Happy Birthday: A Novel

“Please, not in my cab, sir.” The driver looked imploringly at him in the mirror, and Mike told him to go faster. April had stopped talking completely by then and was grimacing in pain as she clutched him.

“Do you want me to call your mother?” he asked, and she nodded. There was no question in either of their minds now, she was having the baby. The contractions were coming fast and furious, and she had probably been in labor since that morning. He called Valerie, and she said she’d call Pat, and they’d come to the hospital to wait for the good news. Mike just hoped the good news didn’t happen in the taxi.

The driver slid into the emergency room driveway and came to a stop as April’s eyes widened with terror. “I think I’m going to throw up,” she said, looking scared and sick, and Mike shook his head. He knew what that meant. He had done his homework. She was very close to having the baby. “Get a nurse!” he shouted at the driver, “or a doctor!” The cabdriver ran into the hospital, and a nurse came out a minute later pushing a wheelchair. She was wearing scrubs, and she was a big African-American woman with a head full of tiny braids and an enormous smile as she greeted April.

“Come on,” she said firmly, “let’s get you out of this cab. Dad, give us a hand here,” she said, looking at Mike, and he nodded.

“I think I’m having it,” April said, with a look of total panic.

“No, you’re not,” the nurse said firmly. “Let’s get you into the hospital first. You don’t want to have that baby in a taxi. It’s a mess!” she said, and April laughed at her although she was having a pain, and the nurse and Mike lifted her into the wheelchair. Mike handed the driver twice what the fare had been, thanked him, and ran after the nurse, who was pushing April. She started to cry as they lifted her onto an exam room table. The nurse asked April what her OB’s name was, and then told another ER nurse standing by to get the OB on call, and then call April’s own doctor. The nurse told April she was going to check her, and she and Mike helped April take off her jeans and T-shirt and put her in a gown, and laid her back on the table.

“Don’t push now!” the nurse warned her, still smiling. There was an aura of competence and warmth about her that reassured Mike. Things were going very fast.

“I’m not,” April said through clenched teeth, “but I want to. It’s pushing very hard. Can I have drugs now? This really hurts.” She looked imploringly at Mike, and he looked at the nurse. She was checking April, and then smiled at them both.

“We’re going to have a baby here in about two minutes, before the anesthesiologist can even get here. You’re at ten, and something tells me you have been for a while. First baby?” April nodded.

“What were you doing that you missed the signs?” She had pulled off the end of the table, and set up stirrups and leg supports and eased April’s legs onto them gently as April looked at her in terror.

“I was carrying some old boards out to a Dumpster. I can’t have a baby now. I’m not ready!” she shouted, suddenly angry and frightened. She was losing control, but Mike was steady as a rock beside her.

“Oh, yes, you are,” the nurse said calmly. “We don’t get a lot of moms in here who miss the signs of labor because they’ve been carrying lumber. Are you a construction worker?” she asked with a broad grin. She was rapidly taking out instruments and keeping an eye on April.

“No, I own a restaurant,” she said, grimacing with another pain, but she wasn’t screaming. Mike was stunned by the process, and how quickly it had all happened.

The nurse turned to Mike then, and the doctor hadn’t come yet, but they seemed to be doing fine without one. “Dad, would you like to see your baby’s head?”

“Can you see it?” April asked, smiling, and then she had another pain that was the worst one she’d had yet, as Mike held her shoulders and then peeked and saw their baby’s head crowning. It had short dark curly hair, and then it retreated slightly when the pain ended.

“Okay, Dad, you hold one leg, I’ll hold the other, and Mom, when the next pain starts, you’re going to push as hard as you can, holding your breath, and we’re going to have that baby in your arms in about two minutes. Come on now,” she said. The pain had already started, and April was pushing, and as she did, the baby moved steadily forward and shot right into the nurse’s hands as April let out a long low scream Mike hadn’t expected. He looked at April in terror, but she was smiling and crying and the nurse was holding their baby and handed him to Mike as soon as she wiped him off and wrapped him in a blanket.

“You have a son,” the nurse said as the doctor came through the door. Her own doctor hadn’t made it, and the one on call at the hospital had showed up in time to cut the cord. Mike was horrified to realize that they had left the restaurant twenty minutes before. April had had the baby seven minutes after they arrived. The cabdriver didn’t know how lucky he was.