Heaven and Earth
One.
"Name?" the attending nurse asks briskly.
"Betty Suarez Meade. I've been seeing Doctor Prasad. She shouldn't have left town on her vacation yet." Betty places her hands on her broad belly and says to the baby within, "Perfect timing. Except for the whole middle-of-the-night thing."
"Can Doctor Prasad even get here?" Daniel's as jittery as Betty is calm; it makes her smile to see him bouncing on his heels as they settle her into her hospital bed. "The Tube isn't running any more. It doesn't start up again until, what, five in the morning? You could have the baby before then."
The nurse and Betty exchange knowing looks. Betty quietly points out, "I'm pretty sure she owns a car, Daniel."
"Oh. Right." He smiles, abashed, but then worry creases his forehead again. "If she doesn't, she'll take a taxi, won't she? I'll pay."
"First baby?" the nurse says to Betty.
"How did you guess?"
"You've a while to go yet, and Doctor Prasad is already on her way in. Should be here any moment." The nurse pats Daniel's arm in a motherly fashion. "We'll be in to check on you again in just a few minutes."
Once the nurse is gone, and they're alone, Daniel begins pacing, the very cliché of an expectant father. "Okay. We grabbed the overnight bag. We grabbed the tennis balls – didn't we? I need those for your back."
"The tennis balls are in the overnight bag." Betty feels slightly nauseated and wishes she hadn't eaten chicken vindaloo for dinner. On the other hand, maybe the spicy Indian food is what brought labor on.
"I didn't bring our passports."
"Daniel, I'm giving birth, not flying to Switzerland."
"But what if they want to check our ID?"
"What does it matter who they think we are? They can tell a baby's about to come out of me, and honestly, at this point, that's all I care about."
Her voice must have been sharper than she realized, because Daniel sits in the chair beside her bed and takes her hand. "Sorry I'm such a basket case," he says. "I need to be taking care of you, not freaking out like a 12-year-old on the Haunted Mansion Ride at Disney World."
"It's okay. It is." One of the few irritations in her marriage to Daniel is how needy he can be, but at this point, Betty understand that making Daniel not be needy would require stopping his father from obsessing about Alex, and getting his mother into rehab years earlier – basically, it would require a time machine. Until one is invented, she's willing to take the man she loves on his own terms. "I'm kind of crabby. You know – no sleep, hospital smell, the fact that I'm about to push something the size of a watermelon out a canal as wide as a lemon – " Daniel's face goes almost white, which makes Betty laugh despite herself. Better spirits restored, she adds, "Later on, when we get to the whole – you know, the pushy part, I'll probably be the one freaking out. If you promise to be calm for me then, you can panic all you want now."
"Deal." Daniel holds her hand to his face and kisses her palm.
She thinks about what he said earlier and frowns. "Isn't 12 a little old to be afraid of the Haunted Mansion Ride?"
"Some people think holograms are really creepy, okay?"
This time, she laughs until the next contraction steals her breath.
They get her settled into her private room—Daniel insisted on private insurance for this, and after a while, Betty finds she's grateful they have the space to themselves. It's invasive enough, having doctors and nurses peering and poking at your vajayjay, without dealing with somebody else's labor and delivery a few feet away. And this way Daniel gets to arrange the room just the way she likes it. She smiles as he puts the small stuffed giraffe they bought on the windowsill, waiting for their baby's fist.
Besides, during quieter moments, she gets to be alone with Daniel. These are the last hours they'll have as just Betty and Daniel; soon they'll be a family, and as much as she's looking forward to that, she feels the loss of what used to be.
"Last chance to come up with a boy's name," Daniel says as she crunches on some ice chips. Monitors blink and beep all around her, and straps around her belly wait for another contraction to come. "Time is running out."
"Probably it's a girl. That's why we decided on 'Estella' so easily. We know it down deep."
"We could've known for sure if you would've let Dr. Prasad tell us. Honestly, Betty, we're about the last people in the Western world not to know the sex of our baby. Someday they'll write about us in history books."
She swats at his arm. "I want to be surprised. You'll see. It's going to be fun. Aren't you even a little glad we didn't find out before now?"
"Maybe a little. But I'd be gladder if we knew what we'd call a son."
It's been quite a debate. Daniel has made peace with his memories of his father, but he doesn't want to call a boy "Bradford." Betty would happily name the baby after her dad, but Papi has sworn that if they saddle another innocent infant with "Ignacio," he will sue for primary custody on grounds of parental unfitness. They could both live with Daniel Jr., but DJ beat them to it. So much for naming a boy after anyone. Coming up with original names has shown just how different they are – Daniel is insistent on picking something Latino, for her heritage, whereas Betty doesn't really care as much. Daniel generally prefers longer, more emphatic names; Betty wants something short and to the point.
Once she remembered something Daniel had idly said about liking the name Philip, and she suggested it, only to see his face fall. It turned out that he'd liked it so much he and Molly had decided on that name for a boy, if they ever got lucky enough to have kids. So Philip is out too.
"Maybe I'll name a boy after the first man I see after I give birth," she says. "Besides you, of course."
Daniel laughs. "No way am I ending up with a son named 'Anesthesiologist On Duty Meade.'"
Settling back into her pillows, Betty sighs. "We'll think of something. But like I said, it's probably a girl."
"Wouldn't be the first time you were right." After he kisses her on her forehead, he turns to his iPhone, the better to text family and friends about the impending event. There will be messages for all their friends in London, including Christina, who despite the early hour is likely to show up at the hospital before the baby does; for their families in New York City; and for Alexis and her fiancé Gareth, who are traveling in India for another week yet. Gareth made Betty swear on a case of Glenfiddich that she wouldn't give birth before he returned; she muses that, if she has to pay up, at least the result will be one hell of a party.
As Daniel types with his thumbs, a nurse comes in for a simple check, and Betty notices her eyes flicking from Daniel, to Betty, and back again. No doubt, to the casual observer, they make an odder pair than ever. She isn't exactly looking her best, with frowsy pre-dawn hair, extra baby pounds and a hospital gown that isn't really designed to be flattering. Daniel got dressed in about sixty seconds, in the dark, and yet still managed to grab designer jeans and a body-hugging black T-shirt. Plus, his hair actually looks good rumpled. It's like he was born with a style gene or something. Hopefully the baby will inherit it.
He's sleek; she's frizzy. He's frantic; she's still. Once again, she knows she could never explain to this nurse or anyone else precisely why they're right for each other, but that's okay; she doesn't have to. She just gets to live it. As the nurse walks out, Betty smiles in private satisfaction.
Another contraction clamps around her, only slightly stronger than before. Not bad yet, Betty thinks – and then she feels a weird sinking sensation. Like she'd managed to come down with a terrible case of the flu in five seconds flat.
"Ugh," she says.
"Bad one?" Daniel takes her hand.
"I don't feel so good." Betty takes a deep breath to clear her head – or she tries to. Her lungs won't let her do it. She tries again, gasping hard, but there's even less room for air than before.
Daniel rises to his feet, and his fingers tighten around hers. "Betty? What's wrong?"
When Betty turns to look at him, the room swims, and everything seems too dim and too dark. Grayed out. Her fingers tug at the front of her hospital gown, but it's not choking her. She's being choked from within.
"I can't breathe," she says, and Daniel's eyes go wide.
And that's when the heavy fist inside her clamps down hard, blotting out breath, and light, and the whole world.