Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [137]
In a way it almost seems polite, this pain. I’ll give you a little glimpse of me, it seems to say. Let you get used to me bit by bit.
There’s a great urge to call somebody, and I’m going to yield to it in a minute. Oh, I wish it was you, Red. I won’t say it again. But I want to state it clearly, before I start this work. I wish you were here. I hate that you’re not. I want to register this complaint, just once, just here. I have your friends, your trusted servants, but they’re not you.
I do see you moving through them.
Baby, if I don’t write to you for a long time, you’ll know why.
LEWIS was deep in a dream of an old section of Los Angeles, where he was driven over a bridge lit with acorn-shaped street lamps and into a realm where nomads’ fires burned across a plain. Something called his name, the syllables squawky, swaddled in static.
“Huh … what?” Speaking, he woke himself up.
“It’s started.” Libby’s voice came from the monitor.
Lewis took in her words with a breath. Then they hit. “Jesus Christ!” he cried, and was out of bed, feet in pants, in one fluid movement. Then, his fingers were so uncooperative that he had to dial David’s number twice. “Libby’s in labor.”
“I’ll be right there.”
The three of them took the Mercedes, Lewis driving.
“It doesn’t really hurt yet,” Libby would say, then make the most scrunched-up face.
“Long, smooth breaths, Lib,” David said. “Don’t forget.”
The moon had set and trees, houses, hills, even the skies were silvery. Gloria, wrapped in a blue shawl, was waiting for them in front of her house. Rafael, small, spry, and white-haired, waved from the porch. A rooster crowed.
They arrived at Buchanan General at four-fifteen a.m. Since the hospital wasn’t officially open, they had to use the emergency entrance. Lewis carried Libby’s overnight bag and stood to one side with Gloria while David and Libby negotiated at the desk. She was preregistered, but they still wanted to check her in and put her in a wheelchair. The wheelchair took forever to arrive, so Libby and David practiced breathing. “I’ll have this girl in the lobby if they don’t hurry up,” Libby said. When the wheelchair finally came, they loaded her bag and coat into it and Libby herself pushed it down the hall, into the elevator, and out into obstetrics on the fourth floor.
The birthing room was painted a rose-tinted peach, with not-too-ugly watercolors of flowers and a baby’s building blocks. There was a rocking chair, a bed, a little cabinet to stash things in.
Libby didn’t want to sit or lie down. She wanted to hike, climb stairs. “I need to move,” she said. “If I keep going, it’s like I can stay one step ahead of the pain. Or maybe I’ll be like that lady in Louisiana who gave birth standing in a bank line. They had to cut open her slacks because the baby was stuck in a pant leg.” Libby laughed and then gasped. David held up a finger to represent a candle, and Libby blew out air as if to extinguish it. “I don’t think this cervix is so fucking incompetent,” she said when the pain receded. “It’s feeling pretty damn competent to me.”
She did have one terrible moment, when she just stood in the hall and wept, head in hands, tears streaming down her arms. She didn’t say anything, but you didn’t need a Ph.D. to guess what she was crying about.
She roamed up and down the halls in Red’s enormous white terrycloth robe. Barbara showed up around six with big hugs all around. She and David and Gloria and Lewis took turns walking Libby up to the sixth floor, down to the lobby and back. Whenever Libby had a contraction, Lewis felt embarrassed by his inadequacy. “Breathe,” he’d say helplessly.
A mistrust and dislike of the hospital staff gave Libby a reckless buoyancy. “Somebody tell that nurse to get a better peroxide job,” she said. She referred to her doctor as Big Head, with variations. “Where is Big Head, anyway? Tell him to finish his Cheerios already and get his ass down here. I can’t