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Water gushes out of me, soaking the crotch of my leggings. I lift up my sweater-dress. I’m going into labor. “Ryke…” I freeze, so still as I truly see what this means. All the hope. All the excitement I trounced floods me. I’m going to have a baby.
“I’ll call an ambulance to meet you at the parking lot,” my dad says, a little nervously. “Don’t wait for me.”
I bend at the next cramp, the contraction stronger. “Ow,” I say in a higher register than I normally use. It must scare Ryke enough because he lifts me in his arms. Cradling me. His pace is lengthy and urgent, not slowing for anything.
Stubborn, iron-willed Ryke Meadows. You can’t tell him what to do.
I look up at my husband and then down at his right leg. He seems to be holding strong. No limping, but I ask anyway. “Are you okay?” The next contraction grabs at me. Ow, ow.
“Don’t fucking ask me that. You’re the one in labor.”
“It’s already amazing.” My overwhelmed smile hurts my cheeks. It truly is. I reach my hands up as the rain kisses our faces. “Are you remembering this?”
I can feel his pulse racing with mine.
I shut my eyes and lean my head back. Thunder growls beneath the ground, and the naked trees creak in the robust, frigid wind. I open my eyes and the sky is nothing but darkness.
Strings that connect us to this world, to nature, to me, become apparent. We’re all living and breathing. We’re all terribly mighty things.
Ryke’s hair dampens, rain cascading in heavy sheets upon us. “Didn’t you have a fucking theory about the woods?!” he asks me over the thunder.
I smile more. He remembered my theory. “Magical things happens in the woods.” I toss my hands in the air again and scream happily at the top of my lungs.
The way Ryke is smiling could reverse a storm and cause a heat wave.
I wish it’d stay forever, but my smile fades and his follows mine, and the next contraction pummels me like a freight train. I nearly curl into a ball against his chest, and his stride reciprocates my pain, moving faster.
I mentally time the contractions, and I realize that they’re really close together. “Ryke…”
He must hear the fear leech my voice because he sets me on sopping pine needles and yanks off my boots.
“You can’t deliver the baby,” I say. “I’m high-risk and—” I grit my teeth at the next wave. Oh my God.
He tears off my leggings, his actions only accelerating. Then he breaks apart my knees and checks between my legs. Not long after, he quickly pulls down my sweater-dress to my thighs. “Come here, sweetheart.” He lifts me back into his arms and continues his vigorous course again.
“What…?” What was it?
“I didn’t see a fucking head.”
Okay, we have time. “We’re okay,” I tell him, dizzy and light. “I can walk.” I’m not sure how much weight his leg can handle. “You can set me down right there.”
“Over my dead fucking body.”
I push past the next contraction and say, “Some would think that you enjoy carrying me.” This isn’t the first instance where he’s picked me up. I’ve lost count of how many times he’s scooped me in his arms and held me like my protective shield.
Over the lightning, I barely make out his next words.
“I’ve always fucking loved you in my arms.”
* * *
I scream in tortured, gut-wrenching pain. Holy shit. The ambulance bumps along the road, the rain slowing the vehicle. I’m on the stretcher in the middle while Ryke sits close, his hand in mine.
“How much fucking farther?” Ryke asks. The three EMTs are doing their best, but the longer we take and closer I am to popping out this baby—the more all of our worry amplifies.
“Maybe forty minutes to an hour,” the girl says, driving the ambulance along a windy two-lane road. A nineteen-year-old EMT takes my vitals with shaky hands. It’s his third day on the job, and color drained from his face when he asked if I was Daisy Calloway.
“I’m Daisy Meadows now,” I told him.
He looked shell-shocked—or I guess star struck—to the point of puking. He gagged in his fist, and the older man then explained that he was new.
Ryke’s whole demeanor changed after that, sharp-eyed on every little action the new EMT takes. His alpha male aura consumes the vehicle, but I’m glad to have him here, noticing things that I don’t.
The older man, late fifties maybe, retrieves his cellphone. My legs are split open, and he keeps checking—but I don’t understand the phone.
“What’s wrong?” Ryke asks him.
I clench my teeth awfully hard. Sweat beads my forehead as my muscles constrict. I cry a little and Ryke squeezes my hand. Owwww. The baby wants out. I can feel how much.
“I’ve only delivered a baby once,” he says. “I’m going to put a doctor on the line.”
“We’re not going to make it to the fucking hospital?” Ryke asks, his features as dark as the roiling sky.
“I don’t think so.” Am I that far along already? He puts the phone on speaker, but I tune out the doctor’s voice, my head pounding from consistent contractions, barely stopping to let me breathe.
I’m scared for the baby. “What are…the chances of a stillbirth?” I ask Ryke. Stillbirth. The word ensnares me like an iron vice, locked around my throat.
Stillbirth would be the worst of all.
Ryke strokes the wet hair out of my face, my drenched sweater-dress stuck to my belly. With our scars and our tangled, soaked hair, we look like we were caught in the wild. I try to focus on this fact. I try to make light of whatever fate has left to throw at us.
He leans down, his eyes diving into mine. “We’re all fucking alive. All three of us.”
I fight tears because I see a different outcome. “I’m scared,” I whisper. I’m scared that nine months has been nothing but a trick. I’m scared that a rug will rip from under our feet again. That tomorrow morning, we’ll both roll on our stomachs and we’ll bury our heads in pillows. We’ll scream.
Violently.
He cups my cheeks, his hands rough and strong. “A hundred-and-fifty miles per hour.”
Tears slip down my cheeks and I murmur, “No brakes.”
“Never any fucking brakes.” He raises my hand in his and kisses my knuckles.
I inhale our exchange and bask in what it truly means.
I bottle this moment with Ryke, not worrying about the next step, the afterwards. I live for now.
And I chase. And I run and I howl. After every second, every detail, and I could raise my arms in the air again. I could say, this is me. I exist in this great, big world.
The older EMT sets a hand on my bent knee. “You need to lean up against something.”
Ryke is quick to help. He straddles the stretcher behind me, and I rest my back against his chest. Once the EMT tells me that I actually need to start pushing, everything zooms into one action. One goal.
You’ll be okay, whoever you are. I can’t wait to meet you, face to face this time.
I begin pushing. Gritting my teeth, head-splitting pain latching onto me. No meds. No doctor physically present. Don’t stop. I try as hard as I can, knowing the baby needs out.
Rain pelts the ambulance roof, the ping ping ping a chorus to my agonized screams. My arms quiver. Hot tears flow down my cheeks. I have no strength to contain the onslaught, the scalding waterworks. My skin heats as I try again.
And again.
Ryke wipes the tears off my face with his sleeves. He whispers encouragements in my ear, but I can barely process time or words. Woozy with exertion and discomfort, I just keep going.
Stopping only worsens the lingering pain. The next push, I scream so loudly that my throat burns raw. My muscles sear inside out. My lungs bursting. I can barely distinguish shapes ahead of me, my mind exploding with color.
And then another scream entwines with my dwindling one. All the suffering begins to eke away. I just listen to the tiny cry of
a baby.
I see little arms waving, crying like here I am; look at me. I break into a sob, my hand trembling by my lips. The EMT cleans the baby only a little before setting the newborn on my chest.
“Here’s your girl.”
I place a hand on her smooth back. How precious you are. I look up at Ryke, tears streaming down his face as he glances between our daughter and me.
I whisper, “We made this.”
He’s overcome with so much that he breaks into a full-blown smile while crying with me. He kisses the top of my head. “I’ve never loved anything fucking more than you and her.”
My core lights up with his declaration. I touch her itty-bitty fingers. “Hey there,” I breathe. As soon as she clasps onto my pinky, her cries begin to fade.
She calms with regular, deep breaths. Like she understands who I am already. Ryke strokes her soft cheek, and her lips smack together.
He tells her, “It’s taken a lot of fucking love to have you.” He chokes on so many sentiments. He has to pinch his reddened eyes. When they meet mine again, they’re consumed with this tremendous, earth-stomping joy.
I feel it too.
Teeming all around us.
I’m so happy that I can hardly speak, and I think back to every month, every day, every hour. I think back to all that we’ve lost and all that we’ve gained. There is no doubt—I know exactly who we brought into this world.
