A Necessary End (13 page)

I
s she sure it's the real thing?” I'm in the hallway, keeping my voice low. “It's so early. Maybe it's false labor.”

“She talked to her doctor and was told to go straight to the hospital.” Gabe's freaked, but he's trying to contain himself, like I am.

“The same doctor who told her to kick back with some merlot?” Though it occurs to me that that conversation might never have happened at all. I'd have no way of knowing, not being permitted entry to the exam room. True or not, I'm still mad about how Leah baited me at Spring Thanksgiving, after all I've done for her.

But her willingness to show ingratitude distinguishes her from Patty, so there's a silver lining. Besides, this is no time for being pissed. The baby's on the way. We're on our way.

I break out into an enormous smile. “He's almost here, Gabe! Can you believe it?”

“No, I guess I can't.” There's a certain crackle to the phone line. I'm on speaker, with the phone lying on the passenger seat, as Gabe drives home to get Leah.

“I'll leave right now and meet you at the hospital.”

“Don't do that. Finish out your day. It'll be your last one with the kids, right? Your maternity leave is starting early.”

“She's only thirty-eight weeks, right?” Panic seizes me. “That means the baby's premature.” I picture him the size of my hand, entombed in hospital Plexiglas rather than his crib at home. We won't be able to hold and kiss and love him, and even Angie knows that's what maternity leave is for.

“Leah said no, he's full term. Thirty-eight weeks is the cutoff, that's what her doctor told her.”

Dr. Merlot again. But on this point, I'll trust her. “I'm leaving right now to meet you.”

“What about your class?”

“The troll can babysit for the rest of the day. I need to be there, Gabe. I need to know that he's okay.” I'm practically done with writing out the framework for my long-term sub anyway. Maybe I can do it by Leah's bedside, as her contractions intensify.

I hear Gabe hesitating. “She doesn't want you there. Not yet, anyway.”

“Let me guess: She wants you there, now.”

“We're friends. You and Leah haven't been getting along so great.”

“That's not my fault! I've been trying!” My voice rings out through the empty hallway. “She was going to drink wine while she's carrying our baby! I have a right to—”

“I know. But she has a right to decide who she wants in the delivery room with her.”

“And she wants you. Alone.”

“You can come in later, but there's a lot of waiting involved. She said . . .” He doesn't want to finish the sentence.

“What did she say, Gabe?” Each word comes out clipped, staccato.

“She said you make her tense, and that's not how she wants to feel through hours of contractions. She said you can come in when the baby's almost here. I made her promise.

“Wren? You still there?”

“Still here.”

“Don't be mad. Be joyful. You're about to be a mother.”

But I didn't think it would happen like this: Gabe on the inside, me on the outs.

“Congratulations, baby.” His voice is like warm breath on my neck. “We're so close. Let's just do it her way a little while longer, and then we're home free. We've got our son.”

I sag against my closed classroom door. Through it, I can hear the natives becoming restless. “How do I get through the day, knowing I'm missing the whole thing?”

“It'll go on for hours, and school's almost over. You'll be at the hospital soon.”

“In the waiting room.”

“I've got to go. She's standing outside.”

“Does she even have her bag packed? Does she know what to bring? I told her to do the birth plan! We haven't even talked names!” I slam my hand into the door, which discharges some frustration and has the bonus effect of making the kids snap to attention for a second.

Gabe speaks directly into the receiver. “I love you. More than anything.” Then he's gone.

M
y poor kids. They didn't stand a chance at holding my attention. I was glued to my cell phone, awaiting each text: Leah checked into the hospital, no problem; she was in early active labor; the baby was in the correct position (as in, he wasn't breech, the delivery would be vaginal, not cesarean); she'd requested an epidural ASAP (of course she did) and was feeling no pain.

Even as I was offering my students good-byes and apologies that we wouldn't get to do all the fun things we'd planned, my mind was elsewhere. I should have been the one in that delivery room, refusing the epidural, because some things in life are meant to be painful. You
feel because you're alive; pain is a sort of currency. Leah and her epidural are cheapening the whole experience.

But it is her experience to cheapen, isn't it? It's her delivery. She'll deliver that baby into my arms, and after that, it becomes my experience.

That's in the back of my mind as I give my final hugs of the school year, and as I inform the office they'll need their long-term substitute sooner than planned, and in the car on the way to the hospital. It helps, but only a little.

I almost stopped by Mel's classroom to see if her perpetual sunniness could perform a type of alchemy. Could she turn my bitterness to gratitude? But I went to the parking lot instead because pain is meant to be felt. It's not just currency; it's information. It can tell me what to do next.

I text Gabe when I arrive at the maternity unit. He meets me at the nurse's station, where one bored-looking woman in scrubs is hunting and pecking on a keyboard. I thought the floor would be more kidded up (clouds painted on the ceilings, circus animals on the walls, maybe), but it's generic hospital. White on white.

Gabe's button-down is untucked and wrinkled and the sleeves are rolled up unevenly. There are bags under his eyes, as if he's been here days rather than hours. “Leah said you can come in,” he tells me. The queen will see you now.

“Isn't she afraid I'll make her tense?”

“Adrienne.” He sighs.

“Did they do an ultrasound?” I ask. I'd love more pictures of him. A few final candids, before he enters the world. This is you, I could tell him, when you were still in the negative integers, minus-three hours old.

“Kid said no paparazzi.”

I smile and step forward, taking his hands in mine. “It's really happening.”

He smiles back, appearing dazed. Little cartoon stars could be rotating around his head. “There's no stopping it now.”

“I'll be nice,” I say.

“Be yourself, okay? Don't try to be her mom. Just be regular.”

I was myself for Spring Thanksgiving, and look where that got us. I was initially banned from the delivery room. “What did you say to Leah?” What I mean is, how come she's letting me in? What changed?

“I told her you won't say anything about her parents. I told her we don't even have to talk, if she doesn't want to. There's a DVD player in there. She's watching
Blade Runner
.” I laugh: Welcome to the world, little guy! The androids have taken over! “I just grabbed a bunch of DVDs and threw them in her suitcase. That's the one she picked. She called it a ‘classic.'”

At that, we both laugh. Then he holds my hand and leads me back to Leah's room.

It's one-stop shopping on the antepartum floor: no more wheeling women through the hall to the delivery room. Instead, Leah will give birth in the same room where she's now watching her generation's
Casablanca
. She's propped up in a bed with steel rails along the sides, in a hospital gown with a blanket over her lower half, her hair pulled back in a tight bun. There are a few stress pimples around her hairline that I never noticed before. But basically, she looks gorgeous and calm. Her eyes are on the TV screen suspended in the air about ten feet away. Harrison Ford and Sean Young are contending with a future that looks positively quaint.

A chair is pulled up to the bedside (Gabe's, I imagine), and another chair resides much farther away, near the door (mine, I presume). There are IV poles and other medical equipment stationed around the room, but Leah doesn't seem to be hooked up to anything.

She glances over, gives me a brief smile and a wave. Then she's back to her movie viewing.

Gabe moves his chair back so he can sit next to me.

“Has she done a birth plan?” I whisper to him. He nods. “What's in it?”

“It was like a multiple-choice test. Does she want the baby placed immediately on her chest, does she want him washed off fully, does she want just a rinse . . . We had fun with it, pictured him being run through a car wash, with those fabric strips slapping at him.” He looks tickled at the memory.

Really, Gabe? A newborn getting slapped around in a car wash is funny?

He gives me a hard stare. “After he's born, do you think you're going to get your sense of humor back?”

Before I can respond, Leah turns to us. “Could you guys, like, be a little quieter?”

The nurse comes in. Gabe introduces us, like he and Katrina are old friends. What an unfortunate name, Katrina, to be forever linked to devastation.

Katrina has a long, dark ponytail and a springy way of moving, but I think she's in her forties. She shakes my hand and then purifies hers afterward from a pump bottle attached to the wall. “How's it going?” she asks Leah.

“Kind of weird,” Leah says. “I'm mostly numb from the waist down. I'm scared to go pee because I feel like I might not know how to use my legs.”

She's scared. It's good to hear an emotion. Our baby isn't being born of an android.

“Let me help you.” Katrina assists Leah in her dismount from the hospital bed, and then they walk across the room to the bathroom. The back of Leah's gown gapes open, revealing a high, perfect ass and cellulite-free legs. Gabe pauses the movie but keeps watching the screen; I can feel the effort he's making not to look in Leah's direction. Maybe she can't feel the breeze on her ass; she said she's numb from the waist down. She might not know she's flashing us.

But didn't she say “mostly numb”?

I don't like the feeling I have: jealous that my baby's mama has a better ass than I do, pissed that she wants me (and Gabe) to know it.

I take a deep breath and try to expunge all negativity. I want to fill this space only with love and kindness so that my baby takes it in from his very first external breaths. I need to have compassion for Leah. She's a scared teenager who's about to have a baby and then give him away.

But not really. As Gabe said, she's only leasing him.

What if Leah holds him in her arms (slimy, or washed, or lightly rinsed, whatever box she checked) and she loves him so purely and completely that she rescinds right then and there?

“I'm scared, too,” I murmur to Gabe, trying to lean into him though our chairs have plastic armrests that make cuddling somewhat prohibitive.

He kisses the top of my head. “Leah's dilating fine. It's smooth sailing.”

There's no time to explain what I'm really afraid of, because Katrina is depositing Leah back in bed. “Dr. Florian will be in soon,” she announces. “Leah's dilating quickly, so delivery's not far off.”

“I don't feel the contractions. Is that bad?”

“We're going to look at a monitor and tell you when the contractions are happening, so you'll know when to push.” Katrina pats Leah's arm. “Nothing to worry about.” She smiles over at me. “So you're the aunt?”

I blink at her and then at Gabe. He couldn't have given me a heads-up that we have a cover story? I see that Leah is staring straight ahead with a faint smile. Did she tell Gabe not to tell me? Does she think this is a game?

For a second, I consider not playing along. But this is not the time to antagonize her. “Yes,” I say, “I'm the aunt.”

Katrina slips out the door, the movie still paused.

“Leah felt like it would be easier to say we're the aunt and uncle,” Gabe says. “Less explaining.”

Gabe hits “Play,” and he and Leah get caught up in the denouement.

I fumble in my purse and remove the ultrasound pictures. I run my fingers across them, over his beautiful profile, like I'm a Catholic and the photos are rosary beads.

Someday I'll tell him, “I loved you before I met you. I would have walked through fire for you.” Before this is all over, I just might have to.

Dr. Florian comes in as the credits are rolling. She looks like a sensible middle-aged woman, not someone who would prescribe wine for a rambunctious fetus.

“I'm Aunt Adrienne,” I say.

Dr. Florian smiles as she sheaths her hand in latex. “Good to meet you.” She tells Leah, “Another cervix check, you know the drill.” Leah obediently places her feet in stirrups and lets Dr. Florian do her worst.

“It's time!” Dr. Florian removes the gloves and heads for the door. “I'll get the team together and we'll be in shortly.”

Leah looks at Gabe, fear plastered across her face. “It's okay,” he says. He moves to her bedside and looks down at her. “I'm right here.” It sounds like something a husband would say. I have a feeling he's part of her birth plan, and I'm not.

The team swarms the room, in masks and gloves. There's Dr. Florian, and another doctor who hasn't been introduced, and Katrina, and two people on standby near a Plexiglas platform that I assume will hold the baby. Gabe stays where he is, only now Leah is clutching his hand, her eyes wild. I inch closer to where I can see better but Leah can't really see me, still on the periphery.

The doctors are watching a monitor and every time the line spikes, Leah is told to push. Her gown is hiked up, and I can see the thin landing strip of dark pubic hair. Gabe must be seeing it, too. It's hardly an erotic sight, but it is an intimate one. In fact, it's a level of intimacy he and I will never experience.