Viktor drives. I sit in the back with Theo. The bag is at my feet. The towel is on the seat. Theo's hand is on the bump and my hand is on his hand and Viktor takes every corner like he's driving a hearse, slow and smooth, and the city moves past the windows in the morning light.
The first contraction comes on the bridge. Theo's grip tightens on my hand. His breathing changes. A sharp inhale, held, then a slow exhale through his mouth. His jaw clenches. The muscles in his neck stand out.
It lasts forty seconds. I know because I count.
"That was the first one," I say.
"Thank you, Novikov. I hadn't noticed."
"We should time them."
"Then time them."
I time them. The app on my phone has been installed for six weeks. I have practised using it. Theo knows I practised using it and has not commented on this, which is the closest thing to kindness he offers me on a regular basis.
The second contraction comes eight minutes later. The third comes six minutes after that. By the time Viktor pulls into the hospital car park, they're five minutes apart and Theo's face between contractions has gone from calm to focused, the same expression he wears when he's deep in a count, when the numbers are running and the world outside them doesn't exist.
I get out. I open his door. I help him out of the car and he takes my arm, which he has never done voluntarily, and we walk through the sliding doors into the maternity ward.
The next four hours are the longest of my life.
The room is bright and clean and smells like antiseptic and there are machines that beep and a bed that adjusts and a nurse who calls me "Dad" and shows me where to stand. I stand where she tells me to stand. I do what she tells me to do. I have never in my adult life followed someone else's instructions without question and I follow every single one of hers because she knows what she's doing and I know nothing.
Theo is on the bed. His knees are up and his hand is in mine and the contractions are coming faster now, three minutes apart, then two, and each one pulls a sound out of him that I have never heard before and never want to hear again.
"You're doing well," the midwife says. "Almost there."
"Define almost," Theo says through his teeth.
"Two more pushes. Maybe three."
"Maybe three. That's very reassuring."
He squeezes my hand so hard that I lose feeling below the wrist. I don't mention it. I don't mention anything. I stand beside the bed and I hold his hand and I look at his face and I think, very clearly:This is the bravest person I have ever met.
Not because of the pain. Because of everything. Because he walked into a Bureau office at eighteen and signed away his future for two hundred and twenty dollars. Because he ran from a prime match and survived alone for eight years. Because he sat in my security room with Viktor talking about ditches and kept his hands flat on the table. Because he spent nine weeks in a concrete cell and came out of it still fighting.
Because he is lying in a hospital bed about to bring our child into the world and he is looking at me with an expression that says, quite clearly:If you pass out, I will mock you forever.
I don't pass out.
"One more," the midwife says. "Give me one more."
Theo bears down. His chin drops to his chest and every muscle in his body contracts and the sound he makes is raw and animal and extraordinary. His hand crushes mine.
Then there's a different sound.
Small. High. Furious.
The midwife lifts the baby and the world stops.
Not the way it stopped in the security room, when Theo's scent hit me and everything I knew rearranged itself. This is different. This is the world stopping because something new is in it.
"It's a girl," the midwife says.
She's small and red and screaming. Her fists are clenched and her eyes are screwed shut and her mouth is open and she is the loudest, angriest thing I have ever seen and I built her. We built her. Theo and I made this furious, perfect, screaming creature.
The midwife puts her on Theo's chest. Skin to skin. The screaming quiets. Not stops, just quiets, settling from a wail into a series of hiccupping cries, and Theo's arms come up around her and his hands are shaking and his face is wet and he is looking down at her with an expression I have never seen on him before.
