"Jack, I've been thinking. I'm not so sure this is a good idea."
Jack looked up from the hospital recliner he had been about to doze off in and stared uncomprehendingly at his friend. "What are you talking about?"
"This. Having a baby. Me, having a baby. I think that completing this little transaction will turn out to be a cosmic mistake with far-reaching consequences for all concerned. So I think I'll just stay pregnant instead."
Jack let out a soft chuckle, which he quickly masked with a suspiciously convenient cough.
Jen's eyes flashed at him. "Are you laughing at me?"
"No! What? No!"
"Because it's not funny. The fact that I am about to give birth to an actual human being who will depend solely upon me for survival is not a funny concept, Jack. It's terrifying."
"I know it's not funny. Look, Jen, you're just getting cold feet. I'm sure it's normal when you're about to become a mother."
"Cold feet are normal when you're getting married. I'm not getting married. In fact, I can't forsee any conceivable turn of events in the near or distant future that would possibly result in my getting married." She paused and frowned at him. "Why in the hell are we talking about marriage?"
"Calm down, you're babbling."
"I'm in labor. I'm entitled to babble."
Jack nodded agreeably. He watched her for a few moments in silence, her blonde hair tousled, her lips pressed tightly together, her face adopting that set, pensive expression he knew too well. He wanted to say something comforting but couldn't think of anything that hadn't been said already. Or anything that didn't have the potential to make her mad. He'd learned hours before that a woman in labor can take even the most innocuous statement as a vile attack on her and everything she holds dear. The epidural (thank God for the epidural!) had eased her contractions along with her temperament, but he was still handling her as cautiously as he would a snake that might or might not be poisonous.
He glanced swiftly at the clock above Jen's head. It was nearing two in the morning. They'd been here since about seven, when Jen's water had broken over a shared dinner of pepperoni pizza and a terrible horror movie on TV. Jack spared a moment to wonder if those kids had made it out of the house without a run-in with the masked machete man, and then rejected the idea of asking Jen for input on that subject.
On his last check-in, the doctor had told them there was still a long road ahead, and that they should try to get some rest while they could. The waiting was growing tiresome—not that he would dare voice anything of the kind to her, not in a million years. But he was nervous for her, as nervous as she seemed to be for herself and her baby.
Earlier, when examining Jen's chart, the nurse had frowned and asked Jen when she had taken her last dose of some drug Jack couldn't recall the name of. Jen had glanced over at Jack before answering, and there was something in the look, slight as it had been, that made him take note of an exchange he might otherwise have overlooked. When the nurse left, he asked about it, and Jen had mumbled something about vitamins. And then she had launched into some totally unrelated topic. A fairly smooth transition, perhaps, but the whole scenario stuck under Jack's skin like a small, irritating splinter.
"Don't you think we should call Grams and your mom?" Jack asked for the fiftieth time that night.
"No," Jen said, also for the fiftieth time. "We'll call them when it's necessary. Right now there's nothing they could do but sit around and wait with us."
"Are you and Grams okay?"
"What? Yeah, why?"
"I don't know, you've been acting strange when her name comes up lately."
Jen sighed. "She just … She worries too much. And I don't need that right now, okay? The only person I do need right now is already here, so let's stop trying to bring in other people to crash our party."
Jack frowned. "I've never known Grams to be much of a worrier. Unless there's valid cause for it."
"Oh my God, McPhee, will you drop it?" Jen managed a laugh, but it carried a dangerous edge that was not lost on Jack. "Suspicion isn't flattering on you."
He swallowed and reached out to hold her hand. "I'm sorry, you're right. I just don't want her to miss the birth of her great-grandchild. I know she'd want to be here."
"Later," Jen said, relaxing visibly as Jack backed down.
Jen shifted uncomfortably as the pressure of another contraction—a blessedly muted one, thanks to the nifty little tube that had taken up residence in her back—squeezed at her middle. She glanced through the dimness toward Jack, dozing awkwardly in the vinyl hospital-issue reclining chair next to her bed, a dark silhouette against a bank of windows overlooking the city.
A ghost of a smile touched her lips. He looked so young, so vulnerable, with his lips parted slightly in sleep and his dark hair rumpled from hours worth of running restless fingers through it the way he did when he was nervous or distracted. She had a sudden, irresistible urge to touch him. Reaching between the guard rails of the bed, she gently grasped his index finger with her hand. He didn't open his eyes.
She felt guilty but resolute about the things she was keeping from him. Guilty because she knew that he could sense something and that it worried him, but resolute because sharing the truth would have done nothing but burden him with the more concrete worry she and Grams and even her mom harbored every day. Jen's "condition," as it had come to be enigmatically referred to (at least when she failed at her tenacious attempts to avoid the topic altogether), had been, over the months of her pregnancy, like the unyielding blossom of a poisonous vine. Blooming and fading, blooming and fading at increasingly regular intervals, one day it bloomed too brilliantly to be ignored any longer. Her stay at this very hospital as they monitored and tested and diagnosed her was recent enough and terrifying enough to haunt her now, even under the vastly differing circumstances of this visit.
But there was no longer any need to worry, regardless of Grams' perpetual insistence (nagging) that she wasn't taking proper care of herself, that she was doing too much, putting too much strain on her already weakened and stressed body. There was no need to worry. The medication was working, a veritable wonder drug, and her doctor's proclamation of "You're young, you're otherwise healthy—the odds are very much in your favor" still held some power to quiet the nagging voice in her head that whispered darker truths.
And now was not the time to dwell on possibilities. She felt the pressure of another contraction and closed her eyes, pressing her hands firmly against the swell of taut flesh until it finally passed. Now was a time to look ahead to the future, a future that would be full and fulfilled by the child currently making her slow but determined way into the world. Despite all the fears, the ever-present insecurities about her ability to be someone's mother, Jen felt stirrings of true happiness at the anticipation of this life change. And there was no one better to share it with than the person sleeping next to her, the man who had filled a void in her heart long ago and taught her in his gentle way what friendship—no, what family—was about.
"This baby is going to worship you," she whispered so softly that the words were almost lost in the undercurrent of ambiant noise around them. "You'll be everything to her that you are to me, and more." Inexplicably, stinging tears flooded her eyes, and her whisper faltered on the next words. "She'll love you as much as I do."
In his sleep, Jack shifted slightly, his hand unconsciously twisting free from her grasp on his finger and maneuvering to take her whole hand into its warmth. They remained like that for a long time, the two old friends, holding hands between the bars of the bed.
Jack practically jumped up from his chair when the nurse came in to do another check.
"What's wrong?" he demanded groggily, looking from Jen to the nurse with an expression close to panic clouding his features.
Jen smiled. "Not a thing, champ. Peggy's just checking to see if I'm going to give birth this year." She glanced at the tall, pleasant-faced woman at the foot of the bed. "So, what's the prognosis?"
Peggy shook her head and offered Jen a sympathetic look. "You're still at three," she said. "And the baby's head is still really high. There's been no progress the last few hours."
"Damn," Jen muttered.
"Jennifer, I'm going to track down Dr. Hudson and give him an update. I'll be back to let you know what he says, all right? Are you still comfortable?"
Jen rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah, never been better." When Peggy had gone, she turned toward Jack. "This sucks," she said quietly. "Do you think something's wrong?"
"No, of course not," he said, trying to sound more certain than he felt. "Can't labor take days for some women?"
Jen managed a smile at his pitiful attempt to be helpful. "Not this day and age," she said. "Now they just pump you full of Pitocin, suck the baby out, and call it a day. Or they just go in through the middle." She winced. "Which is beginning to sound like a viable alternative to all the waiting and worrying."
"Will you let me call Grams now?" Jack asked, without much hope this time. "She was a nurse, she'll be able to ease your mind at the very least."
Surprisingly, Jen paused to think about the offer. Then she shook her head. "No, let's wait and see what Hudson says."
An hour later, they had their answer. Hudson recommended a cesarean section as soon as possible. They had been monitoring the baby and discovered that with every contraction Jen had, there was a significant dip in the baby's heart rate. That, combined with the lack of progress the last few hours, and the decision was made. As they waited still longer for an operating room to be prepped, Jen reached over to Jack, whose eyes looked dark in his strained, pale face.
"Okay, call her," she said in a falsely unconcerned voice. In the pit of her stomach, a small knot of fear was growing. She tried to block the thoughts that came unbidden, the question of what kind of effect this surgical procedure might have on her "condition," but she wondered just the same. And if anything happened, she wanted Grams and Jack both nearby.
