Chapter 12 – Everything Changes.
Nine months later.
"Phil! The contractions are getting closer! I'm getting one every minute!" Steffi called from the bedroom, breathing heavily. She appeared in the doorway, her stomach swollen from pregnancy.
"Okay baby, just calm down!" Phil said, as he rushed into their living room with a bag. "So, we've got your pyjamas, your toothbrush and toothpaste, hairbrush, shampoo and conditioner, shower gel, make up… anything else you can think of?" Steffi shook her head and moaned as her contractions began again.
"Just get me to the damn hospital!" She began to breathe as her pre-natal nurse had advised, and grimaced as the contraction hit. Phil ran up to her and kissed her on the cheek lovingly, putting a hand on her bump.
"I love you, my precious girl! And my new little one too…"
"That's very sweet, and we love you too. Now get me to the damn hospital so I can get some kind of anaesthetic!" Steffi said in warning tones, her patience thinning.
"Okay Cammy, I get it." Phil ran out the front door and pressed the elevator button, coming back for her overnight bag. "Come on, the elevator will be here any second now!" Steffi waddled out of the apartment and into the open elevator. There was a shrill scream as the doors closed, signalling another contraction.
At half past six the next morning, Steffi gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Bundled in blankets, she cradled her new baby and cherished the moment alone with it.
"Hey there, little one! I'm your mommy, and you can call me Mommy. My real name is Stephanie, but your daddy calls me Carmella because that's my New Yorker name. Your daddy is called Philip, but Mommy calls him Phil. You can call him Daddy, or Dada if you prefer. But now for the real dilemma – what shall we call you, precious?"
"How about Precious? It suits her down to the ground," Phil said as he appeared in the doorway, one hand bandaged and the other holding a huge teddy bear and several balloons. Steffi laughed at him.
"I'm not calling her Precious, it makes her sound like an exotic dancer! Next thing you know, you'll be putting tassels in unmentionable places. Why is your hand bandaged sweetie?"
"From where you squeezed it when you were pushing. I said lightly squeeze, not crack one of my bones! Jesus you must have some kind of supernatural strength or something…" Steffi smiled nervously.
"No, I'm just a tough cookie. But uh, I was thinking we could call her Alicia… what do you think?"
"Alicia Gregory; I like it." Phil sat on the edge of the bed and kissed the top of Steffi's head. "What about her middle name? Or is she not going to have one?"
"Decisions, decisions," smiled Steffi. "Are there any names in your family you would like to include?"
"Not really… my mom's called Teresa but that's about it. How about you?"
"Phil, you know I never really knew my mother. That's an unfair question to ask."
"I'm sorry honey, really I am. I guess I wasn't thinking… how about Elizabeth?" Steffi wrinkled her nose delicately.
"Then her initials would be A.E.G – isn't that a brand of fridge or something? I always liked Grace… Grace Alicia Gregory."
"Maybe she could have two middle names? Grace Teresa Alicia Gregory, I like that." Grace gurgled happily, and the proud parents looked down upon their first born.
"I think she does too," Steffi said gently, and Phil dipped his head to kiss her. She moved her head so he could only kiss her cheek, and for a moment he looked dejected.
"I love you," he said, almost hopefully. Perhaps now she would say 'I love you too', instead of her usual response. He was disappointed when she said, as usual,
"You too, honey. You too." He got off the bed and decided to leave his wife with their daughter.
Once he was outside, he sat on one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs and sighed heavily. When had their marriage become like this? Perhaps it was because she'd become pregnant so early on, but she always seemed so distant. Sometimes he would watch her staring into space, and it frightened him that she could be so near and yet so far away from him at the same time. He knew who she was thinking of, but he chose not to bring it up; it would only cause another argument like the one they had had on the second day of their honeymoon when he dared to suggest that maybe she still had feelings for Cole. She'd stormed out of the hotel and hadn't come back until the early hours of the morning, and he spent the next day apologising to her profusely until she'd softened. He heard her now, at night when he'd watch her sleeping, muttering Cole's name with a small smile upon her perfect lips. But he said nothing, knowing that with her volatile temper and tendency to have dramatic, and often unprecedented, mood swings their marriage could be over within the year. He loved her so dearly, and yet she was always thinking of Cole and what he was doing. But if he tried to help her include him in their lives, they would have yet another argument. When he'd asked her to invite Cole to their New Year's Eve party, they'd spent almost three whole hours screaming at each other, only stopping when Cammy had rushed to the toilet to be violently sick. That was the day they had discovered she was three months pregnant. But on New Year's Eve, she'd told him she loved him, and if memory served him correctly that was the last time she had said it to that day. She spent so much time in his head that she wouldn't have been able to fathom it, and yet her mind was full of regret that she'd gone with Phil, and not Cole. Phil sighed again as he thought of all the times he had been told off for letting his mind wander to her, just wondering what she was doing at that moment or even just whether she was thinking of him. But he was sure she was not. She would be absent mindedly folding the laundry and thinking what life would've been like for her if she'd left with Cole that day. He knew it, she knew it; they both knew the other knew it. Yet they would never discuss it.
Cammy was the perfect wife; beautiful, charming, polite, and she carried her pregnancy well. She was the belle of his precinct, and he would often 'forget' his lunches that she would so carefully prepare, just so she would visit him at the station. He loved seeing his colleagues' faces as she would come in, knowing everyone was staring and not really seeming to care, kissing him on the cheek and putting his lunch on the desk. Everyone would stare, especially when she would bend over the desk to kiss his cheek. Then she'd smile at him and say,
"I'm a busy girl, honey. Next time I won't bring it out to you!" But she always did. She was good like that.
Sure, he knew what they would always say about her at the station – she was going to have an affair before long; that she would leave him; that they were in with a chance. Sometimes Phil worried about that. Did they know that Cammy had never kissed him passionately, that they hadn't even had sex since their honeymoon ended? It wasn't because she was frigid – he knew that – it was because Cole was still on her mind. It was Cole, not him, that turned her on, that made her do the things he so wanted to do. It brought a lump to his throat to even consider it, but perhaps she was thinking about Cole when she'd become pregnant. Maybe that was why she hated being intimate with him – she was afraid that she was betraying him by wanting him to be someone else. By wanting him to be Cole.
Steffi was also thinking about Cole. Would he be as happy as Phil had been if he'd been the father? If they were married? She looked down at Grace, who had fallen asleep.
"It's so easy for you, hey Gracie?" Steffi murmured quietly to her sleeping daughter. "You don't have to be the perfect wife for a man you don't love with all your heart, do you? You don't dream of a guy who isn't your husband, do you? No, you just gurgle cutely and cry. And poop," she added as an afterthought. "You're gonna poop a lot." She turned her head to look out the window, and her eye was caught by the phone next to her bed. She picked up the receiver and dialled a familiar number.