“It’s so hard to meet anyone,” he sympathized. “Caro and I can’t meet anyone either.”
Were they swinging? This was new. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“We need some friends,” said Nico, uncharacteristically plaintive. “It would be nice to have friends over for dinner or have someone have us over for dinner or have people to go to the movies with. Dating shouldn’t feel this . . . isolating. But we don’t know anyone.”
“You have a billion friends, Nico.” In addition to everything else, everyone loved him.
“Yeah, but they’re not here. You’re three hours away and always studying. My friends from grad school are all over. Everyone we work with is old.”
“Maybe you should post a personal ad online,” I suggested out of vengeance because that was what he always told me I should do, singularly because he had never even had to contemplate doing so himself.
“Yeah, sure, because ‘Nice young couple seeks other couples or friends for fun, laughter, and good times’ couldn’t possibly attract weirdos or freaks. Besides, we don’t want to try that hard. We want it just to happen.”
“You and every single person on the planet,” I said. “That’s exactly what my students say about finding a boyfriend. That’s exactly what I say about finding a boyfriend.”
“Yeah, but you’re lucky, Janey,” he said. “You have so many good friends. You have people to do stuff with. You have more friends than time to hang out with them, and they’re all near you. Finding love is easy—it’s fate—you just sit back and let it happen, have faith that if it hasn’t yet, it will soon, but then that’s done, and you realize you’re on your own for the rest of your life. It’s up to you to make the rest of it happen because destiny is done with you, at least as far as your social life goes.”
Did he mean Caroline? Did he mean she was his fate and destiny? Or could he mean me? I was considering this when the other line rang.
I clicked over.
I clicked back.
“OhmygodNico, we’re having a baby. I gotta go. Shit. I have a stove and a half full of cooking food.”
“Turn it all off and go,” he said, excited too. “Call me as soon as something happens.”
“Okay. Love you.” I was about to hang up, but it occurred to me, “Nico? Having friends? Lots more responsibility than they’re cracked up to be.”
“Girlfriends as well,” he reported. “Love you too. Bye.”
You’d think that on the way to the hospital, I ruminated on the nature of love, relationships, and expectation, counted my blessings to have such wonderful people in my life, questioned mine and everyone’s search for partnership and marriage, but you’d be wrong. I thought this: holy shit. I thought it over and over and over again. Every time I deep breathed long enough to clear my head and let my mind wander to the song on the radio or the exams or whether I’d turned everything off on the stove or the fact that I hadn’t closed the windows before I left (perfect for newborns in December), I snapped immediately back to this: holy shit. Holy shit shit shit shit shit.
Thirteen
I hit some traffic. I yelled and cursed. The hospital was only five miles away, and I freaked out for every one of them. What if I missed it? What if, after all of this, the baby was already there when I got there, already born, already a person? What if Jill thought I’d deserted her in her moment of greatest need? You would think people in Seattle would be good at driving in the rain. But you would be wrong. It is one of life’s stupidest mysteries. When I finally got to the hospital and finally finally found Jill’s room, nothing, and I mean nothing at all, was happening. Jill was lying on top of the covers in jeans and a sweatshirt. Katie was sitting in a chair next to the bed in the “genius outfit” she’d shopped for specially to take her orals in. They were talking about the exam. I couldn’t believe it.
“Did they ask you about Elizabeth Barrett Browning?” Katie was saying. “They asked me about Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Who even reads her anymore?”
“No, but they asked me about Julia Kristeva,” said Jill. “And I know none of them has ever read a word of hers. They’re delusional.”
“They asked me about David Mamet, and all I could think of was that horrible movie we rented whenever that was with all the gold and the guns and everybody was trying to trick everybody else. Like I needed to go to graduate school for that.”
“I cannot believe you guys are talking about orals,” I said, coming in and wavering somewhere between relief that I hadn’t missed anything and alarm that I was the only one who realized that the appropriate reaction to all this was: holy shit. “They’re over. Who cares? You’re in labor! Did you even pass by the way?” I asked Jill.
She nodded, opened her mouth to add something, then stopped mid-breath and held up a finger. “Hold on one sec.” Then her face scrunched up, and her body got all rigid. I held my breath. Katie looked bored. Then Jill relaxed. “Anyway, yeah, I passed. But they asked some really stupid stuff. Did they ask you about Kristeva?”
“Was that it? Are you contracting?” I was almost yelling.
“I think contracting is when you’re not a permanent employee,” Jill said languidly, “but that’s it. It’s not bad so far.”
“No one is alarmed,” Katie reported. “They don’t even want her to get undressed or anything yet. They said early labor could last hours, but they want us to stay here because her water already broke. Something about infection. They said we should both take a nap. They haven’t even looked in on us in forty-five minutes.”
“So we’re bitching about the exams,” said Jill.
Silence.
“What’s new with you?” Katie asked brightly.
“I am freaking out,” I shouted and paced the perimeter of the room. “Why are you so calm? Does it hurt?” I asked Jill. “Does it hurt her?” I pressed Katie, not waiting for an answer from either. “Are you okay? Are you scared? Can I get you something? Did you call your mom? Are you hungry? Should you eat? What are we going to do? Shit,” I finished. No one was even trying to answer me.
“We’re just hanging out,” said Jill calmly.
“Want to watch TV?” offered Katie.
I looked from one to the other as if they were insane. I checked the hallway in a vain effort to locate the team of nurses and doctors I was sure should be there. I searched my brain for information about what we should have been doing because I was pretty sure it wasn’t watching TV. But there was nothing.
“I think we’ve earned TV,” said Jill. It was true. Along with everything else, we’d put a moratorium on the television while we studied. So we sat and watched reruns of Friends, and every five minutes or so Jill scrunched up her face with a contraction, and we waited. We waited through four different Friends reruns, two Simpsons, and two incredibly bad reality shows Katie explained as we watched (“Okay, so that’s Sophie. She’s the mean one from New Jersey. She used to be blond, but Rob said he had a thing for redheads, so she dyed her hair. She’s a hairdresser and aspiring model. He’s not going to pick her.” Et cetera.) We watched one Law & Order and one CSI-I-forget-where. We watched an old West Wing and another Law & Order. Jill’s contractions got closer together but not a lot. The nurses came more often but mostly just offered not especially encouraging encouragement. “You’re doing fine,” and, “Keep hanging in there.”