“Or him?” she said again.
“You’re trying to cover for that doctor telling us the gender by mistake. It’s totally a girl.” I wiped my eyes.
“Fifty per cent chance.” She shrugged and then headed toward the door and shot Tommy a dirty look before she left, pointing her two fingers at her eyes and then pointing them at him.
I busted up laughing.
Tommy grinded his teeth.
He put his forehead to mine. “Sorry to scare you, baby.”
“You’re scared, too. It’s okay.” I rubbed his jaw.
“What can I do. You want a foot rub? A back rub?”
“Did you read the baby books?” I smiled. I’d told him to read them but didn’t think he did.
“I read a chapter. The chapter about helping you through this part.”
Awe.
I smiled. “I can’t really feel my feet much, so the foot rub idea is probably a waste. But, a backrub would not be unappreciated.”
Tess peeked in. “How’s it going?”
I scrunched my face up. “I might have to have a c-section.”
She smiled. “That’s okay. It’s routine nowadays. And you’re all frozen so it won’t hurt, you won’t have to push for two hours, and your vajayjay won’t be ripped from one end to the other.”
“Yeah,” I grumbled. “But a scar and longer recovery.”
Tommy was on the edge of my hospital bed, flexing his jaw.
He did not like the idea of surgery. I think he preferred someone else give birth to this baby for me. If he could’ve paid someone to do it, I bet he would.
“And you. Behave!” Tess pointed.
“What?” Tommy bit off.
“The nurses are talking about you out there. I heard that one nurse say she wanted to stick you by accident with a sedative.” Tess put air quotes around “by accident”.
Tommy
“I can’t feel my legs! Put me to sleep.”
She was freaking out.
“I can’t handle this, Tommy. Make them put me to sleep. I can’t feel my motherfucking legs!”
I had to keep my cool. That cunt of a nurse warned me twice already that she would have security remove me. But, they weren’t fucking doing anything for her when her epidural wore off at seven o’clock, so she’d been in pain for hours. They couldn’t get her a new one and now it was midnight and Tia had been given a spinal block and they were about to cut her open. I was in scrubs, sitting on a stool beside her head, holding her hand. They should’ve lifted the fucking curtain over her bottom half before blocking her sensation in her legs, because she was trying to move her legs and couldn’t. And now she was out of her mind in a flip-out.
“If they put you out, you’ll miss the baby’s first moments, honey. Calm down. Do your job, Daddy. Her heartrate is spiking.”
The cunt nurse was talking to me and she was giving me a look. She’d already told me when she got me in scrubs and supervised me washing my hands that I needed to do my best to be Tia’s calm in a storm. I’d rolled my eyes at her in there then and resisted the urge to tell her to fuck herself.
But, here, I knew, as much as she rubbed me the wrong way, she was actually a good nurse. She was right.
“Baby girl, eyes on me.”