WHEN I WALK IN THE FRONT DOOR, Meredith’s in the living room, and for a half second, I assume she’s been exercising—she’s perspiring and she’s flushed, grimacing under the strain of whatever she’s put her body through. Then I notice that she’s holding her phone and, oh my God, her trusty contraction timer is open on its screen.
With a rush of terror, I comprehend what’s actually going on, and my bag slips off my shoulder. It lands with a thump as I stand, gaping.
Meredith’s head snaps up. She grits her teeth—she’s biting back a curse or a groan or a scream—and pinches her eyes closed so tight she’s nearly unrecognizable. For a long minute, she breathes shallowly, in and out, in and out. Then she opens her eyes.
I haven’t moved a step.
She grunts, “Baby.”
Meredith is a woman of beauty and poise and control. This sweating, snarling beast before me … she’s petrifying.
“Jill,” she says, jerking me back to reality. “Baby.”
My stomach flip-flops with a bizarre combination of bewilderment and trepidation and … excitement? I hurl into action, dashing across the living room. “Why are you just sitting here?!” And then I realize: I’ve had her car all afternoon. “Meredith! Why didn’t you call me?”
“I was planning to, but I was trying to reach your dad first.”
“We have to go to the hospital,” I say, trying frantically to catalog what we need to take with us.
“I can’t”—she pauses to take in a great gulp of air, one that seems to bring her back to herself—“go anywhere without your dad.”
“Where is he?”
She dabs her forehead with a dampened washcloth. “I’ve been trying to call him for the last hour. No one’s at the office, and he’s not picking up his cell.”
“But he knows the baby’s coming?”
She shakes her head, nearly hysterical. “I haven’t spoken to him since this morning.”
“We have to get you to the hospital, Meredith. You can’t give birth on the couch just because Dad’s disappeared!”
Tiny fissures run like rivers through my heart when she says, “But I need him.”
“What about Marcy?” And then I remember—
“Seattle,” Meredith moans.
“I’ll call Mrs. Tate.” A hospice nurse is better than no nurse.
Meredith nods, but her face is contorting again, and she’s found my hand. She squeezes. My fingers are turning blue, and I’m paralyzed with fear—of Meredith and her new herculean strength, and of the leech baby, who might be trying to claw its way out of her.
I find Mrs. Tate’s cell number in Meredith’s list of contacts, but get her voice mail. The Tates’ landline, too, goes unanswered. Panic fills my throat, fizzing up like champagne in a flute.
Meredith struggles through another fit while I try Dad’s cell, then his office. He doesn’t pick up the phone and neither does Natalie, who’s paid to sit at a freaking desk and do just that.
I toss my own cell onto the coffee table and try not to cry out as Meredith grips my hand again. I find myself breathing along with her, quick, shallow puffs that make my head feel like it’s floating away. When it’s over and she lets me go and my fingers regain feeling, I say, “Meredith, we have to go to the hospital. I’ll come in with you—I’ll stay with you the whole time, if you want.”
Because fear, apparently, breeds impulsivity.
She’s shaking her head. “I can’t ask that of you.”
“You’re not asking—I’m offering. The least I can do is get you there, and then I’ll help however I can until Dad shows up.”
Her expression is insultingly cynical. “Jillian, you don’t know anything about childbirth.”
“Doesn’t matter. You can’t have the baby here.”
I watch it happen: my words permeating her pain-addled mind, her slow acceptance, her swelling hope. “You’ll coach me until your dad arrives?”
I falter at the word coach, picturing myself in a baseball cap, holding a clipboard and pumping my fist as Meredith ooh-ooh-aahs her way through labor.
What have I gotten myself into?
“Of course, Mer.” Dad’s left me with no other choice.
I grasp her elbow and attempt to pull her up off the couch. My effort combined with her lack of assistance reminds me of a tugboat hauling a barge through a choppy harbor.
Once she’s standing, leaning up against the wall of the foyer while I collect my wallet and keys, she says, “Oh! The bags! Run to my bedroom and get them, will you, Jill?”
I dash to the back of the house, into Dad and Meredith’s bedroom. The bags sit on the checkered chaise next to the window. The large duffel’s been packed for weeks, full of brand-new nightgowns and slippers, mini shampoos and a travel hair dryer. The second bag’s much smaller, stuffed with diapers, flannel blankets, and what Meredith calls a “coming home outfit,” a frothy white ensemble with layers of lace and tulle—in other words, totally practical. I grab them both and hightail it down the hallway. I help Meredith out the front door and into the passenger seat of the Saturn before buckling into my own seat.
We fly out of the neighborhood.
My skin feels tight and itchy; the unknown freaks me out, and childbirth is about as far out of my realm as Arabic literature and quantum physics. Sure, a few months ago I happened into the basement while Meredith was watching From Conception to Birth on Dad’s gigantic high-definition TV, but I can’t say I learned much. There was so much screaming and … anatomy … I was at once frozen in horror. That only lasted a moment, though, before I spun on my toes and zoomed right back up the stairs. It’d been a challenge to keep my lunch down.
I weave through traffic. In the lulls that break up Meredith’s apparently intensifying contractions, she alternates between calls to my dad’s cell and his office. There’s still no answer, and my concern peaks. Not only do I have no idea how to help Meredith, but now I’ve got Dad to worry about. I grip the steering wheel, swerving right to exit the freeway.
After pulling into the hospital parking lot, I dump Meredith at the emergency room entrance. I park the car crookedly in the first empty space I see, then hurry into the hospital to find her hobbling up to the triage desk. Chaos ensues. A particularly nasty contraction overtakes her, and she folds over the desk, gasping and moaning and scaring the hell out of me. The admitting nurse also appears alarmed. She makes a quick, quiet phone call, eyeing Meredith like tentacles might erupt from her stomach at any moment.
When another nurse comes hustling around the corner with a wheelchair, Meredith crumples into it. I follow with the bags as she’s shuttled down the corridor toward an ominous set of doors marked LABOR AND DELIVERY; it surprises me to learn that an entire section of the hospital is reserved just for women having babies. And with that little aha moment comes a wave of sheer terror.…
I’m about to become the world’s least helpful person to a woman in the throes of one of life’s greatest miracles.