Chapter 26
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
Three in the Morning
Aoife
I knew it was time at three in the morning on a Tuesday in late September, thirty-six weeks into the pregnancy.
I woke into a sensation that was more organised and more purposeful than the usual nighttime discomforts, arriving in waves with a spacing that I timed on my phone for forty minutes before I could no longer tell myself it was something else.
I did not wake Jensen immediately. Old habit. I lay there for forty minutes timing contractions, and then the next one arrived with a specificity that ended the debate, and I got up and I knocked on his door.
He was awake in under three seconds. He opened the door and looked at me — his hair undone from sleep, his face alert and fully present in the way of someone who has gone from sleeping to completely awake in a single motion — and he did not ask whether I was sure.
He just said, "How far apart?" I told him.
He said, "Get your bag. I'll get the car. "
He had packed a hospital bag two weeks ago without mentioning it.
I had found it in the wardrobe the week before, fully stocked, including the specific brand of coconut water Dr. Mehta had recommended and a soft blanket from the guest room that I had not known he had noticed I used.
I had stood in front of that bag for a moment, and I had thought about four hundred dollars on a table and a man packing a hospital bag in secret, and I had understood that these were the same man, and that somehow that had to be all right.
At the hospital, my blood pressure on admission was 169 over 108, and the room assembled around this information with a briskness that cut through the haze of the contractions.
Dr. Mehta arrived at four fifteen. She looked at my chart and looked at me and said, "Given the gestational age and the preeclampsia status, we're going to proceed with delivery.
Two NICU teams are standing by. This is the right call, Aoife.
" I said I understood. Her face was calm and certain in the way that made me trust her completely.
Jensen stood at the head of the bed. He had been there since the room assembled, holding my hand without being asked. At one point the monitor readout climbed to 175 over 115 and I saw the room shift, more voices, the monitoring intensified, and I closed my eyes.
Jensen leaned down. He said, very quietly, so that it was only for me: "They are going to be fine. You are going to be fine. I am right here."
I looked at him. He looked back. His face was calm and his eyes were not. I thought: I believe you. I do not know why I believe you, exactly, given everything that has happened between us, but I do.
I held his hand. I let them take me into theatre.