Page 163 of The Don’s Omega

“Four is respectable. Some people show up at one and I have to send them home crying. You’re ahead of the curve.” She hooks up the fetal monitor and the room fills with the rapid thud of the baby’s heartbeat. “That sounds beautiful. Baby’s happy in there.”

“Baby might be happy,” I grumble. “I’m less enthused.”

She pats my arm. “You’ll be fine. I’ve delivered over a thousand babies and I can tell you, the ones who complain the most always do the best.”

“Then I’m going to be spectacular.”

“That’s the spirit.” She looks at Marcello, who hasn’t moved from the spot where she planted him. “Dad, you can relax. This is the boring part. Many hours to go.”

He meets my gaze and gives me a weak smile.

Dr. Vasquez arrives. “You boys ready to meet your baby?”

“Yes,” I say enthusiastically. “But it’s going to be a while, right?”

“Probably. First babies sometimes take the longest.” As she speaks she checks the monitors, checks me, confirms four centimeters. “Labor takes as long as it takes. You should try to rest between contractions.”

Maureen nods. “True. These contractions are child’s play. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

I swallow loudly. “Yay?”

Maureen and Dr. Vasquez laugh.

The idea of resting between contractions is the real joke. Each one gets progressively more painful. It starts with a slow, unrelenting squeeze that starts in my lower back and migrates forward, wrapping around like two hands pressing inward.

Marcello sits beside me. Between contractions he feeds me ice chips and rubs my lower back, but doesn’t say anything. He’s not one to offer useless platitudes which I appreciate right now. I feel irritable. I don’t want to hear how everything is great. It doesn’t feel great, and I like that he’s not pretending it should. He’s just there beside me. Solid. Steady. When a contraction hits he lets me grab his hand and squeeze until his knuckles go white. He doesn’t even flinch.

At noon I’m at six centimeters. At 2:00 p.m. I’m at seven. The contractions are three minutes apart now and each one is a production. A tightening that builds for thirty seconds, holds for another thirty, and then releases. During one of the worst contractions, I make a low, guttural noise and Maureen looks up from her charts.

“There you go. We’re getting somewhere now, Elio.” She nods her approval. “Let your body do its job.”

“I don’t think I have any choice.”

She checks something on the monitor. “You want to talk about an epidural?”

“God, yes.”

She smiles. “Most people try to tough it out for a while first. I respect a man who knows what he wants.” She pages the anesthesiologist and looks at Marcello. “This part is quick but he needs to hold very still. You can stand in front of him.”

The anesthesiologist is a tall woman with steady hands and a calm voice who explains everything she’s doing before she does it. She has me sit on the edge of the bed and curl forward, chin to chest, arms braced on Marcello’s shoulders. He stands in front of me, solid as a wall, and I grip the fabric of his shirt and focus on breathing.

“Small pinch,” she says. “Then pressure. Don’t move.”

The pinch is nothing. The pressure is strange, a deep, invasive sensation in my spine that makes my skin crawl. A contraction starts to build while she’s working and I lock every muscle in my body and press my forehead into Marcello’s chest and ride it out without moving. His hands are on my arms, holding me steady. Twenty seconds. Thirty. The contraction crests and I’m still frozen, teeth clenched, breathing hard against his shirt.

“Done,” she says. “You’ll start feeling relief in a few minutes.”

She tapes everything down and I lie back and wait. Marcello watches me like he’s waiting for something to go wrong. And then, slowly, the next contraction builds and it’s different. I can feel the tightening, the pressure in my belly, but the edge is gone. The sharp grinding thing that made me want to climb out of my own body has been replaced by something distant and heavy. Like hearing thunder from inside a house.

“Oh,” I say. “Oh, that’s better.”

Maureen nods. “Rest while you can. You’ve got a long afternoon.”

She’s right. Everything changes after the epidural. The contractions keep coming, I can see them on the monitor, peaks and valleys scrolling across the screen, but they’re something happening to a body I’m only partially connected to. The pressure is still there, low and constant, but it’s become background noise instead of the main event. I doze between checks. Marcello reads something on his phone with one hand and holds mine with the other.

At 3:15 p.m., something changes on the monitor. I don’t pay much attention at first because I’m in the middle of a contraction. My world has narrowed to the pressure in my pelvis and the rail under my sweaty hands. I only notice something is different when Maureen moves to the monitor. Her eyes focus and she presses a button on the wall.

“What’s happening?” Marcello is on his feet.