Page 145 of Love What's Left
“I don’t want to have our baby in the car. There are germs,” she wails.
I nod. And nod. And nod. Then I shake my head. “I, too, would rather you did not give birth in this car. If you could just suck that baby in nice and tight. Just hold on to our little peanut until we’re in the hospital, that would be ideal.”
We have a reprieve of approximately three minutes where she goes quiet. Then she grunts as her body does that thing where she’s doing crunches, her knees drawn up and apart.
“Okay.” I waft a hand in the air. “Breathe. One. Two. Three—”
“I am breathing, Gabriel,” she snarls in a voice that sounds like a demonic possession.
Think.Think. I watched those videos. I took the classes and read the books. “The pushing phase is going to take at least an hour for a first-time mother. We have plenty of time to get to the hospital. It’s only a fifteen-minute drive total.”
Dave speaks up. “It’s fifteen minutes from midtown Manhattan to Mount Sinai ingood traffic. In bad traffic, it can take thirty to forty minutes, and this traffic isn’t good.”
Nope.Nope. That’s not happening here. “Drive faster, Dave.”
He lays on the horn and attempts to inch the SUV around the vehicle in front of us.
Sydney relaxes as the wave passes.
Pushing stage means she’s fully dilated, right?
Germs. No babies on germs. No germs on my wife’s precious cootchie. What the fuck? What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck?
Sydney toes off her shoes and socks. I dig through her hospital bag and produce a baby blanket.
“I’m putting the blanket down under you, so you’re not touching car germs. I need you to lift up. Just let me . . .” It’s awkward. This SUV has decent legroom, but it wasn’t intended for two fully grown adults to fit between the front and middle seats, let alone having one of them currently channeling Violet in her blue era fromCharlie and the Chocolate Factoryand the other a six-foot-two man.
I’ve barely got the blanket under her butt when another wave hits. I brush her hair from her sweaty forehead. “You’re doing great.”
The car crawls forward, trapped in a clogged stream of red taillights and honking horns, not the least of which is Dave, who also has his window down hollering at people to get out of the way.
“The baby is coming,” she says.
I shake my head. “That’s a terrible plan.”
“It’s not my plan. It’s what’s happening,” she hisses.
“Dave, pull over and call Josh on speakerphone,” I say.
“There’s nowhere to pull over to. We’re locked in. Best I can do is put it in park in the middle of the street,” he says.
A single ringtone, then Josh answers. “What’s going on?”
“She says the baby is coming. She needs to push. We’re stopping so you can get in here,” I say.
“I can’t. We’re blocks away. It took us a while to get into traffic, and an accident between us has us gridlocked. You have to keep moving.”
“Okay. Okay. Okay. You heard that, Dave?”
“I heard it,” Dave says grimly.
“You have at least an hour from the time she felt like she needed to push. You’ll make it to the hospital fine,” Josh says.
Sydney shakes her head, a wide and sweeping definitiveno. “This isn’t going to take an hour.”
“Gabe, can you describe what you see?” Josh asks.
I stare at my wife, my mouth tight and eyes wide enough that there has to be a ring of white around the green. Sydney stares back the exact same way.
