Chapter 37

Past

By the time the traffic was clear and we made it home, hours had passed. Hours that had not been kind to my state of mind as worry ate away at my brain, nor to Phoebe, labouring at home alone. Bobby had done his level best to assure me that a woman's first birth often took a long time, labour could last days before her water even broke indicating that it was time to go to the hospital, but the second I entered the kitchen I knew that this was not going to be the case for my wife. She was hunched over the counter, head hung low as she swayed back and forth, moaning loudly. As I approached, intending to attempt some kind of soothing gesture despite my doubts that anything I did could help at this point, her voice rose into a primal scream and suddenly there was a puddle of water forming around her feet.

"Just in the nick of time," Bobby observed, having followed me inside. "We should get her to the hospital."

"She isn't leaving until she's submitted this fucking assignment!" Phoebe bit out, breathing heavily as she straightened a little from her position, holding her stomach in one hand as the other started tapping keys on the laptop in front of her. "I just need to- nnngggg," she paused to let out another briefer moan, panting for a bit before trying again. "I just need to put the reference list in and –"

That's as far as she got before another contraction consumed her. It was clear that the baby was on the way, eager to enter the world regardless of her mother's determination to get one last assignment in before she would surrender fully to motherhood. I exchanged a glance with Bobby, noting the grim set of his expression, we didn't have the luxury of time he'd suggested was normal, which meant we needed to take action now.

"I'll grab her hospital bag and anything else we need and pack it in the car, you help her finish the assignment," I instructed. It felt like a cop out to abandon him with the woman who was a bit of a bitch at the best of times, but he was more useful if something went wrong, and it was easier for me to retrieve the items we needed rather than describe their locations to him. Divide and conquer, play to your strengths, and all that jazz. To make up for my slight guilt in the matter, I did the task as fast as possible, loading the hospital go-bag and double checking that the baby carrier car seat combo was properly installed in the back of the SUV. With that all squared away, I returned to the kitchen to find Bobby and Phoebe locked in an argument.

"Your contractions are barely two minutes apart," Bobby was imploring. "Your waters have already broken. If we don't get you on the road to the hospital now you could very well be having the baby here."

"I need that assignment submitted!" Phoebe countered. "If I put it off I'll forget about it in the baby fog and then my perfect record will be ruined!"

"I think your health and the health of the baby is a little more important than the fact that you've never handed in an assignment late," Bobby pointed out. It was a good point, but I couldn't stop myself from hissing in a breath. Bobby didn't have the multitudes of experience I had. He wasn't as well trained in the art of diffusing Phoebe's unrealistic ideas and coaxing her to do the logical, safer thing. Luckily for him, another contraction seized her and she had to devote all her attention to breathing and moaning and massaging her sides. There was no room left for yelling at him.

"What's left of the assignment?" I asked my friend, stepping up beside my wife and automatically starting to rub my hand up and down her back.

"She says she can't submit it until it's been proofread," Bobby explained.

I shrugged. "So proofread it," I told him.

He shook his head and pointedly scrolled through the document to show me how long it was. I agreed that it wasn't short, but I wasn't actually asking him to read it.

"You're a fast reader," I reminded him, raising an eyebrow. With a glance at Phoebe to make sure she was still distracted, I mimed the rest of my message, holding up one finger and then making a clawed hand and squeezing it. 'One more contraction,' I mouthed. Chances were, she was in such a state with the pain and pressure that she had no concept of how much time was passing. If Bobby could pretend to read through the assignment for one more contraction after this one, we could probably convince her to submit it and go to the hospital.

"Right," Bobby agreed, nodding conspiratorially. "I'll get started."

The plan worked, and in the space of about fifteen minutes we'd managed to get the assignment sent off to her professor, Phoebe loaded into the car and were on the road to the hospital where it should hopefully be smooth sailing from there on out. And it might have been if we'd gotten to Phoebe sooner and managed to convince her to abandon the assignment, because by the time Bobby was pulling into emergency room drive, Phoebe had been screaming that she needed to push for the last third of the drive and the second I got her out of the car, she let out a blood curdling shout, latching her clawed fingers onto my arm.

"I NEED TO PUSH NOWWW!"

That, at least, got the attention of the nurses inside and in no time at all she was guided into a wheelchair and swept away to a birthing suite, Bobby and I jogging along behind.

*o*

The instant the tiny, squalling, pink-wrapped infant was in my arms, the rest of the world fell away. I felt calm for the first time since Phoebe had called to tell me she was in labour more than six hours ago. All of the stress, the worry, the screaming and cursing were suddenly worth it, because it meant I got to meet this precious little angel. I stroked the back of a finger along her chubby cheek and murmured a few reverent words to welcome her to the world and introduce myself as her Daddy.

"She's beautiful," I whispered, meeting Phoebe's tired gaze as I crossed the short distance to her bedside. "Got her mommy's lungs, though, that's not gonna work out in our favours."

Phoebe let out a short laugh, opening her arms to accept the baby girl. "She's been taking lessons from us already," she said softly readjusting her nightgown to reveal a swollen breast as I lowered the baby into her grasps and coaxing her to latch on and feed. "She probably thinks this is the volumed you need to use to be heard."

I decided not to reply to that, worried that we'd get into our very first example of bad behaviour in front of our child before she was even an hour old. Instead, I paced around to the other side of the bed where I could perch myself beside Phoebe on the mattress and still keep a clear view of our daughter suckling away peacefully. We were quiet for a long time, just watching. Enthralled. I could almost pretend that we were a normal couple, both overjoyed by the arrival of our little bundle, prepared to meet every obstacle parenthood had to throw at us, together. The reality wasn't all that far off, after all. We were both privately happy. And we'd agreed that for her to have as normal life as possible we would try to make the co-parenting thing work. But none of the emotions and determination we were both feeling were shared. There was my joy and Phoebe's joy, but there wasn't our joy.

Sometime later, the baby was done feeding and had fallen asleep in her arms. We'd watched her a while longer before Phoebe had passed her back to me to return to the basinet beside the bed. I'd just set her down, careful not to jostle and wake her when Phoebe broke the silence that had been blanketing the hospital room.

"Thank you, Lester," she murmured quietly. When I looked up from the baby her eyes were trained on the sheet covering her legs as her fingers slowly twisting it into knots.

"Thank me?" I questioned, utterly at a loss as to what I'd done to deserve thanks. It wasn't me who pushed a baby out from my nether regions. If anyone deserved thanks or congratulations or anything of that ilk, it was Phoebe. I never thought I'd have the chance to be a father. This baby was a gift. "Why me?"

She shrugged, still avoiding eye contact. "I've wanted a baby for as long as I can remember," she explained, her voice a lot smaller than I'd heard it in a long time. Something about holding her child in her arms must have wriggled something loose in her heart the same way it had for me. "I know the way I went about it was selfish and deceitful, but I'm grateful for the gift of our daughter." Finally, her eyes lifted to me, just briefly, long enough to gauge my reaction and return to the sheet.

"Me too," I admitted on a heavy sigh, settling back onto the edge of the bed beside her. "I don't condone your actions, and I will always harbour an unhealthy level of spite for your ex for rejecting my little girl, but I can't help but be thankful for it all the same, because if he hadn't, I probably never would have had the chance to meet her."

She sniffed wetly, and when I glanced over I noticed the moisture leaking from her eyes. Another sigh left me as I dragged her to my chest in a one-armed hug, and the dam holding back her tears broke. I just held her, rubbing her shoulder soothingly. I couldn't blame her for being emotional after the ordeal she'd just been through. Everything in her life for the last nine months had been building up to this day. Longer, even.

I passed the time while Phoebe sobbed into my shoulder watching my daughter sleep and thinking about what the next eighteen years or so would hold in store for her. Would Phoebe and I find a happy zone from which to operate so she didn't grow up with us arguing at every turn? Would she inherit her temper? Would she be a troublemaker? The image of me standing in the hall, holding two halves of a vase and yelling her name flashed up in my mind. And I realised that we still hadn't picked a name for her. The thought of a human existing without a name was jarring enough to spur me into conversation once more as Phoebe's tears began to slow.

"I have some name ideas to contribute for consideration if you'd like to hear them," I said quietly.

She lifted her head, pushed back the mess of hair that had fallen in her face and gave me a deadpan expression. "No," she said sarcastically. "I blew up at you last night for not contributing because I don't want to hear your ideas." And she's back.

Her words sent a wave of utter exhaustion over me. "God, was that really only yesterday?" I asked, leaning my head back against the pillow wall Phoebe had constructed.

"It feels like a lifetime ago," she sighed in agreement, mirroring my position.

"It kinda was," I reminded her as I dug my phone out of the pocket of my black cargos. "We've added a life to the world since then, and, oh-" I held up the device when I caught sight of the time displayed on the screen. "It was technically two days ago. That makes me feel a little better about how tired I am when you did all the work." I pulled up the note where I'd been keeping a list of names that seemed feasible to me and I passed it to her without ceremony. "Here's my list."

It took a moment for her eyes to focus on the screen but when they finally did, they roved over the list quickly a frown forming the further down she scrolled. It would be just my luck if she thought they were all terrible. "There's not as many Spanish names as I expected," she eventually said, looking back over at me.

I nodded. I could understand her confusion. "At first I was a bit stumped," I admitted. "I was trying to stick within the cultural bounds of my family, like my cousins have, but you've seen the size of the Manoso brood, they stole all the good names before I even had a chance. But then I remembered: my name is Lester which is very much not of Cuban or Spanish origins. So I expanded my parameters."

"Search parameters?" she deadpanned. "You make it sound like naming her is some sort of security operation or research assignment."

"It kinda was," I repeated with a shrug. "Names are important. They can make or break a person. Trust me, I grew up with the name Lester. I know these things."

She smiled a little. "I suppose you're right." Her eyes returned to the list, going over it again. The frown returned, and I was starting to wonder what was so wrong with my suggestions that she would hate them so much when she asked, "Why is my name on the list?"

"Oh," I said, slightly relieved that she wasn't just tearing it apart. Maybe this list meant more to me than I thought it did. "That was just because I was looking at meanings and was curious what yours meant. I jotted it down in case it sparked something."

Phoebe lifted the phone a little higher to make a point that she was reading from the screen. "Bright, pure," she uttered in the kind of stiff tone you'd expect from a teacher reading from a history textbook that had failed to get all the details correct.

I couldn't help the snort that escaped my throat. "Well, one of them is accurate at least," I conceded. Though I wasn't sure whether I was taking bright to mean smart, or if I was just likening her personality to a fire blazing out of control.

Her head swung around to face me again. "Lester," she said in an awed tone. "I don't know whether to be flattered you think I'm bright or offended you don't think I'm pure!"

I gave her a look. "The fact that you knew exactly which one I was hinting at being wrong tells me you don't have much of a leg to stand on if your try to refute my claims," I said, not realising what I was doing until the words had already spilled from my lips. I was pretty sure I'd managed to say it without any scorn, but Phoebe was still in a delicate place hormonally and emotionally. The last thing either of us needed right now was for me to set her off. Probably, if they thought I was upsetting her too much, the nurses would ask me to leave.

To my relief, though, she let out a laugh. "Yeah, okay. I'll wear that one," she sighed. "What does your name mean?"

"A person from Leicester," I pronounced regally when she glanced over.

Now it was her turn to snort. "Not very helpful," she said.

"No," I agreed.

A minute or so passed while she scrolled up and down through the list, pausing here and there to read them out loud, testing them on her lips. They were the ones I was less keen on but thought could work in conjunction with something else, like as a middle name, so I hoped that her tests were because she had similar feelings about them and not because she liked those ones in particular. When she was done, she handed me back the phone. "These are good names. I like a lot of them," she said, pausing for a yawn. "So how do we do this?"

There were so many things she could have been referring to with that question. So many things were floating undecided when it came to the little girl sleeping nearby, but I decided to ignore them just for now and narrow my focus to the issue at hand: naming the baby. "How about we both choose a name from our lists and see if they sound okay together?"

She seemed to weigh my suggestion for a moment, smothering a yawn. "Sounds reasonable," she agreed. "Can you pass me my notebook from my bag?"

I did, and then settled into the chair between the bed and the basinet to contemplate my own list. I'm not entirely sure how much time passed, my attention kept drifting to the sweet angelic face of my daughter as I tried to picture myself calling her by the names I'd written down, discarding the ones that just didn't gel.

"Okay," Phoebe yawned again. The day's events must have been catching up to her by now. If I was honest I was surprised she'd lasted this long. "I've chosen. Are you ready?"

I gave her a nod. "Shoot."

"Elizabeth," she said slowly, watching me carefully.

I tested the name the same way I had the others on my list, repeating it in my head while I gazed the button nose and ridiculously adorable cheeks. "What does it mean again?" I asked.

"Uhhh." She consulted her book. "Bittersweet gift from god."

"Appropriate," I nodded. Definitely not what I would have chosen from her list, but we'd agreed to the terms, so I had to accept her choice, at least until we tried it with mine and figured out if they flowed well together.

"What did you choose?" she prompted, another yawn escaping her. Probably she wanted the name settled before she'd let herself sleep. I'd already witnessed exactly how determined she was when she set her mind to something, so I didn't delay in my response. She needed sleep so that she had the best chance of being a reasonable human being in the future. I had a feeling that making sure she had adequate sleep was going to be my best defence over the coming months and years.

"McKenzie," I stated firmly.

"Meaning?"

"I came across a few different ones in my research," I told her, lifting the device so I could see them easier. "The ones that seem most relevant to our daughter are 'treasure,' 'child of the bright-one,'" I looked up to make sure she caught the connection to earlier in our conversation before continuing. "Born of fire." That was also a reference to earlier, but not one that had been mentioned out loud, so I kept my eyes on my phone. "And 'fair, pure, and beautiful'," I concluded.

A wet sniff reached my ears and I tried not to cringe at the realisation that despite the fact that she was no longer pregnant, her hormones would still be out of whack for a while, so weathering her mood swings was still my life for the time being. "That's really beautiful," she said, making great attempts to swallow back her tears as she met my gaze. After a long moment her attention travelled over to the basinet. "McKenzie Elizabeth Santos," she whispered in awe.

My eyebrows shot clear to my hairline, surprised at her choice of sequencing. "Why not Elizabeth McKenzie Santos?" I asked. Don't get me wrong, I was thrilled that she'd allowed my choice to take the first slot, but I needed to understand her reasoning in case she was planning on using it as a bargaining chip. I didn't think she was capable of such scheming in her current state of exhaustion, but the trust issues I had toward her wouldn't let me accept the win at face value.

Phoebe just screwed up her nose. "It doesn't flow right," she pointed out. "McKenzie Elizabeth has a better ring to it, don't you think?"

"McKenzie Elizabeth Santos it is," I confirmed. McKenzie made a snuffling noise from the basinet which I took to be her approval of her new name, and I smiled until the expression was stolen away by my own yawn. "You should get some sleep before she's awake and screaming for food," I suggested, standing from my chair and stretching. "I'm gonna go send Bobby home, he's been hanging in the waiting room since we got here."