It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I’d come to terms with the pregnancy, with the baby, with doing it alone. I’d accepted it. I was in a much better financial situation, and I still had time. I had two more months to prepare.
The first contraction hit, and it took my breath away. A noise came out of me that I’d never heard before, some animalistic moan, and the nurse rubbed my arm until I barked at her to get away.
“Sorry,” I said when the pain receded. I rolled off the bed and stood next to it, my hands flat on the mattress.
“You’re fine,” she said kindly. “Not the worst thing that’s ever been said to me by a woman in labor.”
“You’re an angel,” I said, and she laughed.
I smiled, and then the second contraction gripped me, ripping the breath from my lungs. By the third one, I was begging for pain relief.
“The anesthesiologist has been called,” the nurse reassured me. “But it might be a while; it depends what surgeries are happening. Could be up to an hour before he gets here.”
“I can’t do an hour.”
She pinched her lips, all sympathy and zero give. “I can give you nitrous oxide,” she said.
I nodded, breathless, and she hooked up the gas. The first puff of gas made me feel like puking. I ripped the mask off my face and moaned through the next two contractions. Pain made me dizzy. It made me nauseous. It made me feel like my life was about to end. The breaks in between were getting shorter, and the clock seemed to be moving backward.
“Where’s that epidural?” I asked.
“On its way,” the nurse told me for the millionth time.
I’d never felt pain like this before. I was so alone. I couldn’t do this.
“Yes, you can,” the nurse said, her voice gentle and sweet. “You’re doing it.”
I wanted to tear her eyes out and flay the skin from her flesh. She was so fuckingkind.
The pain receded and took with it my fury.
“You’re doing it,” she repeated. I looked into her pretty doe eyes, made bluer by the color of her scrubs, and heard the truth in her words.
I was doing it—alone. The way it always was.
The way it absolutely did not have to be.
I had precious few seconds before the pain smashed into me again. I could feel it approaching, barreling toward me, unstoppable.
And I knew.
I didn’t want to be alone right now. I didn’t want a pretty, kind, pragmatic nurse to be the one to get me through this. I didn’t want my brother, my best friend, my mother, or my worst enemy.
I wanted one specific person. The person around whom my world had started revolving the moment I saw him glaring at his poor assistant moments before she quit. The person I’d fallen in love with and walked away from. The person who had cracked open the door and waited for me to make a decision.
In those few moments between contractions, when I panted heavily and saw with crystal clarity the vision of the life I wanted, I realized I’d been wrong.
Cal wasn’t the control freak. I was.
I wanted to control the outcome of my labor. My business. My life. I felt like my agency had been ripped away from a young age, and I’d fought against the raging current of life ever since.
Yes, I was smart. Yes, I was driven. Yes, I had built a business, and I was doing it alone. All of it.
But I didn’t want to do that anymore.
I wanted someone to come home to. I wanted a strong shoulder to lean my head on. I wanted someone to remind me to eat when I forgot.
I wanted Cal. Right here, right now, to see me through the biggest trial of my life. I wanted to see his face when our son was born. I wanted him to kiss my sweaty temple and tell me I was perfect and beautiful and his.
