I remembered something I should have remembered two panics ago. “Oh shit, you’re pregnant.”
“I’ve been pregnant for nine months, Luc. Have you only just noticed?”
“No, I mean, you’re pregnant, so I shouldn’t be ringing at three in the morning.”
“Don’t worry,” yawned Bridge. “I was up anyway.”
“You were not up anyway.”
“I was about to be. I’m sure I was about to be. Are you all right?”
Okay, we were in the ethical weeds here. On the one hand, it was wrong to lie to your friends. On the other hand, it was wrong to offload your anxieties onto a pregnant woman. On the other other hand, or perhaps just on more of the same hand, the wrongness had probably begun when I’d reflexively rung the pregnant woman upin the middle of the night. “Yes.”
“You’re calling me at”—there was a pause as she checked the time—“2:47 on a Sunday morning to tell me you’re all right.”
“Yes?”
“You’re a terrible liar, Luc,” said Bridge. And she sounded genuinely hurt. “Also, you shouldn’t lie to me.”
“I lie to you all the time.”
“Yes, but not about things like this. You don’t pretend you’re okay when you aren’t.”
I made a valiant effort to be lighthearted. “I do. Otherwise I’d be completely nonfunctional.”
“Not tome,” Bridge replied. And she was right about that. Bridge had never let me play theit’s finecard, and she wasn’t about to start now. “You’re trying to protect me because I’m pregnant and that’s…that’s dehumanising. It’s probably misogynistic too.”
“Probably?”
“I was giving you wiggle room to spare your feelings. Because I’m agood friend.”
She was. Although I wasn’t totally sure that this particular exchange had been a master class in good-friend-ness on either of our parts. “Bridge, it’s not a big deal. You need to look after yourself, and you need to let me pretend I’m a vaguely decent human being who doesn’t bother people with his crap when they’re trying to have major life events.”
“But”—Bridge gave a little wail—“it’s not fair to exclude me from your crap just because I’m having a life event. I can’t let my life events mess up life. And I’ve already missed the twins’ birthday because my water broke.”
At the time, I’d assumed that Bridge’s tendency to run late had pushed so hard against my tendency to bail early that we’d completely missed each other. “Oh my God, Bridge, are you okay? Are you in hospital? Did I just call you up to whinge about my problemswhile you were, I don’t know, in labour?”
“I’m not inactivelabour,” Bridge protested. “Your water breaking isn’t like the movies, where it’s all, ‘Whoosh, scream,woowoowoo, pant, baby.’”
This wasn’t the detail that mattered, but I couldn’t not. “Woowoowoo?”
“That was an ambulance. That was my amazing and accurate impersonation of an ambulance.”
Still not the detail that mattered. Still couldn’t not. “Wouldn’t that be moreneenawneenaw?”
“Ambulances haven’t goneneenawneenawin years. Anyway, the point is, once your water breaks, it’s usually a day or two before the actual…”
“Woowoowoobit?”
“Yes.”
I still felt kind of crappy about ringing her. “I still feel kind of crappy about ringing you.”
“Well, don’t. I love that I’m still your person.”
“Isn’t Oliver supposed to be my person now?”
“Love is love, Luc,” she declared, “and persons are persons.”
