Rescue - By Anita Shreve Page 0,33

Fuck. He didn’t want to panic his wife.

“Where’s the attending?” he asked.

“ICU.”

Webster swallowed another fuck.

“The baby’s coming,” Mary said. “You stay up by your wife’s head and hold her shoulders. You’re here as her husband. She needs you more than I do.”

Mary stepped outside the cubicle to hail a nurse named Julie.

Webster held Sheila by her shoulders and told her that he loved her, that everything was going to be fine. The baby was coming, and she could push all she wanted.

“Thank you, God,” his wife whimpered.

Her face scrunched up, and a sweat broke. Within seconds, Sheila’s hair was wet. She’d begun to grunt, and the sound spooked Webster. He’d heard it before, but not from Sheila. He tried to go into EMT mode and make himself calm, but when he felt the grit in Sheila’s muscles and heard her cries, all his training left him. He was both excited and terrified, as if he’d never witnessed a birth before.

“Come on, Sheila,” he said into her ear. “One more big push.”

Sheila bore down with everything she had. Then she lost it, arms flailing. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” she cried, and Webster wondered if it was a sort of prayer.

“Sheila,” Webster said in a firm voice. “Sheila, bear down. A quick one. You got it. You got it. It’ll all be over in a second. Just do it one more time.”

And then Sheila’s body took over and carried her helplessly along.

Webster knew the moment the baby was out. He held his breath during the seconds of silence that followed.

He heard an infant’s cry. He bowed his head, so grateful.

“OK, Daddy,” Mary said. “You want to cut the cord? You got yourself a beautiful baby girl.”

Webster snapped on a pair of gloves, and Mary gave Webster the sterile shears from a tray. He made a clean snip. While Julie dealt with the afterbirth, Mary sterilized the nub. She swaddled the baby and handed the infant to Webster. He nudged the swaddling aside so that he could see all of his daughter’s face.

His daughter.

Her presence flooded him. He brought the infant to her mother, who had her eyes closed.

“Sheila,” Webster said in a low voice. “I’ve got her. I’ve got our baby. She wants to nurse.”

Sheila woke with a start and held out her arms, which Webster saw were trembling. He helped prop her up. He laid the baby on her chest, carefully folding Sheila’s arms around their daughter. He knew that Mary was watching.

“Oh my God, she’s beautiful,” Sheila said, as if surprised, and Webster laughed. Sheila looked like hell and so did the newborn. But he couldn’t hold that thought for long. He was the daddy now. He hovered over both of them.

The baby latched on to a nipple. Sheila looked up at Webster. “Isn’t this where we met?” she asked.

Sheila picked out a Webster family name that she liked: Rowan. Webster cobbled together enough time off to last two weeks. After he returned to his job, he was given Tour 1. The chief called it a restructuring, but Webster suspected he was giving him a break. The day shift allowed him to be home with Sheila and the baby by four thirty in the afternoon.

Each day after work, Webster sprinted up the stairs, nearly desperate to see his little girl, who was rapidly approaching perfection. He found Sheila playing with the baby on a pad on the floor, or dozing on the couch, nipples making wet circles on her shirt while Rowan slept in a crib. Though Webster couldn’t feed his daughter, he changed her and put her to Sheila’s breast as his wife gradually woke. Once the feeding was over, Sheila rose and started dinner while Webster gazed at the baby.

Rowan had hair just like Sheila’s, which Webster thought the best genetic luck. The baby’s eyes were blue, and her limbs were long, a characteristic from either parent. Webster’s mother swore that Rowan looked just like Webster’s grandmother, but when Sheila and Webster examined the picture of a dowdy woman Webster couldn’t remember, neither could find any resemblance. Webster’s parents were christened Nana and Gramps.

Webster’s life upended itself. Sheila and he slept on different schedules, neither of them getting enough and neither of them minding. Webster convinced himself that Sheila and he had produced the most beautiful baby he’d ever seen. His mother took up her knitting needles, and it seemed that every time she came to the apartment, she had knit another item for Rowan: baby clothes and blankets