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“Why doesn’t she ever ask you to kill the fucking spiders?”
Taylor chuckled and rolled onto his side. Five more minutes.
“Tay!” He opened his eyes. “It ain’t no spider.”
What the fuck is it then?
“Chloe’s water broke.”
He sat up. “What?”
“We’re having a baby!”
It wasn’t at all like the panicked scenes in movies. Chloe, now that she knew today was finally the day, was actually quite calm. She finished getting dressed, called Linnea, Doctor Torres, and her dad, while he and Jesse got ready to go themselves. Taylor couldn’t help but think this was the calm before the storm.
He wasn’t wrong.
She felt the first contraction in the Rover on the way to the hospital. Chloe turned her head sideways to smile at them both. “I don’t know what they’re talking about. That wasn’t so bad.”
She was still smiling in the elevator on the way up to her room; still smiling when she changed into a hospital gown with snaps on the shoulders and ties at the back. Jesse sat in a chair beside the bed and held her hand while they hooked Chloe up to a monitor. Taylor stood at the window and took in the room their child would soon be born in.
Pale-blue walls that matched the nurse’s scrubs. Dark wood furniture. Prints of flowers in frames. A pullout sofa and a small table and chairs were opposite Chloe’s bed. The nurse tapped away on a keyboard, glancing at the monitor attached to Chloe. If she knew who they were she didn’t let on. He turned to the window and gazed at the city streets below.
Chloe still smiled when Doctor Torres appeared. She quickly flipped through the strip of paper that spit out of the monitor and then she was at Chloe’s side. “Baby looks great. Let’s see how you’re doing.”
Five centimeters.
“I’m halfway there already. This is a piece of cake.”
She wasn’t smiling anymore an hour later.
By now Taylor knew what those hills on the monitor meant and they were climbing a lot higher and were a lot closer together. He could tell a contraction was coming before Chloe even felt it thanks to those hills. Jesse rubbed her back. Taylor spooned ice chips into her mouth. Doctor Torres reappeared.
Eight centimeters.
“I changed my mind. Give me the epidural.”
But it was too late for that now. She began to cry. Taylor couldn’t remember ever feeling as helpless as he did right at that moment. He dried her tears. The nurse handed him a cool damp cloth for her face.
He should have gone to those classes. Or watched more of those videos when Chloe asked him to. Maybe if he had he wouldn’t feel so inept right now. Jesse must have watched a lot of them because he seemed to know how to comfort her. How to help her breathe through the contractions. How to soothe her.
She reached for his hand and squeezed the shit out of it. He let her. Taylor kissed her brow and told her he loved her. He could do that. Maybe he didn’t know how to breathe through a contraction, but he knew how to love her. So he would do just that.
And then everything happened so fast.
More nurses came, rolled stuff into the room, and left again. One of them stayed. She flipped on the overhead warmer and stationed herself there. The nurse who’d been here with Chloe, the one who gave him the damp cloth, took it from his hand. She replaced the cloth with Chloe’s foot. He glanced over to Jesse on the other side of the bed and saw he was holding the other.
What are we doing here?
Then it was like a scene from a movie, only he was in it, and none of it seemed real. But then he saw it. And he heard it. A head covered with hair. Flailing arms and legs. And that cry—that beautiful fucking cry. Taylor knew he was crying too. He felt the tears dripping down his face.
The doctor announced, “It’s a boy!”
I have a son.
And he was beautiful.
Chloe’s nurse unsnapped her gown and, still attached to the cord, laid him on her skin. He looked sticky and wet with black hair plastered to his little head. Another nurse covered him with a blanket and rubbed him dry while Chloe gazed in awe at this tiny human she made.
