“THIS WAS NOT THE PLAN!”
Nathalie’s mind screamed her objections. Or perhaps she was screaming the words aloud—it was difficult to tell in the rushed aftermath of her bodily fluids leaking all over the banquet hall floor. After a stalled second—during which Nathalie ascertained that she really did break her water and hadn’t accidentally peed herself—Lyndi and Sophia jumped into action.
“Call an Uber!” Lyndi cried.
“They’ll take forever to get here,” Sophia said. “You should see the street outside, it’s like a parking lot with all the kids arriving. We’ll take my car.”
“I’ll go tell the principal we have to leave.”
“I’ll go bring the car around. Next stop, hospital!” Sophia said, as she trotted past an incoming group of glammed-up seniors.
Meanwhile, Nathalie stood staring at the puddle currently ruining her strappy sandals.
This was not the plan.
Because of course, Nathalie had a plan. It involved going into labor gently, at home. Making good use of all the aromatherapy candles and soothing mood music she had been researching. When her contractions were five minutes apart, she would calmly tell David it was time to drive her to the hospital, where Dr. Duque would be waiting with a room ready to deliver her daughter into the world.
It was, to be frank, the perfect plan.
And it was one that wasn’t meant to be implemented for another four weeks!
But instead, she was standing in the middle of a ballroom floor at a high school prom, with a bunch of high school seniors staring at her in shock and mild horror.
Yeah, not the plan.
Not having a hospital bag packed was not part of her plan.
Also not the plan? The low aches that began spreading rapidly, radiating from the back of her hips down her legs—like period cramps but so, so much worse—before she was loaded into the back of Sophia’s car.
“Is this a contraction? Is this what it feels like?” she remembered saying before another wave of aches overtook her.
Lyndi only gave a small unknowing shake of her head, but Sophia nodded as she sped through another turn.
“Granted, it’s been a while for me, but yeah, that sounds like a contraction.”
“Oh God, this is horrible! Why would anyone do this . . . I mean, it’s fine. This is totally fine,” Nathalie managed to say, once she saw just how unblinkingly gray her little sister looked in that moment.
Sophia swerving through downtown traffic like a NASCAR driver was also not the plan—but at that moment, Nathalie was grateful for it.
However, getting to the hospital and discovering that Dr. Duque wasn’t coming in, because she was on vacation in Mexico for the weekend? DEFINITELY NOT THE PLAN.
“Hello!” chirped Dr. Keen. “How are we doing?”
“WE ARE IN LABOR,” Nathalie gritted out.
“Yes you are,” Dr. Keen replied, her smile not even falling a millimeter. “Let’s get you set up then!”
They processed Nathalie quickly. When the nurse timed her contractions, Dr. Keen shifted from chipper and unconcerned to chipper and “Let’s get you into a room. Now.”
Sophia and Lyndi trotted behind her as they wheeled Nathalie into a delivery room, and practically threw her into the bed.
“Go ahead and put on this robe, and then we’ll do an exam, see if we need to call anesthesia.”
“Fuck yes, we need to call anesthesia.”
“Yes, but if you’re too far along, we won’t have time, so . . . chop chop and get changed!”
“She’s too young,” Nathalie said, as soon as Dr. Keen was out the door. “It’s like she’s a kid with a play stethoscope.”
“Uh, she’s my doctor, and I trust her,” Lyndi replied, as she helped Nathalie out of her green dress.
“That’s because you are young. You think your generation knows everything.”
“Considering young Dr. Keen is going to deliver your baby, you better hope they do,” Sophia said, and Lyndi smirked.
“That’s not helping,” Nathalie gritted out. Another contraction gripped her, and she buckled on the bed. This baby . . . this baby could be here any moment! And it occurred to her that David wasn’t.
“Crap I forgot to call David!” Nathalie gasped, reaching for her phone.
“Relax, I called everyone,” Lyndi said.
“I’m not going to relax until he’s here!”
“Well, then you can relax now,” came a harried voice from the doorway.
David.
He was there. His hair was standing straight up. He was wearing what he affectionately called his “work pants”—a pair of jeans that had survived since college with paint splotches and holes in the knees. His eyes grazed over the other occupants of the room, and honed in on Nathalie. He rushed to her side, kissed her forehead, and took her hand.
“I thought we had four more weeks,” he said.
“So did I,” she replied weakly.
“I think that’s our cue,” Sophia whispered to Lyndi, and they shuffled toward the door.
“We’ll be in the waiting room . . .”
“No!” Nathalie cried, panic oddly rising in her chest. She didn’t know why, she just knew that she didn’t want her sister or Sophia to leave. That, as long as she was flanked by these wonderful women, she would be okay. “You guys should stay.”
“Really?” Sophia smiled.
“Really?” Lyndi looked a little green.
“Don’t worry, Lyndi,” she replied. “You can stay on the ‘waist-up’ side of the line.”
“Yeah, kid,” David said, smirking. “Think of it like a trial run.”
Lyndi shot her brother-in-law a look of mock disgust she had perfected at the age of twelve while he laughed at her. Then, Lyndi came over and took Nathalie’s other hand.
“Oh no you don’t try and stop me . . .” A voice moved down the corridor outside. “Now WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER???”
Nathalie turned to her sister in shock. “When you say you called everyone . . .”
“Yeah . . . everyone includes Mom,” Lyndi affirmed.
“How did she get here so fast?”
“She was at my apartment helping with some stuff,” Lyndi replied. “You’re going to have to talk to her eventually.” Then she called out, “We’re in here!”
A quick turn of kitten heels clacked along the linoleum, and suddenly, Kathy burst into the room, trailed meekly by Marcus.
“Kathy,” Nathalie said, her voice small. It was incredibly odd to be in a hospital bed about to give birth, but feeling like a little girl caught after breaking something precious. But Kathy just rushed to Nathalie’s side, wedging in next to Lyndi.
“Nathalie, honey,” she said softly. “You’re going to do just great. I know it. Everything you do, you do so well.”
She felt the tears welling up in her eyes. She opened her mouth to give what could only be a ham-fisted apology for her behavior, but Kathy spoke first.
“Now, your dad is on his way, but I don’t want him to miss a minute. I’m just going to video things until he gets here.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think—”
“Now, tell me, Nathalie,” Kathy said, pulling out her phone and holding it up, “how dilated is your cervix?”
Nathalie looked to Lyndi, who elbowed Marcus, for help.
“Hey, Kathy, let me see if I can make it so your video is high-quality resolution,” Marcus said, reaching for her phone.
“Oh thank you, Marcus. I want to make sure I get everything,” Kathy said, as Marcus discreetly turned off the camera.
“I should find the waiting room,” Marcus said as he handed the phone back to Kathy.
“No, you should stay,” Lyndi said to Marcus. “David said I should, as a trial run.”
“Not a bad idea,” Marcus replied, eyes on Nathalie.
Before Nathalie could reply, another voice came from the door.
“Mom!”
Odd, because no one should be calling her mom quite yet. Nathalie shot a look to her sister. But Lyndi just threw up her hands. “This one is not on me.”
“Maisey, what are you doing here?” Sophia said, rushing over to the door.
“Haley said someone’s water broke, and saw you rushing out of the ballroom, saying you were going to the hospital! Is everything okay?”
“Everything is fine,” Sophia replied. “With me, at least.”
“Jeez you run fast, Maisey.” Foz Craley’s out-of-breath voice came from the doorway. “Is everything . . . oh. Uh, hey, Ms. Kneller.”
“Hi, Foz,” Nathalie replied. Because really, what else could she possibly say? “Enjoying prom?”
“Certainly memorable.” He nodded, edging his way into the room behind Maisey. “So it was your water that broke on the ballroom floor, I guess?” At her nod, he smirked. “I think you prevented several teenage pregnancies tonight.”
“Hey, there’s a silver lining.” Lyndi smiled at her.
“You’re having a baby, Ms. Kneller! This is so cool,” Maisey said, looking around the room. “I mean, weird, but cool.”
“As long as you’re here, you should come in,” Nathalie said.
“Really?”
“Why not—we already have six people, what’s two more?”
Foz looked at Maisey, as if issuing a dare. “I was considering going pre-med.”
And so, surrounded by her husband, her sister, her friend, her stepmom, her quasi brother-in-law, her student, and her student’s prom date, Nathalie gave birth to a baby girl.
It wasn’t as straightforward as it was in the telling, of course. For a time, there was nothing to do but labor and wait for what was to come.
The nurse came in and hooked up the various monitors and IVs she would need. Dr. Keen examined her and said she was at six centimeters . . . just under the wire to get her epidural, thank God.
The handsomest anesthesiologist in the world came in and inserted a line into her spine, making her go pleasantly numb from the waist down.
That was when she really managed to relax.
But it seemed like the medication had barely taken effect, before Dr. Keen was back in the room, doing an exam . . . declaring her at ten centimeters. And suddenly . . . everyone in the entire hospital was in her room.
Equipment dropped down from the ceiling, lighting her vaginal cavity like a movie star during her big scene. Nurses and attending doctors crowded in, and crowded out Kathy and her nonfunctioning camera phone.
She was told to push.
She pushed.
She didn’t particularly care that a dozen people were currently looking up her well-lit vagina.
More pushing. Quite a bit more pushing. More people coming in. And then . . .
“Are you ready to meet your daughter?” Dr. Keen asked, from somewhere between Nathalie’s legs.
Nathalie nodded, clutching David’s hand. Then suddenly . . .
She was here.
A very surprised and goo-covered baby was held up by Dr. Keen, and placed on Nathalie’s chest.
And everything else faded away.
She peered up at Nathalie with squinty confusion. As if waiting to be introduced.
“Hi,” she managed to breathe. The baby had a shock of dark hair, standing up on its ends exactly like her father’s. She had ten fingers, ten toes. She was so very small, but somehow managed to be the entire world wrapped up in a six-pound package.
Nathalie barely noticed as the room began to cheer, to cry. Kathy clutching Lyndi’s hand. Lyndi clutching Marcus’s. Sophia had her arm wrapped around a tired Maisey, while Foz typed busily on his phone.
“You don’t mind that I livestreamed this, right, Ms. Kneller?”
She shrugged Foz’s query off. Literally nothing else mattered. The banal faded into the background. They took the baby to the baby station on the side of the room to do some basic tests—weight, length—after asking David if he wanted to cut the cord. Dr. Keen and the nurses finished the delivery (she was asked if she wanted to keep her placenta. She said no.) and cleaned Nathalie up, and then the baby was back in her arms again.
Everyone gathered around, wanting a look.
“She’s so tiny!”
“Good job, sis.”
“Oh dear, she definitely has your father’s ears.”
“Is anyone hungry?” This last from Marcus.
Nathalie practically got whiplash nodding at Marcus. She had just pushed a baby out of her body, that had to be a couple thousand calories burned, at least. She was starving.
“Is there a cafeteria?” David asked.
“I think I saw it on our way in,” Sophia said, hopping to her feet. “I’ll show you.”
“I could use something to eat, too,” Maisey said. “C’mon, Foz, you owe me a bad chicken dinner.”
“Technically, you owe me that bad chicken dinner,” Foz replied as they headed toward the door.
“No, Mom, you stay,” Lyndi said, when Kathy stood to join them. “I’ll grab you a sandwich.”
“Lynd . . .” Nathalie whispered.
“Like I said, you have to talk to her eventually,” Lyndi whispered back, as she left the room as quickly as her pregnant belly would allow.
“While everyone’s off getting food—the three-bean salad is delightful—mind if we give the baby a quick listen?” Dr. Keen said, as upbeat as a chipmunk.
Nathalie carefully handed the baby over to the nurse. As the nurse cooed over the baby, and Dr. Keen made notes on a chart, Nathalie turned back to Kathy, who had a nervous, tired smile on her face.
How to apologize? Where to begin?
“You did great, Nathalie,” Kathy said. “Just like I knew you would.”
Nathalie gazed over at her daughter. “Thank you.”
“You know that was the easy part, though.”
Nathalie looked up. “The easy part?”
“The birth. The hard part is what’s to come. The diapers, the screaming at all hours. The guessing game of whether or not she’s hungry. Don’t get me started on cracked nipples! Your sister practically bit my left one off, she’d latch on and not let go. I still have phantom pains.”
Nathalie felt a little flame of irritation rise up from her exhaustion. “I’m sure we will manage.”
“Everyone thinks that, honey,” Kathy said, patting her arm.
It was so hard to maintain her intentions to patch things up with Kathy when Kathy couldn’t go three sentences without annoying or criticizing. So hard, in fact, that she didn’t notice when the concerned nurse called Dr. Keen over to the baby.
“Why don’t you let me be a parent for five minutes before you start telling me that I can’t do it,” Nathalie said, trying to maintain a neutral tone.
“I never said you can’t do it, Nathalie,” Kathy said, her voice rising. “I said—”
“Excuse me,” Dr. Keen interjected. She was no longer chipper. And that was enough to drain any irritation from Nathalie and put her body on full alert.
Dr. Keen conferred with the nurse in low, rushed tones. The only words Nathalie could make out was “on call pediatrician,” and “pneumothorax.”
The nurse moved to the phone, talked quickly in low tones. She asked for a rapid response team. Then, everything started happening at once.
A half-dozen people—rapid response, true to their name—entered, and surrounded the baby. They started listening with stethoscopes, checking charts, saying letters and numbers in bewildering combinations . . . and those numbers and letters made them work faster.
“What? What is it?” Nathalie asked, frantic. But everyone was still focused on the baby. All except Dr. Keen, who had gotten out of the rapid response team’s way. With a nod from one of the team’s doctors, Dr. Keen came over to Nathalie, her voice calm, steady.
From Dr. Keen, that was more unnerving than anything.
“Ms. Kneller, we need to take your baby down to NICU for an assessment.”
The blood drained from Nathalie’s face, coursing down her body, out her frozen feet, and to the floor. Only to be replaced by the horrible, horrible realization that something was wrong.
“Why? What’s wrong? Is she okay?”
“Your daughter is not breathing properly.”
The words echoed through the room, through Nathalie’s head. It was as if she had heard the words, but lost the capacity to understand them. She groped blindly for something, anything to hold on to.
And that was when she found Kathy’s hand.
“What does that mean?” Kathy asked, the words Nathalie couldn’t form coming out of her stepmother’s mouth.
“At thirty-six weeks, your baby’s lungs are not fully mature. It’s possible she has a collapsed lung,” Dr. Keen explained. “We need to give her a chest X-ray.”
One of the rapid response team slipped a mask over her baby’s face—oxygen.
“And then?”
“Then if the X-ray shows a pneumothorax, we will do a simple procedure to put a tube in her chest and expand the lung.”
A procedure. Surgery.
“Okay. Okay,” Nathalie said in a rushed breath. “Let’s go to NICU. Let’s go now.”
“Honey,” Kathy said, “hold on. You can’t get out of bed yet, you just gave birth.”
A moment later proved Kathy correct. The epidural hadn’t worn off yet—she still couldn’t feel anything from the waist down. And if she could, no doubt her body would be screaming with sore muscles and pain.
But . . . “To hell with that, I need to—”
At that moment, David came back into the room, his arms loaded down with prepackaged sandwiches.
“I didn’t know what you’d want so I got one of everything. I figured . . .” It took him a second to look up and read the room. When he did, his body immediately tensed. “What’s going on?”
“Something is wrong with the baby’s lungs,” Nathalie said, choking back her tears. “Go with her!” She pointed wildly at the rapid response team who had the baby in a wheeled bassinet. “Now, now, go now!”
David dropped the sandwiches on the floor, and moved to the baby’s side, as they wheeled the bassinet out of the room.
Leaving Nathalie without her baby for the first time in nine months.
But she wasn’t alone. She was still attached to someone, gripping Kathy’s hand for dear life. And Kathy gripping her back.
“What do I do?” Nathalie’s voice cracked. “I can’t just sit here. I have to do something.”
“You are doing something,” Kathy said, soft and fierce. “You are healing. You are getting yourself ready.”
“Ready?”
“For when she needs you,” she replied. “What I was saying earlier, about the hard part being yet to come—this is it. When you want to do something, but can’t. When you have to wait, and prepare, and hope that everything is going to be okay. And it will be okay, Nathalie. You have to be as ready for that. Because she is coming out of that X-ray, out of that surgery, and she is going to need her mother.
“I know you’re scared,” Kathy continued. “And I know . . . I know you wish your mom was here instead of me. But I am here to tell you that as someone who has known you for the last twenty-five years, you can do this. You can. For that little girl? It’ll be the easiest thing in the world.”
Nathalie held tighter onto Kathy’s hand, tears sliding down her nose. She couldn’t look Kathy in the face—she couldn’t move her eyes from the door, where David and her daughter had disappeared . . . where they would come back. But Kathy’s words managed to find their way into her mind, writing themselves under her skin. And Nathalie knew, without question, that her mother was there. Both of her mothers were.
Because no one else but her mother could know exactly what she needed to hear.
They stayed like that, hands gripped together, Nathalie with her eyes locked on the door, Kathy whispering truths and hopes with equal fervor in her ear.
People came in—Lyndi and Marcus back from the cafeteria, a nurse here and there. But none were who she needed to see, so she simply did not see them. She was vaguely aware that Kathy told Lyndi in simple words what was going on, and Lyndi kept the rest of their group at bay.
Seconds ticked into minutes, while everything became focused on a single point. There was only Nathalie, Kathy, and the door.
Finally, the door admitted the one person Nathalie wanted to see. And life came roaring back.
“She’s okay,” David cried as he burst through the door.
A tingling sensation coursed through Nathalie’s body—and not just because the epidural was finally wearing off.
“What happened?”
“They did the X-ray, her left lung was collapsed. They took her immediately to a treatment room, and inserted a chest tube, reinflating the lung. Nat—she gave the loudest scream, you wouldn’t believe it. She’s a fighter.”
Nathalie grabbed David ferociously. Held him tight. She barely noticed the sighs of relief in the room, her sister’s tears of joy. Nor did she notice that Kathy had let go of her hand.
“Can we see her?” Nathalie asked.
“The nurse is here with a wheelchair, she’ll take us down to the NICU.”
Then, Nathalie was wrapped up in blankets, her body sore and floppy, but every nerve pointed toward seeing her baby again. As the nurse wheeled her toward the door, Nathalie made her pause for a moment.
“Kathy,” she said. And then she stopped.
There weren’t words enough to convey what she wanted to say. How everything had become lost in those harrowing minutes, and the only thing she had to hold on to was Kathy’s hand. How much the woman who had aggravated her and raised her meant to her.
“Thank you.”
It was so little. But it was enough.
Kathy, tears in her eyes, held a hand to her heart.
“Go on, honey,” she said. “Go see your little girl.”