That smile, the way her teeth buckled her bottom lip.
“Bob?” Melancholy in her voice.
Maeve nodded. Dylan Thomas Reed. Maeve figured it was no one’s business that she’d named her son after Bob Dylan and her own grandfather.
“Hm,” Wendy said and sighed, pivoting to the end of the hospital bed. “Okay. Looking good, Maeve,” she said, making herself professional again. “Can you put your knees up and kind of let them fall apart? I need to check your cervix. Is that okay?”
Maeve couldn’t stop the wild thoughts.Wendy Walker is looking at my crotch. What if something gross is going on down there? Well, of coursesomething gross is going on.They had fantasized about running away together. Kansas, maybe. California. Mayhem. She groaned as her body turned molten.
Wendy calmly pulled the sheet over Maeve’s knees and went to her side. “Maeve, you’re almost there. Dilated to nine. We need to get you to ten, and then you push. Let’s work together on this breathing.” She put Maeve’s hand in hers, told her to squeeze if she needed to and not to worry, no one had broken her hand yet.
Maeve stared into Wendy’s brown eyes, locked with them, mimicked the breathing Wendy showed her. Hoo, hoo, hoo. Ha, ha, ha.God, the pain.“It really hurts, Wen.”
“I know. I know it does. That’s it. That’s it. You’re almost there. And rest, rest.” Wendy’s voice all around her.
Wendy’s hand on her forehead. Like a basketball. Maeve drifted, thinking about the way Wendy handled the ball like it was on a string, dribbling between legs that chopped like shears. Hoo, hoo, hoo. “You were really good,” Maeve eked out. Ha, ha, ha. “Basketball.”
Wendy laughing, throaty and full. Wendy’s hand on her arm, moving down her body. Wendy’s scrubs, taut over athletic thighs and butt. Maeve couldn’t keep track of the sounds and movement, the rushing in her own body. She was swollen and ugly. She panted like a thirsty dog. She had felt so powerful when she gave birth to Dylan. She’d been home when the contractions began that time. Her mom had held her waist, walked her around the farmyard while Maeve begged to go to the hospital. Her dad had pulled a slab of bacon—Maeve’s favorite—from the refrigerator as they walked out the back door. “I’ll fry up a little for us,” he’d said. Maeve had given him a weak smile, knowing bacon was a treat he wasn’t supposed to have anymore, since his heart attack.
At the hospital, when she was wheeled away from her parents, she’d felt real panic for the first time in years. Maybe this was all a mistake. Maybe she was pretending to be something, someone, that she was never meant to be. And she’d briefly let in the possibility of a differentlife. But a terrible loneliness threatened to consume her, and she swore she’d never think about that again.
And now, of all times, Wendy Walker was the only person in the room with her. Wendy Walker, back from whatever exile she’d endured. Pain shot through Maeve, a lustered aura slicked her field of vision—white and pink and blue, opalescent. “Wendy.”
The doctor swept in. Wendy leaned closer to Maeve. “You ready? C’mon.” She extended her hand, palm down, and Maeve put hers on top. They made a huddle of two. “Baby on three.”
Maeve burst into tears when their hands parted. “What if I shit myself?”
Wendy winked. “All the good ones do.”
“Quick look here, Maeve.” The doctor lifted the sheet, stared between Maeve’s legs. A gloved hand touched her thigh. “Perfect. Perfect.” He appeared above the sheet. “Okay, Maeve. Next contraction, and you’re going to push.”
“Bear down when it comes, Maeve,” Wendy said. “It’s a wave. Work with it. Your body knows. Your body will carry you. You can do it.” And she took Maeve’s hand, squeezed as the contraction began.
The pain was everywhere, pushing out of her, flooding her, rays like bursting stars behind her eyes. It seemed endless. And then nirvana, where pain bursts open, scalding water on raw skin. Maeve roared and roared, felt almighty as her daughter entered the world. The baby’s cries made the room laugh, and Maeve let out a sob.
“They’re cleaning her up quick. They’ll bring her to you in a jiffy,” Wendy said. “You were amazing, Maeve. Really.”
Maeve reeled and reeled.
The neonatal nurse gave the swaddled baby to Wendy, who placed her in Maeve’s waiting arms. “She’s a beauty!”
Her pink face was rosy with color, a thick swash of dark hair, eyes closed, full red lips. Maeve unwrapped her carefully. Her little chest rose and lowered with each breath. She counted fingers and toes, tookstock of her perfect body. She looked up at Wendy. “Could you get my husband?”
Wendy lowered her head, smiled, her lips a knowing pout. Beautiful, yes. Maeve remembered. It was an expression she had loved once.
“You bet. I’ll have him meet you in recovery. Who’s the proud father?”
Maeve stroked the baby’s cheek, shaking her head at this moment, deeply profound, deeply weird. “His name is Sam Reed.”
Maeve watched as Sam approached almost reverently, though nurses scurried around without a care, talking at full voice. He radiated pride, his hands clasped in delight. “Can you believe it?” Maeve asked. She certainly could not. In the background, Wendy smiled and not awkwardly at all, even though Maeve felt a rush of guilt, remembering the first time she kissed Wendy at the beach, the sand sucking at their feet.
Wendy touched Sam’s arm. “Maeve and I went to high school together,” she said. “She was quite the basketball player.”
Sam leaned in, kissed Maeve’s forehead, his hand warming her cheek. Her eyes tipped closed like a doll. “Ooooh,” Sam cooed to the baby. “Maybe you’ll play basketball one day.”
“I’ll leave you all to get acquainted,” Wendy said.
Maeve wanted to put up her hand, to say something. Stay? Go? But words jumbled with memory and the awesome present. She stared at the baby—her perfect nose, thick hair, eyelashes already long, cheeks red and welted from the journey. But she was here and hers, and Maeve was in a different reality, as shiny and smooth as the inside of a shell.
