The number above the door doesn’t move.
“Stairs,” I say.
“I’m in heels.”
“Then take them off.”
“These are Valentino.”
“Celeste, your daughter is being born on the fourth floor. Take off the shoes or I will haul you over my shoulder like a sack of taters.”
She kicks them off without breaking stride and we hit the stairwell at a pace that would concern a cardiologist. She takes the steps two at a time, barefoot, one hand on the railing and the other clutching her phone where Raven’s text still glows on the screen:She’s coming. Right now. Bring snacks.
We did not bring snacks. There was no time.
Three flights up, my lungs are burning and Celeste is somehow ahead of me, which I’m going to attribute to sheer maternal willpower rather than any deficiency in my cardio. She hits the fourth-floor door with both hands and bursts into the labor and delivery ward like she’s the doctor and she needs to save a life.
“Raven Pecker,” she announces to the nurse at the station. “She’s in labor. Where is she?”
The nurse, a sturdy woman in floral scrubs who has clearly weathered decades of frantic almost-parents, doesn’t flinch. She consults her screen with the calm of someone checking a lunch reservation. “What’s your name?”
“Brinley.Celeste Brinley. That’s my baby she’s having. Wait—no, that came out wrong. She’s a surrogate.”
The nurse’s face transforms into several opinions before she checks her screen again. “You’re on the guest list, Ms. Brinley. Drews Pecker is in room three-sixteen A. Down the hall, second left.”
Celeste takes three steps. Four. She realizes I’m not beside her and turns back. “Saylor, come on!”
I’m standing in the middle of the L & D ward with both hands on my chest, shoulders shaking.
“Drews Pecker,” I mutter. “That’s still hilarious.”
“Saylor.”
“What? It’s funny. Do you ever say the full name out loud? Because Drews Pecker is?—”
“A perfectly lovely name belonging to the woman who is currently delivering our child. Move. Your. Feet.”
“It’s just—the nurse said it so seriously?—”
“Men,” Celeste grumbles, and the word contains the exhaustion of every woman who has ever watched a man find something funny at the worst possible time. “I swear to God.”
She grabs my hand and pulls me down the hall. Room 316A has a closed door and the muffled sounds of controlled chaos behind it. Celeste stops. Smooths her hair. Straightens her blouse. Takes one breath. Then she turns to me.
“This is it.”
I smile. “See you on the other side, Lessi.”
Raven only wants Celeste in the room which was a relief to me. As supportive as I want to be, there are a lot of bodily fluids in that room, and Raven’s a good bro. I think seeing her expel a human being from her body might ruin the friendship.
“I’ll tell her you love her.”
“And I’ll tell her again ten minutes later once she’s bundled and they get the goo off her.”
“Don’t say ‘goo’ when you’re talking about our baby,” Celeste scolds.
She kisses me. Quick, firm, the compressed version of everything she doesn’t have time to say. Then she knocks twice on the door, slips inside, and is gone.
The door closes. The hallway is suddenly very quiet.
