I could feel it even as I climbed into the passenger seat of Jen’s BMW, and I put my hand on my belly, willing him or her to calm down. I realized it was ridiculous to try to silently will the baby to stop reacting to my stress levels, but it was all I could do until I knew what the outcome of my crazy idea would be.
Jen started up the car and pulled out of the driveway, turning towards the city. I looked up the address of the Maclaren Children’s Home, and the staid, unconcerned voice of the GPS navigator immediately got on my nerves.
Breathe, Amy. Breathe. Getting all agitated isn’t going to help anyone. I closed my eyes, feeling the easy tears that seemed to rise up in me a few times a day ever since I’d found out about my pregnancy.
You don’t even know if he’ll be there—not really. The fact that I only had Finn’s word about his annual pilgrimage hadn’t occurred to me until Jen began weaving through traffic, trying to get me to the orphanage as quickly as possible. What if Finn had been telling some kind of tall tale? What if he’d just said the bit about his yearly good deed to impress me, and then swore me to secrecy so that it would never come out in an article where he might be held responsible for the lie?
I didn’t think that it could be possible. If Finn had wanted to impress me with a tall tale, he wouldn’t have picked something so personal—and so easily verifiable. He would have chosen something more low-key.
But, at the same time, I had to admit that I didn’t know Finn all that well, in spite of how close I’d felt like we were before everything had gone so wrong. We’d had a fling that had lasted a few weeks, and we’d only really been together for a handful of nights in all that time.
If I ever tell anyone apart from Jen about how I ended up having Finn’s child, I don’t think they’d believe me, I thought, not for the first time. No one would believe that a person could get pregnant from what amounted to a one-night stand; they’d think the coincidence factor was astronomically high, and they’d be right.
Traffic slowed to a crawl and I tried to keep myself calm as I waited for it to clear up.
“It’s probably a good thing that you’re the one driving,” I told Jen. “I’m not sure I’d be able to handle the stress all on my own.”
“You’re tough, Amy, don’t get me wrong,” Jen said. “But I don’t know if you’re tough enough to do this alone. The last thing I wanted was to get a call from you saying you’d gone into labor in your tiny little car halfway across town.”
I laughed, and felt a little jolt shock through me. Braxton-Hicks contractions, I told myself. I’d gotten them randomly over the course of the previous week, and the doctor had told me not to worry about them, that it was just my body getting ready for the main event, and that I would know when the real ones started.
“I just hope I’m not making a huge mistake,” I said absently.
“I think the mistake ship has already sailed, to be honest,” Jen commented, and I rolled my eyes but managed a weak smile at her joke.
The traffic broke up and I breathed a sigh of relief, trying to keep myself in that state of calm all the way across the city to the Maclaren Children’s Home. I saw the sign for it when it was about a block away, and my heart started beating faster again. Keep it together, Amy, I told myself. You can do this. You’ve done harder things in the last year alone.
Jen pulled around to the back parking area, and before she could get out of the car and follow me into the building, I managed to get my seatbelt undone, the door open, and start towards the front entrance. I wasn’t entirely sure why, but I wanted to see Finn on my own, with no one at my side. I also wanted to make sure that it wasn’t going to be some major disappointment—that I’d find out that Finn wasn’t here—with any kind of audience.
I hauled open the door and paused as I felt another Braxton-Hicks contraction. They were coming more frequently than they had been the previous week, but the OB/GYN I was seeing had warned me that they would.
I stepped into the Maclaren Children’s Home, and immediately heard sounds of a party going on: music, chatter and movement that told me that whether or not Finn was present, the staff and children were certainly celebrating something. I could smell the telltale scent of cake and frosting, the cloying sweetness of soda, and the oiliness of fried foods.
I followed my ears and nose, walking through the entryway and past what had to be the equivalent of a den, down a long, winding hallway, and finally through a pair of doors that separated the kitchen from a big dining area.
I couldn’t quite make myself move forward from the door; for a moment I just stared into the room, watching kids of all ages laughing and talking, dancing and playing with brand-new toys and games. I smiled to myself, but I could feel tears starting in my eyes; I almost always found myself getting teary whenever I saw kids these days.
I swallowed down the lump in my throat and looked around the room. I had almost given up on the idea that Finn might be there—almost left the doorway before anyone could notice me—when I spotted him. He was on the opposite end of the room from me, handing a wrapped toy to a boy who couldn’t have been older than eight.
He looked up right at that moment, and our gazes met. For just a second, I almost felt embarrassed to be there, almost humiliated at how pathetic I had to look. I knew I probably looked pasty, sad, and worn. The pregnancy was going along normally, but with only days to go before my delivery, I was far from looking my best.
Finn stared at me, and then before I could react, he was almost running across the room, a look in his eyes that I couldn’t quite read. I almost felt him wrapping his arms around me before I even saw him approach me, and every last bit of self-control I had evaporated in an instant. Tears began streaming out of my eyes, and I buried my face against his chest, soaking the front of his shirt.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, unwilling to pull back. Finn smelled exactly like I remembered; he felt just as good, his body strong, nimble and tough. For a split second, it felt as if it had been hours and not months that we’d been apart.
Finn pulled back and looked down, his gaze going straight to the hugely pregnant belly protruding in front of me.
“This—you haven’t been with anyone else,” he said, finally looking up to my face. It wasn’t a question; he was assuming that the baby was his, right away.
“I haven’t,” I said. “It’s—it’s yours.” I rubbed at my face and tried to think of all the words I’d wanted to say, but they seemed to have left me along with my self-control. I managed to dry my eyes, and saw that Finn’s eyes were misty—he was on the verge of tears himself.
“It’s really you,” he said, his voice full of wonder. “And you’re really…”
“Pregnant,” I finished for him, nodding. My throat felt tight and full. “I’m due in a few days, and I just…” I shook my head.
“But what happened? Why didn’t you tell me?”
I laughed, shaking a little in his arms. “I tried to get in touch, but I couldn’t get through on your phone, and then…” I licked my lips, hesitating. “And then when I tried to tell Heather, she said that if I made any kind of public fuss about it, you were going to sue me over the piece in the Inquisitor.”
The words tumbled out of me, and I saw Finn trying to take them all in, trying to understand.
“That slanderous, reputation-ruining—” he started, but I cut him off.
“Please! Please—I have to tell you,” I said, gripping his hands tightly as another pre-labor contraction rippled through me. “I didn’t write the story. Kent did, and he put my name under it because…” I shrugged. “I have no idea why he did it. But it was him that wanted to ruin you, and when I told him I couldn’t go through with it, he made it all up.”
“I knew it had to be something like that,” Finn said, sighing. “I knew I couldn’t have been that wrong about you.” He leaned in and kissed me on the forehead, looking down at my pregnant body again. “I still can’t believe that all this time…”
“Heat
her told me that if I went public, you’d sued me,” I explained. “I couldn’t get you to take my calls, and then you started dating that actress, and I just figured you didn’t care about me anymore.”
“You mean Eliza?” Finn stared at me blankly as I nodded. “Heather set that whole thing up with Eliza’s management—it’s never been real, not even a little bit.”
He squeezed my shoulders, my hands, and shook his head again as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “She said it would help my career, especially after the article, and I just sort of went along with it.” He looked into my eyes. “If I’d had any idea, Amy…”
“I wanted to tell you,” I said. “The only reason I came today was because I couldn’t bear the thought of not trying one last time. I hoped that I could find you here, without Eliza or Heather, and that I could talk to you.” I laughed through the tears I could feel gathering in my eyes again.
Before I could say anything more, Finn leaned in and brushed his lips against mine. He deepened the kiss after just a moment, and I melted against him, wrapping my arms more tightly around his shoulders, pressing my body as best as I could against his. Even though it had been feeling awkward for months, in that moment it felt perfect, and I felt—once again—as if we were made for each other.
“Finn?” someone said, behind me.
I recognized the voice, but for a moment I couldn’t bring myself to care. I continued kissing Finn, continued letting him kiss me, until the grating, female voice cut through my warm haze of delight again.
“Finn!”
“Heather,” Finn said as we separated. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to come and beg you to let me get some publicity shots of this,” Heather said, and then looked from Finn to me. “But now I’m going to have to plead with you not to destroy your own career after all the work I’ve done to salvage it!”
“What are you talking about? The thing with Eliza?” Finn shook his head, his anger rising. “Everyone knows that’s fake, Heather—it’s worthless.”
“What I mean is you taking up with some second-rate gold digger who’s only here to try and extort money out of you with her little sob story!”
I felt anger starting to rise up in me, but a contraction—deeper and sharper than the ones before—rippled across my belly, down into my hips, and made it impossible for me to speak.
“You don’t even know if she’s pregnant with your baby,” Heather went on. “The way she wrote that garbage article, she probably…”
“You need to stop,” Finn said quietly. “You’re in a room full of kids, and you’re acting more childish than any of them.”
“Childish?” Heather’s voice was almost a shriek. “I’ve been trying to protect you, Finn: your reputation, your credibility, your career. A little gratitude would be nice—but since you apparently can’t manage to come up with that, I’d like it if you would at least avoid doing something that’s going to undo all my hard work.”
I groaned as a deep contraction cut through me; I felt wetness gush against the fabric of my maternity jeans, and cold, hard shock hit me as I realized what it meant. Heather and Finn were too busy arguing, and the contraction that ripped through me before I could even fully get over the sensation of my water breaking, made it impossible for me to speak, to try to get either his or her attention.
Jen hurried into the room. “Amy!”
I grabbed at her as she came close. “The baby’s coming.”
Jen’s eyes widened and she draped an arm around me; I didn’t even know if Finn saw me as my best friend half-carried me out of the dining hall of the children’s home, and then out of the building to her car.
EIGHTEEN
Amy
Somehow, Jen managed to get me to the hospital before the baby came. She didn’t even bother parking the car; instead, she pulled up to the emergency room entrance and climbed out of the stopped car, hollering for help.
“My friend is in labor! She needs to get into the emergency room right now.”
Someone saw her and in a matter of moments, I had orderlies helping me out of the car and into a wheelchair, and someone had taken control of Jen’s BMW so that she could follow me into the hospital.
The OB/GYN had told me that I’d feel pressure; in reality, it felt like my entire body was no longer in my control, as if something was pushing down and expanding out throughout me from the waist down. Each contraction crackled through me, seeming to shoot down my legs, and up through my spine.
Thanks to Jen, I was checked into a room in a matter of moments, and my wet pants and my shirt came off. Before I knew it, I was in a bed, in nothing more than socks and a hospital gown, struggling to remember the breathing exercises that I’d learned months before.
I alternated between being focused on the battleground that my body, and thinking about Finn, back at the orphanage, arguing with Heather.
“Sweetheart, you’re fighting the process,” my doctor said, when she came in to check on me.
“I’m not fighting it,” I insisted. “It’s just…taking…too long…”
“You’re going to be here for a while, Amy,” Dr. Killian said. “You might as well settle in. Where else do you have to be?”
I thought about that question while contractions tore through me, preparing my body for birth. Where else did I have to be? Over the past few months, the baby growing in my belly had become the single focal point of my life. I’d thought about Finn all the time, but until that very day, I’d never even entertained the thought that I might actually reach him.
My labor deepened and I had nothing to do but give in to it; Jen stayed with me throughout.
“I am never—ever—doing this again,” I told her during one of the brief lulls between contractions. “I will never understand women who do it—oh! Oh—God, who do it…four times.”
“Supposedly, right after the delivery, your body floods your brain with chemicals so you forget how awful it is,” Jen said matter-of-factly.
“I wish it would get to that part already!” I yelled, grabbing at the sheets, nearly tearing them in my hands as the hardest contraction yet worked its way through my body.
Dr. Killian came in a few moments later to check on me.
“Please,” I said, gasping for breath. “Please tell me I can get the epidural now.”
“I’ll have someone come in and prep you,” Dr. Killian told me. “You’re almost ready to go.”
When she left the room again, I looked over at Jen.
“I have never wanted a glass of water so much in my entire life,” I told her, my throat burning and my body feeling as if it might rip itself apart from pain.
“I’ll get you some more ice chips,” she suggested.
“They don’t help,” I whined.
“They’re the most you can have,” Jen said firmly. “They might still have to put you under.”
I grumbled and watched her leave, squirming in the delivery bed, for the moment alone in the torment of my body. The anesthesiologist came in while Jen was still out of the room.
“Let’s get this epidural going,” the petite redhead suggested.
“Please do,” I croaked at her. “I feel like I’m going to die.”
“You aren’t going to die,” the specialist told me soothingly. “Your labor is going exactly the way it should.”
Jen was still gone when they finished giving me the epidural, but with the lower half of my body all but numb, the urgency for something to slake my throat wasn’t quite as intense.
I laid back in the bed, eyes closed, making myself breathe as slowly as possible. I could hear the fetal monitor—the baby was doing fine, as was I. A little while longer. I’ll be through this and then… I had no idea what would happen after the baby was born; I hadn’t even thought that far ahead.
I heard the door open and close and sat up in the delivery bed, opening my eyes.
“Jen—I’m sorry I yelled at you,” I started to say. But instead
of Jen, the person stepping into my room was Finn. I stared at him in shock. “What the…”
He hurried to the bed and took my hand in his; he must have run into Jen in the hallway, because he had a cup of ice chips in his other hand. “Did you really think that I was going to stand there arguing with Heather while you were giving birth to our baby?”
I laughed, and then grabbed at my stomach; the epidural helped with the pain of the contractions, but I could still feel them, in a muted way.
“I didn’t… I didn’t realize that you’d know what was happening,” I said, when I could speak. “I didn’t know if you would—if you could—find out where I was.”
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