The check in. The nurse pointing. Andrew's hand on my back. Shannon's worried face. It's all there, but as backdrop for my own heart beat. The brush of the ball of my foot against linoleum. My refusal to ride in a wheelchair. The pressure of my cervix expanding.
The march of inevitability.
We're in an exam room when a long, low contraction hits, hard and grinding. Shannon sees it before Andrew does and moves my hands to the wall, palms flat, pressure suddenly on my sacrum. Andrew's hands go to my hips, but the sweet relief from his strength isn't enough to combat nature.
These babies are coming.
But everything I see and hear, aside from pain, is so slow. So full. Gravity works on my body but my mind floats. Mouths move, words come out of people with eyes on mine, machines are deployed, measurements are charted.
None of it makes sense.
Andrew speaks for me, with me, translating.
“Transverse,” I hear.
Still transverse.
“C-section,” he says, bending down, looking up at me with love and a kind of deep, aching empathy that makes my lungs fill with as much of his air as I can.
“Okay,” I reply.
Because it is.
And it will be.
A water bottle with a straw is thrust before me and I sip, grateful. Nurses come and go, then a man bigger than Andrew comes in.
No small feat, that.
He's in scrubs, with the matching green cap on his head, and carries himself with an affable competence that makes me want to be held by him. Tall and broad, he has the body of an athlete, the groundedness of a guy you want to spend time with. Friendly eyes take me in as he thrusts his hand to me, then jerks when he sees Shannon.
“Shannon?”
“Dr. Derjian?”
I'm shaking his strong hand as he turns to her, but he corrects himself, eyes on mine. “Amanda. I'm Alex Derjian. And very shortly, you get to meet your sons.”
“I–”
The contraction steals my breath.
The doctor leaves, Andrew in slo-mo as he moves the water bottle and turns his arms into a vise again, Shannon's body heat to my right. The only awareness I have of anything is concentrated entirely between my hipbones.
It's the center of the universe. Right there.
In me.
“You'll be fine,” Shannon whispers in my ear, rubbing the lacrosse ball as hard as she can, digging it deep into the small of my back as the contraction fades. “The anesthesiologist is on his way before they prep you for surgery.”
“I can't believe this is happening.”
“I know.”
“Amanda? Andrew?” Dr. Derjian walks back in, calm and cool, tall and big and warm and–I hope–a skilled surgeon. “We're ready.” He gives Shannon a direct look, but somehow it's caring, too. “Only one support person can be in the OR.”
“Andrew, of course,” she says, sparing me from having to say it.
He walks over to her, kisses her on the cheek, and says, “Thank you.”
Tears well up in my best friend's eyes. “No. Thank you.” She squeezes his shoulders. “Take care of her.” Looking at the doctor, her eyes narrow, mouth set firm. “And you most of all. I hope you're as good in surgery as you were coaching my husband to catch my baby in an elevator.”
“I'm even better with a scalpel and a plan,” he says with assurance, eyes cutting to Andrew, then me. “It's time.”
“Can you call my Mom?” I call out to Shannon, who waves near the electric doors.
“Pam's on her way. Already texted her. I texted my mom, too.”
“You invited Marie to come?” I gasp, horrified.
“Invited? God, no. I texted her a warning not to come.” Shannon gives me a careful hug. “Next time I see you, you'll have my twin nephews in your arms. You get to meet your children!”
We both burst into tears, a quick hug necessary.
And I’m wheeled away, going through double doors that feel like a birth canal.
Chapter 21
Andrew
For most men, watching your children being born involves staring between your partner's legs.
For me? It means trying very hard not to stare at a screen displaying her organs, spread out before her like an advanced biology lab project.
It's not that I'm squeamish. I actually love science, but that's my wife's large intestine on the other side of that screen. If I'm going to be intimately acquainted with a body part of hers, that's not at the top of my list.
“We're dealing with adhesions,” I hear Dr. Derjian say to someone else in scrubs, then complex language about organs. It's tempting to sit just a little taller on this metal stool and peek over the drape they use as a curtain.
Too tempting.
Declan never had to go through this equivalent of the marshmallow test. He may have delivered his child in a broken elevator, but my two children are being cut out of their mother while I keep her company and try not to look at the string of slimy balloon animals that are her intestines.
Hah. Beat that, bro.
“Adhesions?” I ask.
“Nothing's wrong,” he says smoothly. “Sometimes women have tissue, a little scar tissue, that makes this a little more complicated.” He flashes Amanda and me a confident smile. “I've seen it before. Just means we'll be here for a little longer.”
Amanda made me watch enough videos of c-sections that I understand the basics of what he's doing. Now the placenta needs to be removed. Each baby has a team, and beyond the surgical table I see the babies being lifted up, rubbed with towels, weighed and talked to, thin little cries whinnying out of them.
In duplicate.
“I need to see them again,” she whispers to me, as if wanting that isn't okay.
“Give us five seconds,” Dr. Derjian says, pausing with his hands to give Amanda a compassionate look. “I promise.”
“Remember that article I told you about, the maternal assisted c-section?” Amanda says to me.
“The one where the midwife asked the OB to let the mom pull the baby out herself?” Dr. Derjian asks calmly. He moves with coordinated grace, but I can't bring myself to look over the drape.
“Yes!” Amanda replies.
He pauses. “Are you asking to do that? Because the babies are already on the–”
“HELL, NO!”
He chuckles. “Try not to use your abdominal muscles like that. Message received.”
“At least she got to hold her baby,” Amanda grouses. Her head is obviously connected to the rest of her, but she feels disembodied, detached. Her lower half is cut open and she's chatting away up here as if blood and organs weren't being rearranged like a game of Three-card Monte a few feet away.
“Dad! Want to cut the cords?” someone calls out. I stroke Amanda's hair and smile.
She looks at me, eyes slowly shining as they fill with tears. “Don't you want to?”
“Want to what?”
“Cut the umbilical cords?”
“What? That wasn't me they were asking.”
“Of course it was,” Dr. Derjian says, happy eyes meeting mine over our surgical masks. “They said Dad. That's you.”