The Shadow Wife

“My mother was supposed to be my birth partner,” she said.

“Do you want me to call her?”

“She didn’t take any of the classes.”

“I’ve had all the classes, Jo,” he said. “I’m a pro.”

Another contraction gripped her belly, and she tightened her hold on his hand. When the pain had passed, she looked into his eyes. “I’m scared,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “Me, too.”

“I’ve been having these terrible nightmares lately,” she said. “That I get the headache.”

He pressed his lips to her hand. “You know that’s not going to happen.”

“What did Sheila say when you called her?”

“Essentially, nothing. I said that you were in labor, that if she could keep Sam, I would like to stay with you. And there was a long silence, and then she said, ‘Fine,’ and hung up.”

“Oh,” Joelle said. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“She could have said she wouldn’t keep him.”

“You can’t blame her. This must be terribly difficult for her.”

“I know.” He swallowed hard, and she saw the blue of his eyes darken for a moment. “Let’s not talk about it now, okay?” he asked. “Let’s just focus on you.”

Within thirty minutes, they had moved her to the birthing room, and, as though her body knew she was ready, her contractions started in earnest. The anesthesiologist, someone she didn’t know, came in to give her an epidural. It only numbed her right side, but that was enough to let her sleep, and when she awakened she was surrounded by people. Her legs were in the stirrups, Rebecca between them, and she recognized a neonatologist from the NICU standing to the side, at the ready. Liam was next to her, brushing her hair back from her forehead with his hand.

“You slept right through the hard part,” Rebecca said to her. “It’s time to push.”

What?

“What time is it?” she asked. There was an intense pressure low in her belly. “I thought I had an epidural.”

“It’s a little after six in the morning,” Liam said.

“You did have an epi,” Rebecca said. “It’s probably worn off by now, but it’s time to push, Joelle.”

Somehow, she’d slept through five centimeters’ worth of dilating. She felt the pressure again, and the urge to push was tremendous.

“I want to push!” she yelled, and several people laughed.

“Good!” Rebecca said. “We’ve been begging you to for the last ten minutes.”

She could feel everything as the baby slipped through the birth canal. It felt good, actually, the pushing, but she feared the whole process seemed so simple because her baby was very, very small.

“I’ve got her,” Rebecca said, instantly swiveling to hand the baby over to the neonatologist.

“Is she okay?” Joelle strained to see, but the neonatologist’s back was to her as he worked on her baby girl at the side of the room. She heard a whimper. “Was that the baby?”

“Want me to go see?” Liam asked her, and she nodded.

She watched Liam’s battered face as he talked to the neonatologist. He was asking questions, then looking down at the table where her baby lay. Much as she tried to read his face, his expression remained impassive.

In a moment, though, he was back at her side. “She’s tiny, Jo, but she looks good,” he said. “She weighs three pounds, and the doc seemed impressed by that. She’s not crying exactly, but she’s making noises—”

“I could hear them,” she said, still trying to look through the neonatologist’s back to see her baby.

“Her Apgars were six and eight,” Liam said. “He said that was good, considering.”

The neonatologist wheeled the incubator toward her. “Quick peek for Mom,” he said. “Then we’re off to the NICU.”

It was hard to see through the plastic. The baby was just a tiny little doll with arms and legs no bigger than twigs, and before Joelle had even had a chance to make out her daughter’s features, the incubator was whisked away.

“I want to get up,” she said, raising herself up on her elbows. She wanted to follow the incubator to the nursery.

Rebecca laughed again. “Soon, Joelle, for heaven’s sake. Let me finish up here.”

Less than an hour later, Liam pushed her down the corridor to the neonatal nursery in a wheelchair. She could have walked, but her nurse insisted on the chair, and she wasn’t about to argue. She didn’t care how she got there, as long as it was quickly. She left the chair in the hallway, though, wanting to walk into the nursery on her own steam.

The NICU was familiar territory to her, and she showed Liam how to scrub up at the sink and then dressed both of them in yellow paper gowns. Inside, Patty, one of the nurses she knew well, guided them over to the incubator, and Joelle sat down in the chair at the side of the plastic box.

“She’s bigger than I expected,” she said, smiling at the tiny infant, who had a ventilator tube coming from her mouth and too many leads to count taped to her little body.

“Bigger?” Liam asked in surprise.

“I’ve seen a lot of babies smaller than her in here,” she said.

Patty brought a chair for Liam, setting it on the opposite side of the incubator, then she came around to Joelle’s side and rested a hand on her shoulder.