Lauren was now studying the printout with some degree of interest. “Christina, let me check you again, hon. These contractions are coming fast and furious.”
Christina was shaking her head. “No. I don’t want to.” Her legs were clamped shut.
“We’ll wait until this contraction is over.” Lauren stroked Christina’s shoulders in a way that was meant to be soothing, but Christina was not soothed. She was writhing. She pushed Lauren away. “I can’t. I’m not ready.” Christina’s voice was breaking up into sobs.
Lauren cast a look at Tibby that seemed to say she was certainly the most horrendous labor partner any pregnant woman had ever been saddled with. Tibby did feel bad. Not because of Lauren—she didn’t really care what Lauren thought—but because of Christina. Christina was alone here. She didn’t have her husband or her sister or her daughter or her mother. She had Tibby.
Tibby’s instinct was to get on the bed with Christina, but her muscles were fighting with her. They were remembering Bailey, and more recently, Katherine. Tibby did not have happy associations with beds in hospitals. Who did?
Christina was in a ball. She was crying quietly. Tibby suffered a deep ache in her chest, climbing up to her throat.
“I need to check you, Christina. I need to see where you are,” Lauren said.
She’s right there! Tibby felt like screaming. Leave her alone!
“I’m not ready,” Christina said, weeping.
Lauren tried to uncurl Christina, but Christina fought her off.
Tibby couldn’t stand it anymore. She got on the bed with Christina. She grabbed her hands and squeezed them hard. That seemed to get her attention.
Lauren still pulled at Christina’s legs.
“She said she’s not ready!” Tibby roared.
Lauren looked taken aback, like Tibby had smacked her. Then, to Tibby’s utter astonishment, Lauren put her face to the side of Tibby’s head. She kissed her temple.
As if this day could get any stranger.
“That a girl,” Lauren whispered. “Fight for her. She needs you.”
Tibby pulled Christina up by her hands. She looked into her eyes. “Christina, I’m here. Look at me, okay? Hold my hands. Squeeze them as hard as it hurts.” That was something Alice used to say to Tibby when she had to get a shot.
Christina was coming down from a contraction. She looked lost, but slowly she zeroed in on Tibby.
Tibby knelt by her. “I’m here. You’re okay. Show me how much it hurts.”
The pain mounted again in Christina’s face. She squeezed Tibby’s hands so hard, Tibby saw them turning white. She tried her hardest not to flinch. The pressure mounted until Tibby half expected to see her ten severed fingers lying on the mattress.
“That’s good!” Tibby shouted. “I feel it! That’s so great!”
Christina’s eyes were tracking hers now. Tibby felt, on some level, that that was the right thing.
“I need to check her. I think this is happening,” Lauren said to Tibby under her breath. “Help me, okay?”
Tibby did not know what happening meant. She did not want to know what happening meant. She straddled Christina’s legs, so she was practically sitting on her, though carrying her own weight. “Tina, Lauren’s gonna do her thing. Stick with me, okay. With my eyes. Are you watching?”
Christina nodded.
“Squeeze my hands. Can you do it?”
Christina allowed Lauren to examine her cervix, though she was desperately uncomfortable. Tibby’s hands were mottled white and purple.
“My goodness,” Lauren said breathlessly. “This is fast. Christina, you are ten centimeters and ready to go.”
Tibby stared at Lauren, dumbfounded. Wasn’t Lauren supposed to do this kind of thing every day? Why did she allow herself to get surprised? She said this was going to take hours. As in several. Not as in one. Did Lauren have any idea what she was doing?
Tibby hadn’t even gotten hold of Carmen. She hadn’t wanted to scare her. She’d thought they had hours. She’d thought Carmen would still have enough time to get back. Now what? What were they supposed to do now?
Christina started crying again. There was a whole lot of blood on the bed, under Christina’s legs.
Tibby didn’t want to show her fast-rising fear. If she panicked, where would that leave Christina? She needed to get them focused again.
Christina was in a new kind of pain, making a new kind of noise. Tibby tried not to be alarmed. It wouldn’t help.
“You need to push, hon,” Lauren said. “You’re feeling the pressure and that means you need to push. You’re almost there!”
“No!” Christina was suddenly livid. “I’m not ready! I can’t do this! David isn’t here! Where is he? Where is Carmen? We took the classes! This baby is not due for four weeks!” In her anger, Christina had tuned herself right back in. She let go of Tibby’s hands, rolled back onto her side, and curled into her ball.
Tibby could see from her body that Christina was fighting a ferocious urge.
“She needs to push. I can see it,” Lauren said. “Don’t fight it, Christina. It’s time to have this baby. You gotta let go!” She was trying unsuccessfully to get Christina’s attention.
Tibby tried pulling her up again, but Christina wouldn’t budge. “Tina, will you look at me? Do you see me? You can do this! I know it!”
Christina wouldn’t look. “I can’t.”
We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears apples.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Roughly twenty minutes south of Downingtown,
Carmen realized there was another sizable topic she and Win hadn’t considered.
“Are you going away to school next year?” he asked her without looking at her. He was bearing down on a slow Nissan in the fast lane.
“Um.” She licked her lips. “Yes.”
This was the obvious moment to say where she was going. It suddenly struck her how badly she wanted to say she was going to Williams. She wanted Win to think she was smart.
She tapped her bare toes against the dashboard. But she wasn’t going to Williams. She was going to Maryland, and she didn’t want to lie to him anymore. She liked him too much to keep doing that.
“I’m going to Maryland,” she said. She quelled the urge to spout her near-perfect grades and her academic honors. She left it at the truth. If he didn’t like the truth, well…then that was a good thing to know.
“Oh.”
Did he find her disappointing?
“What about you?” she asked. It was strange that she didn’t know. Carmen was a great student. She cared about that kind of thing. Most boys she assessed almost like a brand, and where they went to college added or subtracted from their cachet. Win was different. She’d gotten to know him from the inside, it seemed.
“I go to Tufts. In Boston.” He smiled a little and tipped his head toward her. “I was kind of hoping you were going somewhere up around there.”
I was! she felt like shouting at him. I could have! I almost did!
But she stayed quiet, which was good in a way, because when her cell phone started ringing she heard it right away and snapped it open.
It was Tibby, trying to be calm.
“Oh, my God! Oh, no! Tell me you are kidding,” Carmen roared into the phone.
Tibby wasn’t kidding.
“We’ll be there as fast as we can,” Carmen said helplessly.
“What happened?” Win asked.
“She’s in heavy labor,” Carmen said, a little sob getting past her. “It’s going fast. She’s asking for David and for me.”
“Man,” Win muttered. He took his foot off the gas pedal. “What do you want to do? Keep going or turn around now?”
“Turn around,” she answered. As soon as he flicked the blinker she thought better of it. “No, keep going. It’s David’s baby, too. We have to tell him. He’ll be heartbroken if he doesn’t even know.”
Win seemed to think that was a good answe
r. He got back into the left lane of the highway and pushed the speed. He was going eighty-five and Carmen wasn’t complaining.
The news shook her and sent her mind back to Bethesda to be with her mother. Carmen knew Christina was scared. She was probably in a lot of pain. “I was her labor coach,” Carmen murmured.
She was close to her mother. Underneath everything was that. It wasn’t just the good answer, it was true. How else could you explain how powerfully she felt her mother’s distress?
Her mother told her once that when you feel someone else’s pain and joy as powerfully as if it were your own, then you knew you really loved them. Right now Carmen knew she had the pain part right. The joy…well, she still had work to do on that.
Win expertly took the exit for Downingtown. Carmen focused her energies on the map. She was a good map reader. They had the cross streets and the car make and the license plate number. That would be enough information, they both hoped. God forbid David had parked in an underground garage or something.
The coordinates led them to a housing development. Carmen screamed when she saw the green Mercury. She screamed out the letters and numbers of the license plate. Win was laughing and yelling too. The two of them stormed the front door of the recently built clapboard house. Carmen fidgeted, trying to restrain herself from ringing the doorbell more than twice.
A woman appeared at the door. Carmen saw David behind her and immediately started waving and yelling. It was all a flurry after that. Carmen couldn’t remember who said what, but five minutes later, Carmen, Win, and David were speeding south toward Bethesda, Maryland.
“I forgot my rental car,” David muttered from the backseat, still whitish gray in the face.
“It’s okay. Somebody can take it back for you,” Carmen reassured him. She looked from Win, in the driver’s seat, to David. “By the way, David Breckman, this is Win—”
Was it possible that she didn’t know his last name? Here they’d run the gauntlet of emotions, he’d experienced everything with her from Valia’s friable ligaments to Katherine’s hockey helmet to her mother’s unexpected labor, and she really didn’t know even that? “Uh, what’s your last name?”
“Sawyer.”
“Win Sawyer,” she murmured.
“Thanks for your help, Win,” David said robotically. He was trying to call the hospital on Carmen’s cell phone. Her battery was almost gone.
“What’s yours?” Win asked her. They were in their own world.
“Lowell.”
“How do you do, Carmen Lowell?”
She smiled at him gratefully. “Ask me later.”
By Baltimore, they were flying down 95 at just as many miles per hour. Carmen was incensed when a siren started blaring behind them. Win groaned.
“Oh, you’re joking,” Carmen said.
Win pulled onto the shoulder. Carmen opened her door.
“Carmen, no!” Both Win and David were yelling at her. “You’re not supposed to get out of the car!”
Suddenly a policeman was yelling at her over his bullhorn. It made her angrier. She slammed the door and crossed her arms over her chest.
“My mother is in the hospital about to have a baby without her husband, and you are holding us up!” She practically exploded.
After an impassioned chat with the policeman, Carmen got back in the car.
Win looked a bit shell-shocked. He and David both looked defeated, as though expecting tickets and fines of hundreds of dollars and also to go to jail.
“He said he was sorry,” Carmen reported instead. “Go ahead.”
“What?” both Win and David yelled at her.
“Win, go!” she said. And Win obliged. “He offered us an escort but I said no,” Carmen continued once they’d gotten back up to speed. “I told him no, but please radio ahead to his fellow cops and tell them to leave us alone.”
Win was trying to hold back his smile. Carmen couldn’t think about whether she was being Good Carmen or not. She couldn’t keep track anymore.
David was shaking his head. “Win, this girl is a force of nature.”
Win cast a sideways look at Carmen. “I’m getting that impression.”
“We need some help here.” Lauren and Minerva, the labor and delivery nurse, had pulled Tibby aside. “I’m not getting through to her,” Lauren added. Like Tibby didn’t know that.
Aren’t you the professionals? Tibby felt like screaming at them. Aren’t you supposed to know how this goes? I’m seventeen! I’m not even supposed to be here!
Minerva cleared her throat. She was a stocky Filipina. “This isn’t a medical issue. It’s an emotional issue. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“You mean Christina is freaking because her husband isn’t here?” Tibby asked impatiently. She was tired. She was scared.
“Yes,” Lauren said. “And she doesn’t want to let the baby go. She’s gotta release it, she’s gotta make the leap. We need to help her so she feels safe.”
Tibby knew a thing or two about leaps. She turned and strode back to Christina. She felt like a soldier going back into battle. She’d already done the sensible thing of putting a pair of hospital scrubs over the Traveling Pants, which she still wore from the night before. She prayed they would bring Christina some of their magic by association, but she wasn’t crazy enough to leave unwashable Pants uncovered in such a circumstance.
Christina was fighting. And all in a rush, she reminded Tibby powerfully of her daughter. Like Carmen, Christina was a fighter, all right, and also like her daughter, she was fighting to total destruction.
Tibby got on the bed. She held Christina by her shoulders. Inside herself, Tibby made Christina a promise. If you leap, I will. We’ll do it together.
Tibby could be a fighter too. At least, she could try. She propped Christina up on her pillows. She held Christina’s face between her hands.
“Tina. I know it’s hard. You don’t want to let go. I know how it feels. I mean, not having a baby. Obviously I haven’t had a baby, but—” Okay, she was getting off track.
To her amazement, she saw a look of mirth flit through Christina’s eyes. Here and then gone. If Christina could even consider laughing at Tibby, then maybe they were in business.
“David and Carmen are coming. And they want to see this baby so bad. And the baby wants to come out, so you gotta do it.” Tibby figured she would just talk. Christina was listening to her now. Her body was shaking from head to toe, but she was listening.
Lauren and Minerva had their latex gloves on. They were positioning themselves at the foot of the bed for the main attraction. Christina allowed them to pull her onto her back. Her knees were bent. She was in position.
Christina let out a whimper. She was bearing down, crumpling up her face.
“Let go! You can do it! I know you can. You’re Carmen’s mom, right? You can do anything! Right?”
“Tell her to push,” Lauren muttered. “She needs to push or we’re all in trouble here.”
“Tina, push!” Tibby said it so loud she felt her eyeballs rattling. “You can do it! Get that baby out of there, would you?” Tibby didn’t even care what she was saying, because Christina was listening.
Christina was clinging to Tibby now, holding her tight around her neck, looking for strength. It made Tibby feel strong. “You know how much we love you! You know how happy David is going to be to see this baby! Just picture Carmen’s face!”
Tibby was just as hysterical as Christina, but Christina was pushing now, and both Lauren and Minerva looked nearly delirious with relief.
“Tibby, I’m pushing!” Christina whimpered.
“You are! You are unbelievable! You are a star! You are the hero! You are the bomb!” Tibby was shouting; she was beyond herself. Somewhere back there was self-consciousness, and here, right up here, was she.
“Tibby!” Christina cried. She was getting some control now.
Tibby kept right on yelling and screaming, the dumbest, silliest things. She wasn’t even lis
tening to herself anymore.
Contractions came, and with each came a push. Minerva and Lauren were shouting their encouragement too, but the world had shrunken to just the two of them—Tibby and Christina, a funny pairing most every other day of the year.
Christina kept her eyes fixed on Tibby’s, on Tibby’s very pupils, and Tibby did not blink. As long as she could keep Christina right there with her, she could make a difference.
“I see the baby’s head! I feel it!” Lauren shouted.
“Oh, my God. Did you hear that!” Tibby thundered. “She can feel the baby’s head!”
Christina smiled a real honest-to-God smile.
“The baby is right there. Right there!” Tibby was beside herself. She had Christina’s shoulders in her hands, then her face. “You got it! You know that?”
“I got it!” Christina cried. She was coming to life.
“I feel it,” Lauren said. “I feel the hair.”
“Tina, your baby has hair!” Tibby screamed. “Can you believe it?”
Christina looked like she liked the idea of a baby with hair. “Carmen had hair,” she said faintly, “when she was born.”
“Well, lucky thing, that is. I love hair. Hair is great!” Tibby was giddy now. She pushed long, sweaty strands of Christina’s hair off of her neck.
“One more push, and this head is out,” Lauren said. She left Tibby to her own insane translation.
“Tina, one more big one! Biggie. Big big big push. Don’t you want to meet your baby?”
Christina went all out. She screamed bloody murder. Her face turned dark purple.
“And…it’s…a…baby!” Lauren shouted.
One more gigantic push and the rest of the baby followed the head. Tibby was afraid to look down, because it was all pretty damn gory. But Lauren raised this wriggling, slimy, purple little body up.
Tibby could barely breathe. The baby waved its hands and let out a cry. It was a very tiny person, a real person, who had hands to wave and a cry to cry.
Lauren landed the purple body on Christina’s chest and Christina sobbed. She held her baby and cried. Tibby watched in wonder and cried too.