by Julia Kent
“Wha–?” A sleepy head appears on the other side of my enormous body pillow. “Wh'd I do?”
“Help,” is all I can choke out as the belt-like feeling across my hips cuts off my words.
Andrew rubs his eyes, sniffing once, moving his fingers across his chin slowly, cricking his neck. The sound of snapping filters through the pain I'm feeling, but all I can do is ride it.
Ride it out.
Except nothing fades away like it should.
“Did you just say help?” he asks in a low voice. It's finally kicking in that something's wrong.
All I can do is nod, his eyes going to my belly as I suddenly let out a sound I associate with marine wildlife documentaries.
“Are you–are you in labor?”
“I–I–” A long, impossibly stretched out inhale twists my lungs into toy balloons as I try to answer him, but can't. My butthole tightens like it's a piece of pain taffy. Those inner thighs, deliciously tickled in my dream mere seconds ago, become painful wooden boards wedged under my skin.
“Amanda! What's wrong?” His hands are on my shoulders, his sleepiness replaced by deep concern.
“Contraction,” I finally hiss.
“Contraction? You're only at thirty weeks. It's not time yet.”
The pain washes out like the tide. Fear spikes through me. “I know. But I'm pretty sure that's a contraction.”
“We need to call the doctor.”
“Wait! Maybe I'm just dehydrated.” All of my muscles that were tight feel noodly, loose and stringy, and a deep exhaustion seeps in.
Andrew leaps off the bed, runs to the bathroom, and I hear the faucet running. He returns with a half-filled glass and hands it to me, a bit of water sloshing over the edge.
I drink. He fumbles for his phone.
“Don't!” I shout, but a bit of water goes down my windpipe, and suddenly I'm coughing, which turns the hard pull above my pubic bone into a wall of tight rubber.
He freezes, eyes wide, hair a complete mess. He's shirtless, underwear askew, chest rising and falling faster and faster.
Is this what Andrew looks like when he's panicking?
“Why not? We need to call the doctor.”
“Let me think.” Thrusting the glass back at him buys me time. “Fill this again. I need more.”
“I'm calling 911.” His voice fills me with terror, because when he sounds like that, he's in action mode and there's no stopping him.
I need time.
“NO!”
“Amanda.”
“Please. Water first, hospital next.” The words are out of my mouth. I said it. This is inevitable.
But my fear needs a few seconds to get used to the idea.
His finger is an inch away from his phone's screen, but he stops, gets me more water, brings it back, and starts getting dressed. Then he picks up the phone again.
“I said I need more time.”
“I'm telling Gina to clear my schedule.”
My terror turns up a notch. This must be bad if he's doing that.
“An entire day?” I squeak.
“Are you bleeding?” he asks calmly, and that's what breaks me. His calm. His concern.
And clearing his schedule.
My hand moves reluctantly between my legs, praying for dryness. Peeling back the covers is an act of will. What's there?
What isn't?
As I twist to look, one of the babies moves in a long, rolling line, and a bump of a tiny joint pokes out my skin. It’s an inch of heaven.
“He moved! One of the babies moved.”
And then the tightening happens again.
A rush, all the air in my body moving out of me, paralyzes my lungs as someone stretches me impossibly. A dull ache turns up in intensity as Andrew holds my shoulders. Strangely, I notice that his shirt is buttoned up wrong, one buttonhole off.
“I'm calling,” he says, but I reach forward and clutch his shirt, pulling him closer. He whispers, “Breathe. Use what we learned in class. Just breathe through it. Imagine oxygen pouring into your cells, opening everything.”
I take a breath, pushing past the wall that makes air stay on the other side.
“Breathe,” he says, making breathy sounds like he's trying to do it for me. His hand is still gripping the phone, but he's not calling.
I do. It slows down, then fades suddenly, like someone stopped wringing a washcloth. The water suddenly tastes like ambrosia and I gulp greedily.
“Call the OB practice,” I whisper, grateful for the break. My legs begin to shake. “Let's start there.”
“But–”
“Call the OB,” I respond in a low, commanding voice neither of us recognizes. I sound like him when he's being brutally firm.
It works. He calls. Someone answers on the second ring.
“This is Andrew McCormick. I'm calling for my wife, Amanda. She’s thirty weeks, twins. She's experiencing contractions. Yes.” He hands the phone to me.
I take it.
“Hi, Amanda. This is Morgan. I'm calling Dr. Parnathi right now, but as I ping her, can you give me more specifics? Are you bleeding?”
“No.”
“How far apart are the contractions?”
“I've had two.” I put the phone on speaker.
“How far apart were they?”
Helpless, I look to Andrew, who frowns at the bedside clock as if it's derelict in doing its job.
“I'm not sure. Maybe five minutes?”
“Okay. I'll ask you a few more questions, and let's see if we can stay on the line for five minutes. If there's another one, that'll tell us a lot.”
“Okay.”
“Has this happened before?”
“No.”
“What were you doing when it happened?”
“Sleeping.” Andrew takes my empty water glass and walks to the bathroom, refilling it.
“The contraction woke you up?”
“Yes.”
“Did you do anything different yesterday? Something extra strenuous?”
“Nothing more than normal.”
“Did you have intercourse before bed?”
Andrew freezes on his way back to me, hand clutching the now-full glass. He looks at his crotch.
“Er, um... yes.”
“Any suspicious discharge?”
“No.”
“Any nausea? Fever? Headache? Heart racing?” She goes through a longer list and I say no between sips of water.
“Then it's the contractions only?”
“Mmm hmmm.”
“Okay. Amanda?”
The phone suddenly shows Dr. Parnathi calling on another line.
“Oh! The doctor's on the other line.”
“I'm going to hang up now and the doctor will take over from here. I hope everything goes well.”
I accept the doctor's call.
“Amanda,” her soothing voice says, “I understand you're having contractions. Can you tell me more about it?”
As I give her all the same information I gave Morgan, I drink to the point of needing to pee, but hold it. I climb off the bed and stand, the pressure on my bladder shifting.
“Do you feel the babies?” she asks.
As if in cue, Lefty moves, then Righty.
“Yes. Pretty sure they both just moved.”
“Good. That's very good. Have you had another contraction yet?”
“No.” I look at the clock. It's been at least five minutes.
And it's 5:59 a.m.
Another series of questions. I ask Andrew to get me a glass of orange juice, per the doctor's suggestion. I drink it.
“At thirty weeks, Amanda, I'm still concerned about the babies' lung development. I hate to send you to an emergency room when our office opens in just ninety minutes, so here is what I suggest: hydrate. Elevate your legs. Pack a bag–”
“A bag! You think I'll be hospitalized?”
“In case. You and your husband should get ready and be at the office at 7:30. We'll
make you a standby appointment. We're adjacent to the hospital, so if we need to admit you, we will. But given we're now at eight minutes since the last contraction, I'm suspecting dehydration and sexual activity might be the culprit.”
Andrew's eyes change at that last part.
“But–”
“Do you need to go straight to the ER, Amanda? I can make sure–”
I walk a bit, doing an inventory of my body. Babies moving? Yes. Back aching more than usual? No. Need to pee?
Badly.
Contractions? No.
“I think I'm okay. It's been nine minutes and nothing new. I'll keep drinking water. We'll be there at 7:30.”
“Good. In the meantime, if anything changes...” She rattles off a list of issues to watch out for, and then I hang up the phone.
My eyes meet Andrew's.
“We're going now.”
“No. Please, Andrew.”
“And we're never having sex again.”
That makes me laugh. Which makes my abdominal muscles (what's left of them) tighten.
Which makes the air whoosh out of me.
Which terrifies my husband.
“We're going,” he demands. “I'll have José drive us.”
“Hold on.” I hold up a finger to denote the need to pause.
He storms across the room and then I hear the shower running. He comes back naked, holding my again-full water glass.
“Drink. Check on the babies' movement. I'm taking a one-minute shower and you're next, then we get ready for the doctor's office.”
The tight feeling fades much faster than before. “Yes.”
Relief makes his whole body relax. “Thank God.”
While he's in the shower, I waddle into the bathroom and pee. The water turns off before I even flush.
He wasn't kidding. That really was a one-minute shower.
My wet, anxious husband opens the shower door, steam billowing around his tall, muscled frame. A wave of arousal pours over me, so wholly inappropriate that it fills me with the weirdest mix of lust and shame.
Who feels this?
Apparently, me. I do.
“Another contraction?”
“No.”
“Good,” he says tersely. “Need me to pack a bag for you?”
“I'm not packing a bag.”
“Then I will.”
“I'm not staying at a hospital! This is just an office visit!” I'm breathing hard, and trust me, it's hard to breathe with two babies treating your lungs like kickballs.
“Amanda.” Naked, wet, with underwear half on, sticking to his ass, Andrew's hold on my shoulders is tight. He bends down, eyes boring into mine. “You are the most important person in the world to me. The babies rely on you to survive. I rely on you to survive. I can't have anything go wrong with you or the babies. Do you understand?”
“I'm sure I'll–”
Raw, vulnerable fear pervades his every cell. I swear I can smell it on him as his fingers dig into my shoulders and he repeats starkly, “Do you understand?”
Suddenly, I really can't breathe. The emotion is too much. My body's sensations are too much.
Gravity itself is too, too much.
And my womb is filled with two babies who need to be okay.
“I do.” His kiss is short, a perfunctory brush of lips that says there's no time for more, because we have to act now.
“I need to get dressed,” I say, body in a new state of vigilance. Every twinge could be the next contraction, and I'm going mad reading my nerves as they send messages to my brain about where my skin and bones are in space and time.
Everything pinpoints. For this second, all that I am is my hand, clasping the cloth of my nightgown. And in the next second, I am my arms, going up, pulling the cloth over my head. And for the following second, I am my nose, snagging on the cloth, pulled over my chin.
And so on, and so on, each second a world I inhabit.
Enough seconds piled on top of each other become a breath. And each breath a heartbeat.
Three, in fact.
I'm moving for three.
“You want me to pack the bag for you?” Andrew asks, my answer on the tip of my tongue, a reflexive no that isn't good enough for this moment.
My no is a relic of a time when I had the luxury to think I didn't need help.
“Yes,” I say, giving in, his terse nod more of a relief than I wish it were. Slipping my feet into simple flat shoes, I waddle to the nightstand, find my half-empty water glass, and drink. Then I stretch slowly, arms back, shoulders popping slightly as blood flows under my skin, legs aching with weight but gratified to have movement.
I sigh.
“Another one?” he asks, floating to my side so fast, it's like he's levitating.
“No. Just...” My tears take over.
“You're fine,” he says, kissing the tear off my cheek. “The babies are fine. Everyone will be fine, Amanda.”
“How do you know? We have no control over anything.”
“We sure as hell do,” he counters. “I'm getting you to the doctor now. You're hydrating. We're following the expert's advice, and that's control.”
“That's not control.”
“It's as close as I can get, so I'll take it.”
Bang bang bang
The door downstairs opens, Gerald's voice floating up. “Andrew? Amanda? I'm ready when you are. You need help carrying Amanda down?”
Gerald's presence takes the reality of this crisis up a notch.
“What are you doing here?” I gasp.
“Andrew texted José. I'm filling in for Mort while he's on workman's comp. I was worried.” Gerald and Andrew exchange a powerful look that instantly makes me feel safer and terrified.
“I can walk,” I whisper. If any two guys in the world can carry a pregnant me down a flight of stairs, it's Gerald and Andrew, but this is already going sideways.
I don't need the memory of that added to this.
“We're good. Give us a minute,” Andrew shouts. “You’re sure you can walk?” he whispers to me.
I nod.
I take one, two, three steps toward the door, gaining confidence as no contractions hit. The clock says 6:33. We're only twenty minutes or so from the doctor's office, but Andrew's insistence on going now makes sense.
Better to wait in the parking lot there than to worry here.
I'm slow. Really slow. And our stairs are big.
Really big.
The estate Andrew's dad and mom bought when the boys were little is a sprawling home designed to impress. The staircase wraps around the wide entry hall, and there are twenty stairs from the second floor to the first. My hips rotate as I take each step down, ligaments recalibrating, babies moving with each step.
Thank God.
“I've got your purse and bag. Do you need my arm?”
“The bannister's fine. I'm just slow.”
“Take all the time you need. Any more contractions?”
“No–”
Damn it.
As I start to reply, one grips me, hard, lower this time, then suddenly lighter, spreading up over my belly like fingers playing tight piano strings. It's easier to breathe through and fades faster.
“We need to go directly to the ER,” Andrew says.
“Would you just STOP?” My voice starts soft and low, but by the last word, I explode. Bending down a little, I take a deep breath, eyes fixed on my hand. I listen to him breathe behind me.
The last breath comes out like an exasperated sigh.
“I know you're worried,” I grind out, literally gritting my teeth. “But I don't need the pressure, either. We have a plan. What time is it?”
“Six forty-seven.”
“That means it's been over fifteen minutes since the last contraction. They're slowing down. If you want to help, stop barking orders at me about the ER and get me some damn water.” That came out harsher than it should, and two different Amandas suddenly take up residence inside me.
<
br /> One feels guilty.
One feels terrified.
One feels angry.
Guess there are a few more Amandas in there.
“Here.” A bottled water is in my hand before I can blink. Andrew's heat radiates behind me, his body close. In my peripheral vision, I see he's got my small bag open. He must have put the bottled water in there.
“Thank you.” I unscrew the cap and drink half the bottle, hoping the hydration really does stop the contractions.
“I'm sorry.”
I halt with the water still upright, tongue blocking the flow before I choke on the spot. Andrew isn't exactly free with his apologies, so this catches me off guard.
I slowly lower the bottle. “You are?”
“I'm not trying to add to your stress. Or your pain. The opposite. I just–you're right.”
An apology and a “you're right”? Did I die and somehow not notice?
“I am?”
“I–I–I just...” Something in his voice makes me turn as his shadow changes, lowering. When I look behind me, I expect to see his face, but instead he's sitting two steps above me, one hand over his face.
And he's crying.
Crying.
He’s not sobbing; silent tears are running down. The bag is resting on the stair tread beside him, and I see he has a backpack on his shoulders. He reaches for my hand, threading our fingers, lacing him into me.
“Take all the time you need,” he says slowly, earnestly. If I could bend forward, I would kiss him, wipe his face, hug him until he squeezed the fear out of me.
But he has fear, too.
And he's mature enough to show it to me.
We make it to the car, emotion radiating off him, but we're silent. Gerald is, too, moving the car smoothly on the roads, the silence a strange comfort in the enclosed space. By the time we pull up to the medical building, the contractions are there, but they’re bearable.
Still present, but not as dire.
It's when I climb out of the back of the car that I realize I've been lulled into a false sense of security.
Because one rips through me as I have one foot still in the car.
One breath is long enough and too short by far, the pain in my belly taking on color. The rip is so intense, I can't even close my eyes. I feel like webbing covers me, all of it pulled tight under my skin.
