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“Did you expect something better form a hospital vending machine?”
“I guess not.”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence while I pretended to calm myself and completely and totally failed. I wasn’t sure what Dad was trying to accomplish. From the look on his face, he was either contemplating or constipated—it was anyone’s guess.
We went back into the room, and I tried to keep my shit together; I really did. After a while, Michael and Douglass were kicked out so Tria could drop most of her clothes and just kind of hang out. You would think she’d be embarrassed or something, but she didn’t seem to give a shit anymore. Chelsea and Julianne stayed at Tria’s request, and I was glad to have them there. I had no fucking clue what I was doing and mostly fought against any kind of Bill Cosby impersonation, which would definitely have gotten me killed.
It was still very tempting.
For a while, I was fine, but when the contractions started coming closer and closer together, and Tria started really screaming, I could barely keep myself from doing the same. Everywhere I touched her made it worse, but when I tried to get a little distance, she got hysterical. Of course, if I didn’t touch her or didn’t say anything to her, she got mad, too, so I tried to speak and touch softly.
“You’re doing great,” I told her.
“Fuck you!” she spat back.
I cringed a little, rubbed her back, and hoped something I said or did made some kind of difference, because I felt useless. She wasn’t pushing me away anymore, but it was probably because she was too weak to do so.
I didn’t think it would take this long. Tria was a couple of weeks early, but still within the definition of a full-term pregnancy, according to the doctor. As much as I tried to reassure myself, it was getting harder to believe as the minutes and hours ticked on.
“I want to be up there,” Tria said, and I helped her move on her hands and knees toward the top of the bed.
Almost immediately, she screamed again.
“Can you try breathing?” I asked.
“No,” she moaned as tears flowed down her cheeks. Every one of the tears that left a trail on her skin also left a rip through the center of my chest.
All I could think was that it was my fault. If I hadn’t shoved my cock in her, none of this would have ever happened, and she wouldn’t be hurting like this.
“It hurts,” she whisper-cried at me. Her voice was too low for anyone else to hear. For the first time all day, her eyes didn’t show anger or frustration, but terror. “It hurts a lot more than I thought it would…I don’t understand…”’
“It’s supposed to hurt,” I reminded her. “You can still do the epidural or—”
“No!” she cried. “It’s not good for the baby…natural is so much better…the magazines…”
“I know, babe.”
Tria had gone kind of crazy over the whole natural birth thing. It was entirely possible she read too much about it. Though I had no doubt it was the better route to go, it seemed like an awful lot of shit to go through. Tria was sure, and I just went along with it because it was what she wanted.
Despite all the time we had to get ready for this, I felt completely unprepared. The baby was early, and we didn’t know what we were doing.
Tria went back and forth from the birth ball to the bed. Then she went from being up on her hands and knees to lying on her back so someone could check her progress though there really didn’t seem to be any.
“Stop poking at me,” Tria growled at one of the nurses.
The shift had just changed, and the nurse who had been
there earlier was now gone. I wasn’t sure who this one was, but Tria obviously didn’t like her much. The nurse moved off to the side for a moment but then reached out and placed her hand on Tria’s stomach as another contraction hit.
“Don’t touch me!” Tria yelled at her.
I was about to move around and just get in the nurse’s way when she ignored Tria’s obvious warning and placed her hand right above my wife’s belly button, and Tria backhanded her.
Yep—right across the face.
The nurse jumped back, looking astonished, and then just backed out of the room altogether. Tria didn’t even say anything.
“Did she just hit that nurse?” I heard Julianne ask as she leaned over next to Chelsea.
