Page 75 of Blueline Baby

“To do what, Jack? Have the baby on the shoulder of I-20?”

“Fuck! Are you having the baby right now?” And then, before I know it’s happening, I start doing the frantic little pant-pant breathing from her birth class.

“Stop that.” She grips the door handle until her knuckles turn white. “Stop making that noise immediately.”

“I’m supporting you.”

“You’re hyperventilating.”

“I’m doing the breathing”

“That’s my breathing. That’s for me! You are the emotional support staff.” She grits it out through another contraction, and God help me, she’s in active labor and still winning the argument. “Hands on the wheel. Eyes on the road. Get us to the hospital and stop breathing at me.”

“Okay.” The wipers are still screeching across the dry windshield. “Right. Okay.”

“And turn off the damn wipers.”

“I can’t figure out which lever they are.”

They get her into a gown and onto a bed with rails. The room is too bright and too calm for what’s going on inside my head. A nurse with steady hands checks her, and then pauses for half a second in a way that stops my heart.

“And this is just false labor, right?” Chloe asks her. “Statistically, first babies take forever. I’m thirteen days early. It could still be false labor, right?”

The nurse looks up. She’s kind and professionally unbothered, like she’s done this ten thousand times.

“Oh, sweetheart. This baby is coming, and it’s coming quick.” She puts her hand on Chloe’s knee. “Now you listen to me, darlin’. Whatever you do—do not push. Not one bit. You wait right here for the doctor.”

I grab the door frame to keep myself standing. I can feel the blood leave my face. It’s the gray-out from the video, except this time it’s real and it’s mine. “Why can’t she push?”

“Not yet,” is all she says. She’s already moving, cheerful as anything, and then she’s gone out the door.

And here’s the truth about me. My whole life, no matter the situation, I’ve had a play. A hit to throw, a line to say, a thing to fix, a list to make on the back of a napkin. I fell through the wrong apartment door and turned it into this. There has always, always been a move.

I look at Chloe and she’s staring back at me terrified. And for the first time ever, there’s no play. There’s nothing to fix. It’s just her, doing the hard part, and me, doing nothing.

So I do the only thing I can. I pull the plastic chair up and take her hand in both of mine, “I’ve got you, Chlo,” I tell her. “Don’t push, baby. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

34

CHLOE

MACKINNON

I’ve never handled pain well.

“Okay,” I grit out as the nurse comes back into the room, “I’m ready. Can I get an epidural now?”

The nurse, who’s setting up a tray of sterile instruments as quickly as she can, pauses and looks at me with real sympathy.

“Oh, sweetheart. It’s far too late for that. You’re fully dilated. Why on earth didn’t you come in hours ago?”

“Because she was eating yogurt,” Jack says. His voice is hollow. “In Louisiana.”

The nurse stares at him for one second, decides she doesn’t have time to unpack that, and moves for the door. “I’m going to go drag your doctor out of his other delivery. Do not push. You wait for the doctor.”

She disappears down the hall.

A second later, a pressure hits me so hard it feels like my back is breaking.