds almost like a question.
"That's your dad," Daisy says, tilting so the baby can see me. "He's going to be ridiculous about you. Fair warning."
"I'm not going to be ridiculous."
"You have highlighter on your face and you've been crying for twenty minutes."
"I'm going to be the appropriate amount of ridiculous."
"Lies."
I lean down, brushing my lips against the baby's forehead. She smells like warmth and possibility and everything I never knew I wanted until this exact moment.
"She needs a name," Daisy says softly.
"Annie."
She looks up at me. "You want to name her Annie?"
"After your mother. Unless you don't… I mean, if it's too painful, or if you wanted something else—"
"Adam."
"Yes?"
"I love you."
"I love you too." I touch our daughter's cheek, marveling at the impossibility of her. "What do you think? Annie?"
Daisy smiles down at the baby. "Annie Smith. You're named after the bravest woman I ever knew. No pressure."
Annie makes another small sound. Her tiny hand curls around my finger.
"She has a strong grip," I say.
"She'll need it. We're a lot."
"We're a good lot," I say, and I mean it.
"We're an intense lot."
"I'll allow it."
The room empties eventually. Dale and Ingrid take turns holding Annie, both crying fresh tears.
Klaus appears briefly, pronounces her "very small but extremely German in spirit" for reasons I don't understand, and retreats to let us rest. Bev left lasagna at the nurses' station.
Priya sent flowers. Grayson and Abbie texted a photo of themselves in their pajamas, holding a sign that says WELCOME BABY SMITH in glitter paint.
Ruth is the last to leave. She stands at the door, watching the three of us, her eyes suspiciously bright.
"You did good," she says to Daisy. "Both of you."
"Thank you for being here."
"Wouldn't have missed it." She looks at me. "You keep showing up, you hear? That baby's going to need a father who stays."
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Good." She nods once, satisfied, and disappears down the hall.
The room goes quiet. Hospital-quiet, which isn't really quiet at all: monitors beeping, footsteps in the hallway, the distant murmur of other families living other moments. But it feels quiet. It feels like the world has shrunk to this bed, these three people, this impossible new reality.
Daisy is asleep, finally. The labor exhausted her in ways I can't imagine. Annie is in my arms, awake and alert, studying me with those dark newborn eyes like she's trying to figure out who I am.
"Hi," I whisper. "I'm your dad."
She blinks.
"I know I look ridiculous right now. Your mom mentioned the highlighter. It's… it's a long story. I'll explain when you're older."
She makes a small noise, not quite a cry, not quite a coo, a sound caught between the two.
I settle beside Daisy on the bed, wide awake with Annie secure in my arms. Daisy shifts against my chest without waking.
"Nobody arranged you," I whisper to our daughter. "You just showed up."