AARON
We’re on our way to the hospital. I can’t believe how fast the last few months have rushed past. The rain is a steady stream, the night sky cast with the yellow of streetlamps. My driver is moving at his usual safe pace, but I wish he’d go faster. Nicole has my hand in her grasp, and I’m keeping track of her contractions as she squeezes my fingers with pain.
I hate seeing her like this. I wish I could make her comfortable. “Are you okay?” I ask, shifting in my seat and using my free hand to stroke her hair back from her face. It’s damp from the rain and maybe a little from the pain. Her smile is small and tight. For all her bravado, I know she’s scared too.
“How much longer?”
“Five minutes,” I say. “Maybe less if the traffic is okay.”
“This is London. When is the traffic ever okay?”
The car turns a corner and speeds; the traffic moving well. We could have luck on our side.
My phone buzzes, and I retrieve it from my lap. It’s Robert, sending his good luck. It won’t be the first time he’s an uncle, but that doesn’t make him any less enthusiastic. “Robert sends best wishes,” I say. Nicole nods. “I’m surprised he didn’t invite himself to the birth. After all, he’s seen where the baby’s going to come out, so there’s not that much mystery left where he’s concerned.”
I shake my head and roll my eyes. “Can you try to forget about that now? I know it was bad, but it’s been years. It’s not like he goes around recalling it all the time.”
“He doesn’t have to,” Nicole says. Then she grins to let me know she’s just teasing me.
“How’s little Bean?” I stroke my hand over Nicole’s swollen belly. It’s so firm, now.
“Little Bean isn’t so little.” She sighs, staring down at herself and shaking her head. “At least I have pretty toenails.”
Smiling at me, she leans in for a kiss. I know she’s remembering last night when I sat on the coffee table with her feet in my lap and used her brightest pink nail varnish to take her mind off the wait. Little things like that are so surprisingly intimate. Little things like that are what make a relationship strong.
Nicole has taught me a lot: how to take chances, how to have faith, how to love with a whole and honest heart. I think she’s about to teach me a whole lot about strength. At the last midwife’s appointment, they measured her belly and raised their eyebrows. Little Bean is definitely not so little, and I’m worried for my wife. She’s not a large woman.
We pull up at the hospital just as she’s having another contraction. I hold her hand through it while my driver leaves the car idling with hazard lights flashing. When Nicole can move, I help her out of the vehicle and into the hospital.
Part of me wishes she were less stubborn and had let me book her into the private hospital where all the celebrities have their babies. The other part of me understands that her heart condition will be better treated here if anything went wrong.
As we head to the maternity ward, I try to push that from my mind. Her consultant has told us not to worry, but her notes are clear about her condition, so whoever is going to look after her today will monitor her closely.
We arrive at the door, push the buzzer, and wait. Nicole rests her hands on her hips and arches backward. I take a mental image of my wife with her hair in a messy bun, belly half hanging out below her vest top, pink yoga pants slung low, and flip flops on her feet. She’s radiating that glow that only pregnant women seem to possess. She’s like a ripe fruit ready all rosy and ready to burst.
When the door buzzes open, I hear Nicole take a deep breath before she steps over the threshold. This feels momentous to me. We’re arriving as a couple and, if everything goes to plan, we will leave as a family. Before we go through the next set of double doors, I reach for her hand and stop her.
“I love you,” I say.
She smiles and moves closer to me, her belly touching mine, her hand coming to cup my stubbly cheek. “I love you too.”
“You need anything in there, you just let me know. Anything. Do you understand?”
She nods, her eyes scanning my face. “You don’t need to panic, baby.”
“I should tell you that,” I laugh, even though my heart is aching. All my happiness is wrapped up in this woman. If I could have this baby and save her the pain, I would.
“It’s okay,” she says. “It’s not easy to stand by while everything happens to me. Especially for someone so used to being in control.” Nicole waggles her eyebrows.
She’s right. Control is a big thing for me, not just when it comes to sex, which is what she’s alluding to. If they allowed me, I would have brought my own physician as a bystander. I even suggested it, but Nicole just laughed.
“Just you wait until this baby is born, and you’ve had six weeks’ rest to recover. I’m going to remind you exactly who’s in charge,” I tell her.
“I’m counting on it,” she says. “Now, can we get into this place before I have another contraction?”
“Of course.” I yank the door open, rushing to the main desk to hand in Nicole’s file. I know they won’t do anything without it. Nicole leans against the counter, and the nurse smiles up at her.
“How are the contractions?”
“Around six minutes apart.”
“Well, let’s get you into a room and take a look at you.”
The next four hours are a blur of holding Nicole’s hand while she clings onto me hard enough to break a finger and witnessing my wife handle more pain than I’ve ever had to experience. She’s stronger than me, that’s for sure.
When the midwife tells her she’s almost there, Nicole cries out, gritting her teeth. Her heart monitor beeps faster in the background as the exertion takes its toll.
“Come on, baby. You can do this,” I tell her. It’s my pathetic attempt to help her and the only thing I can do.
“That’s it,” the midwife says. “Push.”
I remember nothing she says after that, just the sight of my firstborn entering the world. The umbilical cord obscures the baby, so I can’t see whether it’s a boy or a girl, but I don’t care. I really don’t care. Its first cry pierces my heart and fills me with joy. It’s the strangest sensation to feel that you would do anything to make this tiny new person happy.
“It’s a girl,” the midwife says. “A beautiful baby girl.” She’s rubbing the baby to stimulate her, and Nicole is panting and crying. My eyes fill with tears, too, but as much as I want to get lost in the moment, I promised Nicole that I would be clear on her wishes if she was unable.
“Nicole would like to hold the baby skin to skin and is it okay to delay clamping the cord until it stops pulsing,” I ask. It’s all there in Nicole’s birth plan, but I’m not sure the midwife will remember.
“That’s fine,” the midwife says, scooping up Alexandra Harrington into her arms. I gently unbutton Nicole’s top and help the midwife lay our precious daughter on her chest. Alexandra is quiet from the moment she hears her mother’s heartbeat.
“Hey,” Nicole says, her voice hitching with emotion. “Hey, little one.” She cradles Alexandra close, and Alexandra stares at her momma as though she’s committing her face to memory. “Look, Aaron.”
“I’m looking, baby,” I say, moving closer. “She’s so beautiful. So perfect.” The baby’s hair is matted with fluid, but even through that, I can see she’s got Nicole’s coloring.
“I think she has your eyes.”
“Baby’s eyes can change color,” the midwife says. She’s busy waiting for the placenta, and I’m waiting too. There is a woman waiting outside to collect and store the baby’s stem cells.
Nicole makes sweet kissing sounds to our daughter. “They can, but I hope they don’t. My husband has the most beautiful eyes.”
“He does,” the midwife smiles. “But so do you.”
“Yes, she does,” I agree.
It takes time for everything to be sorted out. I finally cut the cord, and Nicole gets to grips with feeding Alexandra for the first time. We take pictures, and I make the announcement to our family and friends, forgetting to list the baby’s weight and name until my sister prompts me for all the information.
It’s overwhelming and beautiful and terrifying and awe-filled, and when I hold my daughter for the first time, I can’t hold back my tears any longer. “She’s perfect,” I say, bending to press my lips to her tender forehead. I breathe her in, and she smells familiar. This little soul is half Nicole and half me, the best of both of us. A blank page, an unwritten poem. A miracle that makes my head swim, it’s so enormous. Alexandra’s tiny finger grips around mine, and I feel my heart shatter in my chest. How is it possible to love so fast and so hard? It’s a mystery, but it’s a fact as well.
“It’s probably a good thing she’s a girl,” Nicole says when we’re settled back in the ward, private behind the curtain surrounding her bed.
I know what she’s getting at. She thinks my parents would have blamed her for not carrying on the name tradition. To be honest, she’s probably right. The older generation is stuck in their ways, but I would have supported my wife in whatever she wanted to do. She carried this baby for nine months, nurtured and protected her, went through excruciating pain to have her. Nicole is my first miracle. The woman who showed me what love is and multiplied it by two.
“What about the next one?”
“That’ll have to be a girl too,” Nicole says with a scowl. “And can you stop talking about the next one, please? The way I’m feeling right now, you’re going to have to wait a year to resume your conjugal rights.”
“I’d wait for you forever,” I say in my cheesiest voice.
Nicole pretends to retch, and we laugh so hard that Alexandra wakes up, whimpering for her next feed.
Moments in life stand out as memories in the making. The day I met Nicole is one of those. Our day in London another. Our wedding day and first night as husband and wife are there too. The day Nicole arrived at my office, clutching a white stick still takes my breath away. And as I sit with my wife and watch her nurse our daughter, I look forward to all the future memories that our life and love will bring.
(c) Stephanie Brother 2020
