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He rubs my leg a little bit. “Well, I’m sure that if I explained the situation to you, you would have felt less guilty. But I also wasn’t ready to go to prison. Kind of put me in a tough spot.”
I laugh, feeling a little bit of my residual guilt dissipate. Even though we’ve more than moved past it, I was significantly emotionally wounded by my own perceived selfishness. I wanted nothing more than to be the equally devoted, loving partner that he had been to me.
“Fuck, I’m feeling kind of crampy,” I say, shifting the energy of the conversation completely. “I think I might be starting to have contractions.”
Adas’s face lights up. “You mean she’s on her way here? Finally?” he says, leaning over and taking both my hands in his.
“Yeah, I sure hope so. At this point, I feel like I’ve been able to identify every different weird sensation that pregnancy has forced upon me, and this one is new,” I reply, feeling a combination of excitement and intense anxiety coming over me.
“Should I go get your stuff? Should I call the doctor? Should we panic?” he asks, feeling the gravity of the situation affecting his judgment already.
“Yes, yes, and absolutely not. We’re going to be fine. It’s going to be scary, but we have each other. We have nothing to fear right now. Let’s just take it as it comes,” I say in my most calm, practiced mother’s voice. I’m under the impression that I’ll need to comfort Adas through this more than myself.
He damn near jumps off the couch to go fetch the overnight bag I’ve packed in preparation for the arrival of our baby girl, Iulia. Adas wanted to name her after his grandmother, and since I know nothing of my birth family, I had no qualms with his request.
Iulia Poltorak.
I’ve spent the last two months repeating her name to myself like a mantra, feeling her kicking me in the ribs every morning as if to prepare me for the handful she’s destined to be with Adas as her father.
“Okay, which car do you want to take? Which one has the best lumbar support?” he asks, bringing me a bottle of pomegranate juice from the fridge before I even needed to ask.
“Adas, the drive is twenty minutes. We’ll be fine in any of your seventeen luxury cars, I promise.”
He salutes me, one of his many strange idiosyncrasies that I’ve learned to fall in love with. He nearly sprints to the garage to fetch one of the cars, knowing fully that we’re in absolutely no rush to get to the hospital this early in my labor.
He wants to be a father so badly that it absolutely slays me. I wish I knew what kind of man I was interested in before, just for some kind of frame of reference for how my preferences have changed.
Adas’s fierce protection of me, strength, and desire to care for his family have made him my dream man on so many levels.
He pulls the car around, parking it out front. He rushes back inside to help me up, taking my whole entire bag in one hand even though I could swear it weighs fifty pounds.
Reaching a hand out to me, he lifts me up out of the squishy confines of the couch as I almost topple over from the weight of my awkward pregnant belly.
In the midst of the chaos, he stops for a moment to just look at me, gazing into my eyes like he’s always done. Except this time, I see a glimmer of tears over that steely blue that I’ve fallen in love with.
“What is it? Are you okay?” I ask, feeling confused and a little concerned.
“I just can’t get over how beautiful you are. In all forms, you are an absolute goddess. Wheelchair, pregnant, every way.”
His comment is so strangely worded that despite how sincere he’s being, I can’t help but laugh. “Adas, I love you, but that sounds ridiculous.”
He finally takes the time to catch his breath, slowing down enough to look me in the eyes, put my bag down, and take my face into his hands.
“I know it might seem that way, but you’ve got to remember that I have all of my memories, River, and I’ve seen lots of women that I thought were going to hold the place in my heart that you do. They never even came anywhere close.”
Even though I’m not trying to be mean-spirited at all, I soften my tone a little bit. He’s clearly trying to be truly vulnerable with me, so I need to listen and respond in a way that encourages him.
“You don’t need to say all of that, but I appreciate you and love you so much. Now, let’s get out of here before this baby gets ahead of us,” I reply, holding his hand against my face and kissing it as we both head out the door.
We’ve done so many trial runs of the rampage to the hospital that I thought we would be better practiced at it by now, but the pressure of it being thereal thingstarts to weigh on both of our anxieties.
“Damn, so you’ve never had a baby, that’s so crazy,” Adas says, more to himself than to me.
The concept that having a baby is supposed to feel natural to me has always felt insane, but in this moment, it seems like something out of a science-fiction novel. I’ve been feeling Iulia kicking all of my organs and doing backflips as soon as she was the size of an avocado. But for some reason, the idea of her comingout of mefeels more unnatural than ever.
When we get to the hospital, the front desk area feels so casual externally in contrast with what’s going on in my body. Everybody in the waiting area seems so bored, like half of them are in sleep mode until they hear their name called. I envy that kind of boredom, that serenity.
“River! It’s finally the big day, huh?” chirps Andrea, the nurse who has been tasked with being my handler, life coach, and cheerleader for the next eight or so hours.
