Page 88 of Omega’s Fold

“Three minutes.”

“How long when your water broke?”

“Okay, looks like we’re going to get you done quickly.”

“All right. Let’s get you in. Julian, grab the bag and follow me.”

The bed in the room she shows us to has been made up with a fresh gown laid out across the foot of it.

The monitor is humming low in the corner. The window faces east and there is a single small pink cloud high up over the ridge.

Sarah checks me. She listens to the baby’s heart through a small handheld doppler and she frowns at it for a half second and then nods, and the nod tells me what I need to know before she has said it out loud. The baby is fine, and her heart is doing what a baby’s heart is supposed to do at this stage of labor. We are on track.

“You’re at five centimeters,” Sarah says. “Good progress for a first. You walking or staying in bed?”

“Walking.”

“Good answer.”

I walk. The next two hours are slow. The contractions get closer and harder and I get up and walk the short corridor outside the room, leaning on Julian’s shoulders.

I sway through the back end of each one, the way the midwife shows me, and at some point I stop being interested in sentences and the only thing I say is a single low sound through my teeth at the back end of each contraction. Sarah says it is fine. Julian, who has gone white around the mouth, takes it for what it is.

At seven, Sarah checks me again.

“Eight.”

“How long.”

“Not long. Forty minutes maybe. Could be more, could be less. Your body knows what it is doing.”

“Mm.”

I get back on the bed. I do not remember Julian helping me but he must have, because he is on one side of me and Sarah is at the foot, and the room has gone small and very warm.

Sarah checks me.

“You are ten.”

“Mm.”

“On the next one, you push.”

The next one comes.

I push.

I push the way she tells me to push, which is for as long as the contraction lasts.

Three pushes.

“Stop,” Sarah says. “Wait.”

I wait. The room rings.

“All right, Wyatt. Small one now. Just give me a small one.”

I give her a small one.