TAKE TWO_ Who says you can't ma - Heather M. Orgeron Page 0,86
my hands in the air. “Don’t just sit there. Get in the car, woman. It’s time to meet our son!”
“You’re so cute.” She bites down obnoxiously on her lower lip. “Too bad sex might introduce infection now that the water has busted, because you’re hella sexy right now, husband.”
I walk up behind her, placing my hands under her arms and lifting her from her chair. “Don’t toy with me. Let’s go. Aren’t you supposed to be breathing funny and screaming through contractions or something?”
She shrugs me off, laughing. “I’m going to go change into some dry clothes so I don’t look like I’ve pissed myself, and then we can go. Babies don’t just fall out, you know.”
When we arrive at the hospital, we’re taken to the labor and delivery ward, where the liquid is tested to be sure it isn’t urine.
Do pregnant women make a habit of going around pissing themselves and lying about it so they can have their babies? If so, that’s some savage shit. My wife wouldn’t do that…would she?
“You’re sure you didn’t have a little accident?” I ask, nervous we’re about to be sent home.
“For heaven’s sake, Liam.”
I shrug, trying to play it off like a joke. “Just messin’ with ya, honey.”
It takes nearly an hour for Dr. Bing’s nurse to come back and confirm that indeed Nya’s water has broken, and we are having a baby today.
“Never doubted you for a minute.” I pat the top of my wife’s hand while she rolls her eyes. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Despite the fact that we preadmitted weeks ago, there’s still a bunch of paperwork before Nya finally gets hooked up to monitors and I’m able to track the strength of her contractions. To look at her, you could barely tell anything’s going on at all. It’s a comfort to me to be able to see what’s happening in there.
Nya is not impressed by my play by play commentary on the strength of her contractions, so I sit down and shut up, watching reruns of America’s Next Top Model while my wife dozes fitfully.
“Four centimeters. I’m going to order your epidural.” Janet lowers the sheet to cover my wife and takes off.
I don’t know what that nurse did while she was down there, but she must’ve kick-started something. By the time the anesthesiologist arrives, my wife is in some major pain. Watching her grip those bed rails as she grunts through the contractions, with sweat beading on her forehead, is pure agony, for both of us. As a man, her husband, I have this natural urge to want to protect her, to make this better, and there is literally nothing I can do but stand here and watch while she nearly breaks every bone in my hand with her vice grip. At first, I did my best to distract her, but everything I say only seems to annoy her.
“Would you like to step out while we administer the epidural?”
When I see the size of the needle she’s about to shove into my wife’s spine, the word yes is on the tip of my tongue. I take one glimpse at Nya’s outraged face and swiftly decline the invitation.
“All right, Daddy, you can sit in that chair against the wall over there,” she says as she preps the site.
Janet moves to stand between my wife’s legs. “Nya, I want you to wrap your arms around my neck and bend forward. Arch your back out like a cat. That’s it…”
The woman’s voice fades away, and ice filters through my veins, chilling me to my core. I shut my eyes, praying the room will stop spinning. There’s a ringing sound in my ears that just won’t quit. The smell of latex and alcohol assaults my nostrils. If I pass out, I’ll never live this shit down. I look up to see how my wife’s doing just in time to get another look at that needle. Just as I feel the chair start to fall out from under me, there’s a gush of warm fluid. It soaks my shoes and the bottom of my jeans, splattering all over the floor.
“It’s okay.” Janet tries to ease my wife’s mortification at bathing us in her amniotic fluid with a soothing tone. “Just relax, honey. It’s normal for it to gush out with the contractions.”
There’s one way to snap me out of it. But I don’t dare show how disgusted I am, because my poor wife is beside herself.