It's only been a week. Five days at home, five days of not working, five days of thinking, worrying, planning, napping, eating, and of answering the phone to Dempsey what feels like hourly just so he can check she's okay. She's been trying so hard to be patient with him, she knows he's feeling a little lost at work without her even though he would never admit it, but it's hard enough dealing with her own restlessness without managing his wildly over-protective tendencies too. Of course today would be the one day he hasn't called, the day she can't seem to get hold of him, the day that she's fairly sure she's in labour.
She's calm, remarkably so, especially considering this is happening three weeks before she thought it would, before it was supposed to. Not that there's any such thing as 'supposed to' when it comes to this, she's paid enough attention to the books to know that babies don't work to the prescribed calendar; when they're ready, they're ready, and this one appears to have decided today is the day. Picking up the phone again, she dials his number, sighing when it's not his voice she hears at the end of the line.
"Hi Chas, is he around?" She's sure the answer is no because if he was he'd be picking up his own phone.
"Not sure where he is, Harry, sorry. I think he said he was meeting a snitch and then he mumbled something about lunch. I'll ask him to call you as soon as he gets back." Chas pauses for a second or two. "Is everything okay?"
"Everything's...fine, Chas." She sighs, not seeing any reason to say more and not wanting Chas to send Dempsey into a panic if he did happen to walk back into the office in the next few minutes. "If you could ask him to call me when he does turn up, that would be great though, thanks."
She walks around the bedroom, picks up her bag to check one more time that everything she needs is packed, and then another contraction hits her and she has to sit down. This one is longer and a hell of a lot more painful than the others, and she looks at the time, realising she's been trying to walk the pain off for more than half an hour. She realises too that she has no idea where her husband is, and that she's clearly in labour and he's completely oblivious. Perfect. Just...perfect.
Once again she gets up and walks around the room, reaching for her bag and deciding that it probably makes a lot more sense for her to be downstairs while she can still make it that far. Tea, she'll make tea. It's a thought that makes her smile because she knows tea won't deliver this baby, or locate its missing father, but it can't hurt. In the kitchen another contraction hits, another one that's so hard and lasts for so long that she finds herself having to clutch the kitchen counter and bite her lip until it passes. When it does pass, she checks the time; eight minutes since the last one...okay, this is fine, she'll have some tea, this is fine.
She's standing drinking her tea (because sitting seems pointless when in another few minutes walking around is going to be the only thing that offers the tiniest bit of relief) when she hears the slam of the front door and almost drops her mug. Only one other person has a key to the house and when he strolls into the room with a wide smile on his face she almost cries with sheer relief.
"Oh my God, where have you been?" She throws her arms around him and she feels his surprise in the way he takes a second before his hands move to her back. "I kept calling you but Chas said nobody knew where you were, but that he thought you'd gone for lunch, which I thought was just great. You've taken yourself off for a nice long lunch somewhere while I'm here, in labour, and can't get hold of you. The first day you haven't been calling incessantly to check I'm okay is the day I'm absolutely not okay, I didn't know what-"
"Wait, Harry, what? You're…" He pulls back and looks at her, his eyes wide with fear, verging on terror, really, and it almost makes her laugh out loud. "But it's too early, we still have three weeks to go!"
"You know, I've tried numerous times over the last hour to tell the baby that very same thing, but it really doesn't appear to be working." She spots the bag in his hands and it reminds her that she's hungry, that perhaps she should eat something now before she's in too much pain to care. "Did you come home to bring me some lunch?"
"Yeah, I thought…" He runs his hand through his hair, the panic in his eyes no less diluted than it was when he walked in. "Holy shit, Harry, we need to go, you can't have this baby in the kitchen, I can't deliver a baby, oh my God, we-"
"What you need to do is calm down. I'm fine...well, every eight minutes or so I'm not quite fine, but mostly I'm fine, and it's too soon to go anywhere quite yet." She takes his hand and points at the bag he's still holding. "And I'm hungry, so what we're going to do is eat whatever you brought for lunch, and while we do that you're going to try to relax enough that you're still capable of driving us to the hospital when we do need to go. Okay?"
"How are you so calm?" He looks so completely bewildered that she can't help laughing.
"I'm tired, I'm the size of a hippo, and I know we're a couple of weeks ahead of schedule here but I am more than ready to have this baby. That's how I'm so calm." She takes the bag out of his hand and smiles. "Now, there had better be doughnuts in here."
There are doughnuts, and really good sandwiches, and she manages to eat both even if she does have to stop several times to breathe through a couple of contractions that hit her so hard that she has to grip his hand like her life depends on it. They finish drinking their tea and she looks at the clock, feeling her composure begin to waver slightly as she realises that she's reached the point where all the books would say it's time to head to the hospital.
"How are you feeling?" She recognises the irony in her being the one to ask Dempsey how he's doing, but he needs to drive and she needs to know he's going to get them to the hospital in one piece.
"We need to go, right?" The smile he gives her is a nervous one but he's calmer than he was and he's ready, she can tell.
"Yes, we need to go." She leans forward and rests her hand on his face, smiling at him. "Now, there's a good chance I'm probably going to yell at you a bit over the next few hours, and there may be more swearing than you've heard come out of my mouth before, and if I break any of your fingers I apologise in advance. So I need you to know that I love you, no matter what, okay?"
"Honey, you're about to get a small human from inside your body out into the world, all those things are totally forgiven already." He leans across the table and kisses her gently. "I love you too. Let's go."
In the grand scheme of things, as labour goes, it's not actually very long at all, but it's almost six hours that feel like a week, six hours of pain, of walking around the room, up and down the hallway. It's six hours during which the pain and frustration brings tears to her eyes, and her impatience almost defeats her. She realises she hadn't considered the time at all, the only thing her mind had focused on was how hard it would be, not how long it would take, and there's nothing on earth that she can do to speed it up.
Eventually the nurse puts a stop to the walking and she finds herself on the bed, apparently ready for the hardest part, but the part with the sweetest reward at the end. She's aware of a certain level of chaos, of pain, of the helplessness written all over Dempsey's face, and of being told to push, over and over.
"What can I do, honey?" He's right beside her, pushing her hair out of her eyes, looking like he would do anything to make this easier. God, she wishes he could.
"You can remind me of this if I ever suggest we have more children." She bites her lip as the nurse tells her to push yet again. "I don't think the books properly warned me how much this was going to hurt. Oh God, Dempsey, what if I just can't do it?"
"Hey, you can do it, Harry, you can do anything," He squeezes her hand as she pushes again, closing her eyes and hoping that's the final one, even though she knows it's not.
"No, I can't. I can't do it. Why won't you listen? You keep saying I can, but I can't." She's tearful, sweaty and vaguely aware of being soothed by a nurse who tells her she's going to need to push again. "I can't push anymore, I just can't. The baby's going to have to just stay in there, I can't do it, I'm so tired."
"Harry, you're almost there." She looks at Dempsey as he strokes her forehead, smiling at her. "I know you're ready to have this baby, and I know you can do this, honey."
"I am ready to have this baby, I'm so ready." She pauses, grimacing as the nurse once again tells her to push, before sighing and doing as she's told, gripping onto Dempsey's hand so hard that she fears somewhat for his fingers. "Okay, I can do this. I can."
"You got this, princess." He kisses her hand and she takes a deep breath. "You're almost there."
Something inside her brain kicks into gear about five minutes later, it's either the realisation that there's no way out of this, or a sudden reawakening of her intense desperation to meet her baby. Nobody in the room seems quite sure which it is, but there's a collective sigh of relief and her newfound determination results in her obeying the nurse's "one final push, Harriet, and you're there" instruction, without protest. The last push is accompanied by something which is part scream, part profanity, and then there's silence, broken a few seconds later by the startled wail of the newest person in the room.
"You have a beautiful little girl." There's a big smile on the nurse's face as she moves to clean her up slightly.
"Is she okay?" She pushes a sweaty lock of hair out of her face and squeezes Dempsey's hand a little tighter.
"Oh, she's very much okay." The nurse answers, still smiling. "She's little but she's absolutely perfect."
"We have a baby." She stares at Dempsey, eyes wide, awe in her voice.
"We do." He leans down and kisses her softly. "You were amazing, Harry, just… amazing."
"Yeah, you're right." She grins wearily, nodding at him. "I was."
"How do you feel?" He smiles at her and squeezes her hand.
"A little bit like I've been hit by a bus." She sits up slightly and winces, slightly dazed at the thought that when she woke up this morning she thought she had a few more weeks at home wondering what to do with herself and now here she is with a baby. "Did I break any of your fingers?"
"Nope, all still intact." He lifts his hand and wiggles his fingers in front of his face, smiling.
"Well, here we go, here's your little one. Six pounds and two ounces, all fingers and toes accounted for." The nurse hands the baby to her, and as she looks down at her she scrunches up her tiny nose and her finger latches onto hers. "Congratulations."
"Oh." Looking down at her, her eyes fill with fresh tears as she strokes a finger gently down the side of the baby's face. "Hello, little one…"
"She's...God, she's perfect." She watches as Dempsey looks at their daughter with total wonder in his eyes and she has to wipe her tears away again. "She has your eyes, Harry."
"She has your mouth." She runs a finger softly across the baby's bottom lip, smiling. "Your hair too, and lots of it."
"So, does she have a name or are we marking her down as Baby Dempsey for now?" The nurse smiles as she asks, looking at the baby and then back at her.
"No, she has a name." She smiles back at her before once again turning her attention back to her baby, running a finger softly down her cheek, unable to stop touching her, struggling to believe she's here, she's real.
"Grace Louisa Dempsey." Dempsey answers and strokes a finger across the baby's tiny hand. She has to swallow a huge lump in her throat, Dempsey's suggestion of her mother's name as a middle name for their daughter still making her emotional even though they'd agreed on it days ago.
"Lovely." The nurse smiles and starts to write on the chart in her hand. "I think it suits her perfectly."
"Come on, little Grace." She shifts slightly and carefully passes the baby to a nervous looking Dempsey, wiping away yet more tears as her daughter settles against her father's chest, looking impossibly tiny in his arms as she makes small snuffling noises. "Say hello to your daddy."