Astrid was crying. I could hear it through the phone—the wet, shaky breathing of a woman who had been carrying this with me for nine months and had just found out it was over and everyone was alive. "I was so scared. He said you were on Route 9. He said you were alone in the car."
"I'm okay. I promise. We're both okay."
"You had her on the side of a highway."
"I had her in the back of a medic unit. Slight upgrade."
Astrid laughed through the crying. "Don't make me laugh right now, I'm trying to be upset with you."
"Astrid, I'm sorry I didn't call. The contractions were right on top of each other. I couldn't even make it to the exit."
"Stop. Don't apologize to me. You called 911, and they came, and you're both fine. That's all that matters." She took a breath. I could hear her pulling it together, the practical Astrid coming back online under the tears. "I'm coming. What do you need?"
"You don't have to come tonight."
"I'm already getting my keys. What do you want me to bring?"
"The chicken from Rosario's."
"Done. I'll be there in less than an hour."
Maricel was at the monitor beside my bed, checking the readout, adjusting the IV line. I knew her. I'd worked beside her for two years on the L&D floor, traded shifts with her, and eaten her leftovers out of the break room fridge when mine were sad. She was good. Efficient without being cold, warm without making it about herself. She wrote something on the chart without looking at me any differently than she looked at every patient who came through postpartum recovery. I appreciated that more than I could say.
The bassinet was beside the bed. My daughter was in it, asleep, wrapped in the hospital blanket with the pink and blue stripes that I'd placed on a thousand newborns and never thought about from this side. She was small. Her face was red and compressed from the delivery, her fists curled against the blanket, her mouth working in her sleep at something I couldn't see. She'd been alive for two hours.
I was in the bed. Hospital gown, hair pinned off my face with a clip Maricel found in the supply closet. My body ached in places I understood clinically and was now understanding in a way that had nothing to do with clinical knowledge. The epidural I didn't get was making itself known in every muscle from my hips to my knees. My arms were heavy. My hands were shaking, and I couldn't make them stop.
I'd delivered on the shoulder of Route 9. In the back of a medic unit. With Duke Rhodes's hands catching my daughter.
I wasn’t going to think about that yet.
I set the phone on the bed.
Maricel was at the whiteboard by the door, finishing the bassinet card. She'd been moving through the room the wholetime I was on the phone, quiet and steady, the postpartum checklist, the labeling, and the small adjustments that I'd done for a thousand women and that someone was now doing for me.
Maricel capped her pen. She adjusted the bassinet half an inch closer to the bed without being asked and stood at the foot of the bed with the chart at her hip and the professional composure I recognized because I wore it every shift.
"Vitals are stable," she said. "Bleeding's within range. I'll be back in thirty to check again."
“Thanks, Maricel.”
She paused. "There's a firefighter outside. He says he's the father. He's been in the waiting room for a while."
Her voice was even.
He'd been in the waiting room for a while.
I heard the words and tried to make them fit the story I'd been carrying for nine months. He was supposed to leave. He was supposed to go back to the firehouse, file the call, and drive home. He wasn't supposed to sit in a hospital waiting room.
"He can come in," I said.
She nodded. She left.
I'd spent nine months building speeches in my head, and none of them started with me in a hospital bed two hours after giving birth on a state highway with my hands still shaking.
A knock.
"Can I come in?"
