“The class said?—”
“Pavel, I’m aware of what the class said, I was there, I’m doing the best I can.”
“You’re doing well,” he says immediately. “You’re doing very well.”
“I know I am.” Another contraction. The city moves past the windows, and I breathe through it. He puts his hand over mine and says nothing else, which is what I need. Talking is a challenge.
I have had nine months to get ready for this, but the hospital outdoes me on that score. The doctor is present, and the process of becoming parents begins in earnest under bright lights with people who know what they’re doing moving around us with the purposeful calm of competence.
I’m grateful for each and every piece of this puzzle.
Pavel performs calmness poorly, but the effort is endearing. He stands beside me and holds my hand and says the right things and responds to the medical staff with the appropriate precision, and underneath all of it, he’s scared. I feel the terror in the grip of his hand, which is careful and steady and slightly too tight.
“You can breathe,” I tell him, between contractions.
“I’m breathing,” he says.
“You’re holding your breath every time I have a contraction.”
“I’m not.”
“Pavel.”
He exhales. It’s a substantial exhale, blowing the hair that’s fallen near my face.
“Better.”
“Focus on yourself,” he says, with the dignity of a man redirecting. “This is not about my breathing.”
“It will be if you pass out on top of me.”
“I can move away?—”
“Don’t you dare.”
He looks at me with those pale blue eyes, and there is something in them that is beyond what I have words for, and I squeeze his hand, which is still too tight around mine. He looks down at our hands and eases his grip, and we don’t say anything else for a little while because there are other things to attend to.
The next several hours are grinding and relentless and loud, louder than I expected. Mostly because of me. “I cannot believe you fucking did this to me!”
“You have my endless apologies, wife.”
“Do you think that’s helpful?”
“Not at all. Just wanted it on the record.” The man is infuriatingly polite about it.
“I need something to break?—”
He offers his hand.
I raise a brow and glance down at his groin.
“There are limits.”
“Fine.” I huff right before another contraction hits.
The doctor is steady and talks me through what’s happening with the practical honesty I asked for at the beginning. But it’s the nurses who are my heroes. They manage the space between Pavel and the medical process with the skill of people who have done this many times and know what partners need.
Pavel holds ice chips. “Are you certain she can’t have a little food? In Poland, it’s no big deal for a woman to eat during labor.”
