chapter thirty-two
It’s still pitch black when an elbow pokes into my ribs. I rub my eyes, trying to wake up when I hear Skylar say, “I need you.”
Instantly I spring to life. I wrap my arms around her and chuckle into her hair. “Woman, you’re insatiable.”
Seconds later, a pillow lands on my face. Hard. “Not that, you animal.” The light turns on and I shield my eyes while they get used to it. “I thought I was having false labor, but now . . . well, either I wet the bed or my water just broke.”
The oxygen is sucked out of my lungs as anxiety overtakes my entire being. A million things run through my head. We aren’t ready yet. It’s not time. We haven’t packed a bag for the hospital.
I’m gonna be a fucking dad.
“I’m scared, Griffin.” Her hands tremble as she reaches for her cell phone on the nightstand.
Before she can make the call, I grab her hands. I try to put up a calm exterior even though I’m freaking out on the inside. “It’s okay, Sky. We can do this. You can do this.”
“But it’s too soon,” she cries.
I shake my head. “It’s not. You’re almost thirty-six weeks. Millions of babies are born healthy at this point.” I rub her belly. “Aaron is going to be perfect, you’ll see.”
She tries to smile and then she makes the call to her doctor.
They exchange a few words about how long she’s been in labor. Then Sky turns to me. “Look at the bed. Is there any blood on the sheets?”
I pull down the top sheet and hold my breath while I search her side of the bed. No blood. Relief rushes through me like a fucking tsunami. “Looks clear.”
She relays that to the doctor and then, from what I gather, we’re told to meet her obstetrician at the hospital. When Skylar hangs up, she doesn’t look quite so pale. “She said what you did. He’ll probably be perfectly fine.”
I jump out of bed and pull on last night’s jeans and shirt that lay in a pile by the bed. Skylar tells me to fetch a bag in her closet. I frown when I realize she was prepared all along, but that I wasn’t a part of it. I vow not to miss another thing. Ever.
She tries to get dressed when a contraction hits her. She reaches for her phone and shoves it at me. “Time it!” she shouts. By the time I figure out where her stopwatch app is, the contraction is over and she’s glaring at me.
I shrug. “I’d say it lasted about a minute or so.”
“Maybe you should get your phone,” she says, dryly, through clenched teeth. “At least write down the time so we know how far apart they are. Do you think you can handle that?”
I try not to laugh. I’ve heard about this. Women getting bitchy when they go into labor. I say in my nicest voice, “Sure, Sky. I’ll write it down and then I’ll go call a cab.”
“Do not tell them I’m in labor. I’ve heard they won’t come!” she yells from the bedroom.
I quickly throw some stuff in my own duffle, not knowing how long it will be before I can get back here. In record time, I race to the basement to get a camera. No way in hell am I missing out capturing this on film. When I go back up to get her, she’s already coming down the stairs with her bags in hand. I run up, two at a time. “Are you crazy, Sky? What the hell are you doing trying to do this yourself?”
In hindsight, I realize calling a woman in labor crazy is not the appropriate thing to do.
“Well, if you weren’t taking so goddamn long, you could have helped. What were you doing down there anyway? Eating breakfast? Folding laundry?”
I take her bags and walk her to the front door, not bothering to answer her stupid questions. “Who should I call? Baylor? Your mom?”
“No,” she says.
She stops in her tracks and grabs my arm. Hard. I pull out my phone and check the time. I start my stopwatch.
A minute later, when she can talk again, she says, “I don’t think I want a bunch of people coming in and out of the room like when Baylor was in labor. Plus, this could take a while. Why don’t you wait and call them when it’s almost time.”
I nod. “Sounds like a plan.” I see the cab rounding the corner and tell her to stay put while I take the bags down. The cabbie gets out, putting them in the trunk while I go help Skylar down the steps and into the back. “Mount Sinai Hospital.”
He looks at Skylar, his eyes trained on her belly. “Oh, shit, really?” He shakes his head mumbling something about always getting the pregnant ones and how he’s going to kill someone named ‘Bubba’ back at dispatch.
Despite Skylar’s assurances to the cabbie that we have plenty of time, he makes it to the hospital in ten minutes flat. I guess it helps that it’s the middle of the night. The bars have all closed and the only thing illuminating the streets of Midtown are the ‘Open’ signs in the all-night diners.
I swipe my debit card, leaving the poor guy an insanely huge tip before we head into the maternity ward.
Four hours later, Skylar’s contractions are getting harder. We’re waiting on an epidural and she’s told by one of the nurses to use her Lamaze breathing. Skylar nods her head and points to her overnight bag. I put it on the bed next to her and when she’s able, she pulls out a framed picture of her and Erin. The one from her nightstand. “My focus point,” she says. “Can you put it over there on the table?”
Focus point? Lamaze breathing? “How do you know all this stuff?” I say, placing the picture where she directed.
“From Lamaze class.”
“You went to Lamaze class? When?”
“Back in December. Baylor went with me.”
I sigh, berating myself for missing yet another part of this monumental thing.
Thirty minutes later, I’m trying to find something on the television to take her mind off things while the epidural kicks in. However, the only programs on are the morning news shows and they’re downright depressing.
“Turn it off,” she requests. “Tell me a story.” She shifts around to try and get comfortable. “Tell me about the first time you met Erin.”
I sit beside her bed, letting her squeeze my hand through every contraction as I tell her about my first love. I tell her about how we ran in different circles. I was more of a loner, having lost my mom. I didn’t belong to any group. Erin was a popular cheerleader who I’d had a crush on for years, but never had the courage to approach. Then one day I saw her pulled over on the side of the road, in our little rural town in Ohio, flagging me down for help. She’d gotten a flat tire and didn’t have a spare. I offered her a ride home. Then as luck would have it, or as I now know . . . fate, my own car failed to start and we sat there on that dirt road for hours, talking, waiting for another car to pass.
Skylar tries to smile, but pain riddles her face instead as she crushes my fingers once again. I’ve decided being in labor is like being bi-polar to the extreme. One minute, I half expect her head to spin around like that girl from ‘The Exorcist’—the next, she’s completely back to normal, talking about her sisters or the restaurant.
A large nurse comes in the room. Her scrub top, adorned with storks carrying pink and blue bundles, tightly stretches across her rolls of flesh. Skylar asks her, “Exactly how long does it take for this epidural to work?”
The nurse looks surprised. With a smile plastered across her face, she says, “Sweetie, it should have kicked in by now. I’ll have the doctor come check you out, but there’s a possibility it just didn’t work for you.”
Skylar’s eyes widen in horror. “Didn’t work? Are you kidding?” she yells at the nurse, who’s now checking the baby monitor printout.
“It happens in a small percentage of women.” She flashes Skylar a sympathetic-yet-practiced smile. “Don’t worry, sweetie, women have been doing this since the beginning of time without any epidurals. It’s the way God intended. You’ll be just fine.”
Skylar’s eyes follow Nurse Happy as she exits the room. If looks could kill, that nurse would be flat-lining on the bleach-mopped floor of the maternity ward. “The way God intended?” Skylar yells. “Screw that!” She grabs my arm. “Griffin, get me some drugs. This hurts. Like really, really hurts. Not like stubbing your toe hurt, or like breaking your arm hurt, it really hurts—like body being ripped in half hurt. Like hot lava running through me hurt. Ahhhhhh . . . !” She grips my arm like a vice as another contraction takes control of her.
With my free arm, I rub her back and speak words of encouragement. I look at the door, hoping someone will come through it to provide whatever relief they can. It’s tearing me apart seeing the woman I love in pain like this.
She relaxes back into the bed, sweat dotting her hairline. I wipe it with a cool cloth.
“I feel sick.” She rubs the sides of her belly. “Do you have a piece of gum or hard candy? I know they won’t let me eat, but maybe gum would be okay.” She looks at me with hopeful eyes.
I stick my hands in my pockets, searching for the pack of gum I can usually find there. My hand hits something hard and I realize that in throwing on my jeans from last night, I still have the engagement ring with me. As I retrieve a piece of gum from my other pocket and give it to her, I contemplate my choices. But there really is no choice, because it occurs to me right here, right now, that I don’t want Aaron coming into this world without knowing how committed I am to his mother. Surely this was fate, me having the ring with me at this moment. I grip the box. “Skylar, you believe in fate now—I mean, we both do, right?”
She gives me a hard stare. “You think it’s fate that I have to have this kid without any drugs?”
I bite the inside of my mouth so I don’t laugh. “Just answer the question, Sky. Do you believe in fate or not?”
Her hand comes up to touch her locket. She nods. As another contraction grips her, she looks at her focus point, giving me a chance to pull the ring from the box and lower to a knee. Her contractions are only a few minutes apart, so I don’t have a lot of time and I need to make every second count.
When the contraction is over, her head falls back on the pillow and her eyes close. I reach over to pull her left hand into mine. “Skylar.”
She opens her eyes and looks around the room quickly as if she’s woken up in a dream. She takes in my stance, as I balance on one knee. Then her eyes fall to the ring and she gasps. She stares at the ring I had made for her. The engagement ring like no other. It’s a platinum infinity symbol, boasting a diamond within each circle. I had it designed with the tattoo in mind.
I clear my throat, praying my words come quickly and before pain overtakes her again. “We’re about to have this incredible little boy. I don’t want him coming into this world wondering if his daddy loves his mommy. Fate brought us together. Fate had me put on these pants so I could give you this ring at this very moment.” My voice cracks and my vision becomes blurry with tears. “And fate will have me loving you and Aaron until the end of time.” I eye the monitor and see the line starting to go up again, indicating another contraction is coming. I quickly blurt out, “Skylar Mitchell, will you marry me?”
Tears flow from her eyes as her smile changes into a wince, her face scrunching up as she pulls her hand away and tightly grips the sides of her bed. Through her gritted teeth she grunts, “Are you seriously asking me to marry you when I’m in fucking labor?”
Trying not to laugh, I say, “Don’t say fuck, Sky.”
Instead of focusing on the picture, her eyes bore into me for the entire contraction. We silently stare into each other and I swear we become one, and through her eyes, I can almost feel the pain ripping through her body.
When the pain retreats, she nods to the ring in my hand. “How long have you had this?”
“I had it made weeks ago. I was going to propose last night at the party, but it wasn’t meant to be.”
Her hand comes up to wipe a tear. “Oh, God, Griffin. When you walked off the stage and came over to me. You were going to propose right then, weren’t you?” Her eyes go sad. “I ruined it. I’m so sorry.”
“You ruined nothing, Sky. It wasn’t supposed to happen then.” I turn the ring over, pointing to the inscription. “Anyway, it was too dark last night to read the inscription.”
She smiles, taking it from me, squinting to read what I had inscribed on the inside.
Fate ~ Faith ~ Family
I reach out to catch more of her tears. She starts to tense up and I glance at the monitor, confirming another contraction. “So are you going to fucking marry me, or what?”
Her answering grin flashes white teeth before her face falls into a grimace from the oncoming contraction. “Yes,” she grunts. “I’ll fucking marry you, Griffin Pearce. Ahhhh…” She squeezes my hand so hard, I’m sure I will suffer some sort of paralysis.
“It’s a good thing I didn’t video this moment. We’d never be able to show it to our kids,” I joke.
“Kids?” she shouts out in pain. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding.”
I laugh, slipping the ring on her finger when the contraction subsides. I rise up and lean over the bed, placing a kiss on her salty lips as I hear people enter the room behind me. “Come on,” I kiss the tip of her nose. “Let’s do this.”
~ ~ ~
After twelve hours of labor, my fiancée is getting some much-needed sleep. My tiny-but-healthy son lies still in my arms, his mouth puckered and making little sucking noises as he sleeps. He is the perfect little version of Skylar. He has a heart-shaped face and a full head of hair that can’t decide on a color. I can only hope his baby-blue eyes will one day turn green.
Family and friends have come and gone, leaving a room full of blue balloons, teddy bears and, of course, white lilies. Along with the decorations, sits a letter from Erin. One that Baylor raced home to get once hearing of our engagement. While the nurses cleaned up Aaron, Skylar and I read the letter together, both rejoicing that Erin got to somehow be a small part of this joyous occasion. Both crying that she couldn’t be here in the flesh.
“He’s perfect,” Skylar whispers, looking at Aaron and me through sleepy eyes.
“Just like his mom.” I reach over to touch her arm.
She fiddles with the new ring on her finger and something dawns on me. “Sky, will you go on a date with me?”
She laughs quietly through her beaming smile. “Wow, we really do things backwards, don’t we? First we get knocked up, then we get engaged, then we go on a date.”
I raise my eyebrow at her. “Well, if you want to make it even more interesting, we could just go ahead and get married now, before we go on that date. I’m sure they have a chaplain here in the hospital.”
Her hand comes to her chest. “My parents would kill me, Griffin. Plus, Piper promised to not only come home, but plan my entire wedding if I ever got hitched. I wouldn’t give that up for anything. Imagine, a whole three months or more with my little sister.” Her eyes light up.
“I have to wait three months to marry you?” I joke.
“Or more,” she adds, laughing. “I only plan on doing this once, Griffin, so if it’s okay with you, I’d like to do it right.”
“It’s more than okay.” I look down at our sleeping son. “It’s perfect.”
“I wish I could take a picture of you right now,” Skylar says, beaming at me. “You look so happy.”
“I am happy. Happier than I’ve ever been.” I lean down to kiss his little forehead through the striped blue hat he’s wearing. “I don’t need a photo to remember this, Skylar. Everything I want for the rest of my life is right here in this room.” I look at the tattoo on my right arm and realize that for the first time, I said those words without feeling guilty. I said them knowing it’s what Erin would have wanted. I said them knowing she loved me enough to give me away. I said them knowing this little boy and the amazing emerald-eyed woman that gave him to me are everything Erin said they would be.
My fate.