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We walk our way back to the elevators, but I have to stop short as I’m seized by another cramp.
A passing nurse stops beside us. “Honey, you’re going the wrong way. The reception desk is in the opposite direction.”
“No, I’m fine, I was just here to support a friend.”
The nurse raises a suspicious eyebrow at me, looking at her watch. “Stand five minutes with a straight face and you’re good to go.”
I make it to about four minutes before another spasm seizes me. “Ow.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“No.” I stare at Gabriel in a panic. “I’m fine, I swear, I’m not ready.”
“Babe, why don’t you let the nurse check you. If nothing is happening, we’ll be on our way.”
“No.” I shake my head vehemently.
“It’s okay,” the nurse tries to reassure me. “You’re in the best place to be having contractions.”
“I’m not having contractions,” I protest, shaking my head again in utter denial. “It must be indigestioooon—aargh.”
“I’m bringing a chair,” the nurse decrees.
I hold on to Gabriel for dear life. “Don’t let them take me.”
With the sweetest possible expression on his face, he sweeps a strand of hair behind my ear, and in the gentlest voice ever, he says, “It’s okay, babe, we knew this was coming. You’re going to rock.”
“No, I don’t want to spend hours suffering like Marissa, and I don’t have an inside doctor to give me early access to drugs. Take me home.”
“Are you sure? Because there’ll be no drugs at all at home.”
The reality that the baby is coming, now, whether or not I’m ready, hits me worse than the following contraction.
I gladly collapse in the nurse’s chair and let her bring me to a room. There, she helps me onto a bed and asks Gabriel, “Could you please fill out the paperwork while I examine her?”
“Sure,” he says.
At my pleading, please-don’t-leave-me-alone, desperate expression, he adds, “I’ll be right back.”
The nurse helps me out of my underwear and looks down there, letting out a surprised, “Oh.”
“What is it?”
“Did the contractions just start?”
“I felt a little off all day,” I confess. “But I thought it was just the normal pregnancy discomfort, why?”
“You’re at four centimeters already.”
I sag back on the bed as relief washes over me. “Does that mean I can have the epidural right away?”
“Sure does, honey.”
By the time Gabriel gets back, the anesthetist is already in the room prepping me.
The second the epidural hits, all the pain goes away. I recline on the bed, peacefully calm. If not for obvious reasons, I’d ask them to bring me a cocktail with a pink umbrella to sip while we wait.
Whenever the aching resurfaces, they pour a little magic liquid into the IV going into my back and all suffering is whisked away.
