Days stretch out ahead of us, and we had plans, but we’re too caught up in each other’s bodies to notice. We’ve crafted a private world, a bubble where time doesn’t exist and the outside noise fades into nothing. We spend our days naked, in each other’s arms. We don’t answer calls, we don’t cook. We shower, we fuck and we sleep. We christen every part of the house. On the balcony in the nights, the bedroom at all times, every time we shower, we even sneak up to the roof and make out. In therains, in the sun, in the heat. We bite, we slap, we fuck, we love. It’s as if it’s a pain to live in two bodies. It’s like we’re tuned to the same frequency, where everything around us whispers, ‘Don’t resist.’ It’s a month later that we emerge. Tired but not satisfied.
We leave the house to get a pregnancy kit.
When we come back home, we find out our lives have changed forever.
A little later, we are in the nursing home. The room’s dark. A screen is glowing. We are looking at it.
And on that screen, there’s a tiny heartbeat matching ours.
11.
Daksh Dey
‘No!’ Aanchal’s scream pierces through the playlist I’d meticulously created for our date night. It was Prateek Kuhad, Yellow Diary and other singers who moaned into their microphones. Now it feels annoyingly inappropriate. How did I think music would alleviate pain and uncertainty?
‘TYPICAL GUY THING TO DO!’ she shouts. ‘Solve things.’
‘If it’s going to happen today, we can’t have our core memory be a conversation about how guys are differently wired.’
There is shock in her eyes. ‘You think it’s going to happen today?’
‘Aanchal, it’s just Braxton-Hicks, fake labour,’ I assert, my eyes flitting between the road and Aanchal in the backseat. At least, I hope it’s Braxton-Hicks because the baby isn’t due for another month.
‘You’re suddenly a gynecologist?’ she retorts, while putting in a voice command in Google. ‘Hi Google, if the pain is five on tenone month before the due date and everything was normal in the scans before, is it Braxton-Hicks?’
I don’t point out the folly in her Google search. If I ask, ‘Ihave a pimple, am I dying?’ the answer would be, ‘Yes, within a week, you will be in a coffin.’
She swipes through the results. The pain has subsided.
‘It’s Braxton-Hicks,’ she announces. ‘Pretty common.’
For the next ten minutes, there are no contractions. I’m keeping track of flyovers and U-turns. Another couple of minutes without any pain, and we will turn back.
‘Thank god, the baby’s 2.5 kgs,’ she says, referring to the last weight of the baby. ‘I want a big gublu baby.’
‘Don’t weight-shame our baby.’
But I’m relieved.
There are no more contractions. We were overreacting. There was no way the baby would come one month before time. Just a couple of days ago, we had gone for a scan, and they told us the baby would gain another kilogram, strengthen its lungs and bolster its heart before delivery. If our baby decided to show up today... the thought trails off ominously. Snapshots of a fragile newborn tangled in a web of life-sustaining wires in a neonatal ICU (NICU) spring into my mind.
We are safe.
There’s no pain.
The baby’s not coming today. Our journey into parenthood will not start with us spending nights outside the NICU watching our baby being kept alive by tiny pipes helping it breathe and being fed through tubes. We should turn back.
‘NO!’ she doubles over in pain.
I bypass the U-turn.
This is something. It strikes us that this is the first time she’s felt this kind of pain. Throughout this journey to parenthood, she has known pain, intermittent, as is the nature of carrying alife within. But this... this isn’t the usual. Most times she has felt pain, it has been mild enough for her to drive to the hospital herself. She has handled most of the hospital stuff herself despite my insistence on being a part of it.
‘I need to feel responsible,’ she would say. ‘I need to do this alone. You know you’re going to be the best baba in the world. I need a head start.’
We need to get this pain checked. Right on cue, rain begins to fall. At first, it’s just a few droplets, a little pitter-patter against the windscreen, but then suddenly, it’s a full-blown downpour. I can see her pain rising and falling in waves, yet she doesn’t let out a cry. Fear is slowly creeping in. It’s unspoken, but it’s there, looming heavily inside the car. Will our baby be okay? It’s a silent question that’s echoing within us. I watch her face lose all colour.
‘What if . . .’
