Page 12 of Dax

“No,” I cry. “I’m not ready, Dax. I’m scared. What if I’m a terrible mother? What if he doesn’t like me? What if I can’t lose the baby weight and then I get addicted to ice cream and by the end of next year I’m a four hundred-pound blob who can’t even get out of bed?”

He kisses the back of my hand and then massages my neck. “Listen to me,” he says. “You’re going to be an amazing mother. This baby is lucky to have you. Everything is going to be fine. You’re just freaking out. I get it, I’m freaking out, too. But we’re in this together. And whatever comes our way, we’ll face it together.

"This time tomorrow you’re going be holding our beautiful newborn baby in your arms, and you’re going to love him like he’s the gift from God he truly is. You’ll look back at this moment and wonder what the heck you were thinking.

“But first, we need to get you to the hospital. You really don’t want to give birth here.”

I look around at the printing press, and grudgingly I admit he’s right. The orders can wait. Everything can wait. I’m about to give birth to my first baby, and I’ve got my amazing husband by my side, literally holding my hand and telling me how amazing I am.

“Okay.” He helps me up and kisses the side of my sweaty, clammy face. “It’s time to push a tiny little human out my vagina.”

He smiles and kisses me on the cheek again. Happy that I’ve regained my sense of humor.

Jane and the rest of my staff look at me in disgusted horror. Perhaps the graphic detail of what’s about to happen was more than they wanted to hear mid-lunch break.

Kennedy, our nineteen-year-old apprentice puts her sandwich down and pushes her chair away from the desk, a slight green tinge to her skin.

At the hospital, a nurse races me through the corridors in a wheelchair. Dax is by her side the whole way. Telling her the time in between contractions. Holding my hand. Reminding me to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth.

Then, once I’m laid down in the bed, and my feet are in the stirrups and I’ve listened to the doctor tell me I should have been here ages ago. Once the drugs are coursing through my veins, making everything around me oddly bright and brilliant, and I’m woozy as a walrus with a belly full of whiskey, I lean over to Dax and I lower my voice like I’m about to tell him the biggest secret in all the world. “I love you,” I say.

He strokes my hair and kisses me on the lips just as my internal organs squeeze, with one, almighty last push.

I hear him tell me he loves me too, and that he’s proud of me, and then I rest my head against the pillow and the next sound I hear is the high-pitched cry of my baby entering the world.

My chin wobbles and I bite my lip as tears of joy flood down my face. I may not feel the same way in a month's time, but right now, it’s the sweetest music I’ve ever heard.