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Lauren was now studying the printout with some degree of interest. “Christina, let me check you again, hon. These contractions are coming fast and furious.”
Christina was shaking her head. “No. I don’t want to.” Her legs were clamped shut.
“We’ll wait until this contraction is over.” Lauren stroked Christina’s shoulders in a way that was meant to be soothing, but Christina was not soothed. She was writhing. She pushed Lauren away. “I can’t. I’m not ready.” Christina’s voice was breaking up into sobs.
Lauren cast a look at Tibby that seemed to say she was certainly the most horrendous labor partner any pregnant woman had ever been saddled with. Tibby did feel bad. Not because of Lauren—she didn’t really care what Lauren thought—but because of Christina. Christina was alone here. She didn’t have her husband or her sister or her daughter or her mother. She had Tibby.
Tibby’s instinct was to get on the bed with Christina, but her muscles were fighting with her. They were remembering Bailey, and more recently, Katherine. Tibby did not have happy associations with beds in hospitals. Who did?
Christina was in a ball. She was crying quietly. Tibby suffered a deep ache in her chest, climbing up to her throat.
“I need to check you, Christina. I need to see where you are,” Lauren said.
She’s right there! Tibby felt like screaming. Leave her alone!
“I’m not ready,” Christina said, weeping.
Lauren tried to uncurl Christina, but Christina fought her off.
Tibby couldn’t stand it anymore. She got on the bed with Christina. She grabbed her hands and squeezed them hard. That seemed to get her attention.
Lauren still pulled at Christina’s legs.
“She said she’s not ready!” Tibby roared.
Lauren looked taken aback, like Tibby had smacked her. Then, to Tibby’s utter astonishment, Lauren put her face to the side of Tibby’s head. She kissed her temple.
As if this day could get any stranger.
“That a girl,” Lauren whispered. “Fight for her. She needs you.”
Tibby pulled Christina up by her hands. She looked into her eyes. “Christina, I’m here. Look at me, okay? Hold my hands. Squeeze them as hard as it hurts.” That was something Alice used to say to Tibby when she had to get a shot.
Christina was coming down from a contraction. She looked lost, but slowly she zeroed in on Tibby.
Tibby knelt by her. “I’m here. You’re okay. Show me how much it hurts.”
The pain mounted again in Christina’s face. She squeezed Tibby’s hands so hard, Tibby saw them turning white. She tried her hardest not to flinch. The pressure mounted until Tibby half expected to see her ten severed fingers lying on the mattress.
“That’s good!” Tibby shouted. “I feel it! That’s so great!”
Christina’s eyes were tracking hers now. Tibby felt, on some level, that that was the right thing.
“I need to check her. I think this is happening,” Lauren said to Tibby under her breath. “Help me, okay?”
Tibby did not know what happening meant. She did not want to know what happening meant. She straddled Christina’s legs, so she was practically sitting on her, though carrying her own weight. “Tina, Lauren’s gonna do her thing. Stick with me, okay. With my eyes. Are you watching?”
Christina nodded.
“Squeeze my hands. Can you do it?”
Christina allowed Lauren to examine her cervix, though she was desperately uncomfortable. Tibby’s hands were mottled white and purple.
“My goodness,” Lauren said breathlessly. “This is fast. Christina, you are ten centimeters and ready to go.”
Tibby stared at Lauren, dumbfounded. Wasn’t Lauren supposed to do this kind of thing every day? Why did she allow herself to get surprised? She said this was going to take hours. As in several. Not as in one. Did Lauren have any idea what she was doing?
Tibby hadn’t even gotten hold of Carmen. She hadn’t wanted to scare her. She’d thought they had hours. She’d thought Carmen would still have enough time to get back. Now what? What were they supposed to do now?
Christina started crying again. There was a whole lot of blood on the bed, under Christina’s legs.
Tibby didn’t want to show her fast-rising fear. If she panicked, where would that leave Christina? She needed to get them focused again.
Christina was in a new kind of pain, making a new kind of noise. Tibby tried not to be alarmed. It wouldn’t help.
“You need to push, hon,” Lauren said. “You’re feeling the pressure and that means you need to push. You’re almost there!”
“No!” Christina was suddenly livid. “I’m not ready! I can’t do this! David isn’t here! Where is he? Where is Carmen? We took the classes! This baby is not due for four weeks!” In her anger, Christina had tuned herself right back in. She let go of Tibby’s hands, rolled back onto her side, and curled into her ball.
Tibby could see from her body that Christina was fighting a ferocious urge.
“She needs to push. I can see it,” Lauren said. “Don’t fight it, Christina. It’s time to have this baby. You gotta let go!” She was trying unsuccessfully to get Christina’s attention.
Tibby tried pulling her up again, but Christina wouldn’t budge. “Tina, will you look at me? Do you see me? You can do this! I know it!”
Christina wouldn’t look. “I can’t.”
We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears apples.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Roughly twenty minutes south of Downingtown,
Carmen realized there was another sizable topic she and Win hadn’t considered.
“Are you going away to school next year?” he asked her without looking at her. He was bearing down on a slow Nissan in the fast lane.
“Um.” She licked her lips. “Yes.”
This was the obvious moment to say where she was going. It suddenly struck her how badly she wanted to say she was going to Williams. She wanted Win to think she was smart.
She tapped her bare toes against the dashboard. But she wasn’t going to Williams. She was going to Maryland, and she didn’t want to lie to him anymore. She liked him too much to keep doing that.
“I’m going to Maryland,” she said. She quelled the urge to spout her near-perfect grades and her academic honors. She left it at the truth. If he didn’t like the truth, well…then that was a good thing to know.
“Oh.”
Did he find her disappointing?
“What about you?” she asked. It was strange that she didn’t know. Carmen was a great student. She cared about that kind of thing. Most boys she assessed almost like a brand, and where they went to college added or subtracted from their cachet. Win was different. She’d gotten to know him from the inside, it seemed.
“I go to Tufts. In Boston.” He smiled a little and tipped his head toward her. “I was kind of hoping you were going somewhere up around there.”
I was! she felt like shouting at him. I could have! I almost did!
But she stayed quiet, which was good in a way, because when her cell phone started ringing she heard it right away and snapped it open.
It was Tibby, trying to be calm.
“Oh, my God! Oh, no! Tell me you are kidding,” Carmen roared into the phone.
Tibby wasn’t kidding.
“We’ll be there as fast as we can,” Carmen said helplessly.
“What happened?” Win asked.
“She’s in heavy labor,” Carmen said, a little sob getting past her. “It’s going fast. She’s asking for David and for me.”
“Man,” Win muttered. He took his foot off the gas pedal. “What do you want to do? Keep going or turn around now?”
“Turn around,” she answered. As soon as he flicked the blinker she thought better of it. “No, keep going. It’s David’s baby, too. We have to tell him. He’ll be heartbroken if he doesn’t even know.”
Win seemed to think that was a good answer. He got back into the left lane of the highway and pushed the speed. He was going eighty-five and Carmen wasn’t complaining.
