Ryan and I get up off the sidewalk slowly. He grabs his bag. He picks up the pieces of my dropped cell phone and puts it back together.
“We might need to get you a new phone,” he says. “This one appears to have taken a beating.”
He grabs my hand as we walk into the hospital. We join the group of people waiting at the bank of elevators. When an elevator finally arrives, all of us cram into it, pushing against one another, spreading out against the three walls. Ryan never lets go of my hand. He squeezes it tight. He holds on for dear life. Both of our hands are sweating into each other. But he never lets go.
When we get to the eighth floor, I lead us off the elevator, and standing in front of us, ostensibly waiting for a down elevator, is Rachel.
“Where have you been?” Rachel asks. “I’ve been looking all over for you. I called you four times.”
I start to answer, but Ryan answers for me. “Her phone is broken,” he says, showing Rachel the pieces.
Rachel stares at him, her eyes fixated on him, trying to piece together why seeing him in front of her feels as if it makes perfect sense and yet doesn’t make any sense at all. “Um . . .” she says. “Hi, Ryan.”
He moves toward her and hugs her. “Hey, Rach. I’ve missed you. I came as soon as I heard.”
Ryan’s back is facing me, as Rachel’s face is in my direct eye line. She mouths, Is this OK? half pointing to Ryan’s back. I give her a thumbs-up. That’s all she needs. She just needs a thumbs-up. If I’m thumbs-up, she’s thumbs-up. “I’m so glad to see you!” she says. She turns on the charm as if it has a switch, but it’s real. She’s being entirely genuine.
“Me, too,” he says. “Me, too.”
“We’ve missed you around these parts,” Rachel says, giving him a sisterly light punch to the arm.
“You don’t even know the half of it,” he says. “What can I do? How can I help now that I’m here?”
“Well,” Rachel says, looking at me now, “we’ve had a slight hiccup.”
“Hiccup?” I say.
“Natalie and Charlie ran down to prenatal.”
“Oh,” I say.
“When is she due?” Ryan says. “It’s soon, right?”
“Thursday,” I say.
“Right,” Rachel says. “Well, she thinks she has something called Braxton-Hicks.”
“What is Braxton-Hicks?” Ryan and I both say at the same time. It’s muscle memory, the way we can function as one unit so easily. It’s such second nature to be two halves of a whole that after months of not speaking, we are now speaking as one.
“I don’t know. Mom explained it. It’s something where it seems like you’re in labor but you’re probably not.”
“Probably not?” I ask.
“No,” Rachel says. “I mean, she’s not. But they thought it was best to address it. Apparently, the contractions feel just like real contractions.”
“So it’s painful?” Ryan says.
Rachel nods and tries not to laugh.
“What?” I ask.
“It’s not funny,” Rachel says. “It’s totally not.”
“But?”
“But when the first one came, Natalie grabbed her stomach and said, ‘Jesus, fuck me.’ Even Mom was laughing.”
I start laughing along with Rachel. Multiple elevators have come and gone at this point, and we just continue to stand here.
“You guys are mean,” Ryan says.
I start to defend myself, but Rachel intervenes. “No, it’s just funny because Natalie is the nicest person I’ve ever met. Truly. When she said it, Mom laughed so hard she blew a huge snot bubble.”
I start laughing again; Ryan does, too. My mother has appeared right behind Rachel.
“Rachel Evelyn Spencer!”
Rachel looks at me and rolls her eyes. “Mom heard me, huh?”
I nod.
“Sorry, Mom,” she says, turning around.
“Never mind that,” my mom says, her face growing serious. “We have a slight hiccup.”
“Yeah, Rachel told us,” I say.
My mom’s line of sight focuses in on Ryan and then my hand, which is still holding his after all this time. “Good Lord, this is all just too much,” she says. She sits down in one of the chairs along the hall and puts her head in her hands. “It’s not Braxton-Hicks,” she says. “Natalie is in labor.”
“Please tell me you’re joking,” Rachel says.
“No, Rachel, I’m not joking. And this is a good thing, remember? We want this baby born.”
“No, I know,” she says, reprimanded. “I just mean it’s a lot at once.”
“Can I do anything?” Ryan asks.
My mom looks at him and stands up. She hugs him tight. She hugs him the way only a mother can hug. It’s not a mutual hug, like Rachel and Ryan had. My mother is hugging. Ryan is being hugged. “I’m just so glad to see your face, sweetheart,” she says. “So glad to see your face.”
Ryan looks at her for a moment, and I think he might lose it. He might actually start crying. But he changes course. “I missed you, Leslie.”
“Oh, honey, we all missed you.”
“How is Grandma Lois doing?” he asks. “Can I see her?”
“She’s sleeping at the moment,” my mom says. “I think we should split up. Some people need to go be with Natalie and Charlie, and the rest of us need to be with Grandma.”
It’s an impossible choice, isn’t it? Do you want to be there for the last moments of one life or the first moments of another? Do you honor the past or ring in the future?
“I can’t do this,” my mom says. “I can’t choose. My grandbaby or my mother?”
“You don’t have to choose,” I say. “Between me, Ryan, Rachel, and Fletcher, we’ve got everything. You can go back and forth.”
“I suppose I’m going to get stuck with Uncle Fletcher?” Rachel says.
I look at her. The look on my face is an apology and a plea.
“Fine,” she says. “Everyone has a life event but me. So I’ll just go watch Grandma with Uncle Fletcher.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“When the baby is born, please come get me. Please? Ryan? Will you come get me? Switch with me or something?”
“Absolutely,” he says.
“I’ll go with you,” Mom says to Rachel. “Keep us posted, please,” she says to Ryan and me.
“OK,” I say. “You got it.”
“If she wakes up,” Ryan chimes in, “tell her I’m here?”
“Are you kidding?” Mom says. “I don’t know if we could keep the news in if we tried!”
Ryan smiles as I hit the elevator down button, and then I hit the up button. I don’t know where we’re going.
“Mom?” I call out.
She turns around.
“What floor?”
“Five.”
The down elevator dings. It’s here. Here we go. We have been chosen to ring in the future.