Page 141 of Everything After

“You’re going to be one hot mamma,” he said in a dramatic tone.

“She is,” Alfie agreed, and slid his hand in mine. “Now, get the fuck off my cell phone so as I can pay attention to my wife.”

Jack chuckled. “Is that your dad tone?”

“No, that’s just me… you never want to hear my dad tone, buddy,” Alfie warned, adding a threatening tone to his voice.

“Oh, that’s getting better. Keep practicing,” Jack said, laughing.

Alfie cut the call and slid his cell phone in the pocket of his bomber jacket. “Right, now that I know he’s safely on the otherside of the pond, let’s get down to it, Mrs. Black. I guess it’s time for us to meet our son.”

CHAPTER 73

ALFIE

When Lily had called her OBGYN, Dr. Geoffry, he’d suggested it might be better if she arrived at the back of the hospital to maximize her privacy. This detail was relayed to Keith via Oscar.

Lily might have sounded upbeat while we were traveling to the hospital. However, the moment the car pulled into the loading bay at the rear entrance, her grip tightened around my hand and her face looked pale.

My heart ached when I saw fear in her eyes, and in that moment, I wished I could take away any pain she would feel, to bring our child into the world.

“You’re going to do great,” I enthused. I gave her hand a gentle squeeze in support. She flashed me a brave, tight smile as Oscar opened the back door. “Go find a porter with a chair for her.”

“No, I’m walking through that door,” she insisted, stubborn as ever.

“Atta girl,” I said, making light of the situation. I glanced up at the sky and was glad the rear entrance wasn’t one of thoseunderground affairs. “Isn’t it a beautiful day,” I remarked. She followed my lead and looked up at the sky. “Not a cloud up there, baby.” We both took in the beautiful, cornflower-blue sky before I turned and took her head between my hands. “This is where shit gets real. It’s the last day we’re going to be a couple. Can you believe this?”

Lily smiled. “I’d better believe it,” she slid a hand across her huge bump and gave it a gentle pat. “I just hope the obstetrician brings that scientist dad fromHoney I Shrunk the Kidswith him. I’d pay him every penny I had to do a number on this baby bump until our baby gets here.”

I laughed. “Yikes.” I glanced over her shoulder and saw Oscar holding the door open. “Let’s go, Mrs. Black, it’s time someone checked on our baby.”

“It’s most unusual these days that parents don’t know the sex of their baby,” the maternity nurse, Carlie, admitted almost four hours into Lily’s labor. I nodded, momentarily distracted from staring helplessly toward Lily while she sucked in nitrous oxide gas through a mouthpiece, to help with the pain. It had been recommended as a method of pain relief.

Apparently, Roslyn had sworn by the ‘gas and air’ combination while giving birth to Lily, and the method although not too common in the US, was in everyday use on labor wards all over the UK.

Inhalation analgesia wasn’t something I’d heard of before, but Lily had taken her mom’s advice and therefore requested ahead of time for this form of pain relief be available to her. Herobstetrician had been very proactive to ensure Lily’s birthing experience be how she’d wanted it to be and had even handed out NDAs to the hospital staff ahead of time.

I waited until my wife’s contraction had subsided before I spoke. “I wanted to know, Lily didn’t. I figured we’d waited years for a baby, and as Lily was going to be doing all the heavy lifting to have our child, I could wait out the incubation period to find out.”

Carlie chuckled. “The incubation period,” she mused, shaking her head like I’d said something stupid.

Dr. Geoffry had checked Lily over on arrival, read the monitoring graph on the CTG machine that records the baby’s heartbeat and contractions, then stated that all was ‘moving along smoothly’.

Lily’s knuckles were white while she clutched the mouthpiece to the nitrous oxide. “Would you rub my back?” she asked.

I helped Lily onto her hands and knees before I did as she asked. Each time a contraction began to build Lily rocked back and forth on her knees with one hand, while she sucked on the mouthpiece held in the other. Seeing her in pain felt unbearable. It devastated me because my poor wife had barely gotten a break from one contraction when the next one would start again.

Apart from rubbing her back, dabbing Lily’s brow with a washcloth, or ensuring she drank some water, I was either a spectator or her distraction from her pain for most of it. The birth of my son would go down as one of the greatest days of my life, yet I felt redundant during Lily’s labor. Her contractions were relentless, going on for hours… ten hours in total, before she became more restless and began to grunt.

Hearing the sound Lily made, Carlie’s back straightened. “Do you feel as if you need to bear down, Lily?” the maternity nurse asked, observing her more closely through narrowed eyes.

Lily had been quiet for the past few hours, totally focused on her labor, but she pulled the mouthpiece out of her mouth, gasped and nodded. “At the height of that contraction, yes.”

Just as Lily answered, her doctor poked his nose around the door. “How are we doing?” he asked.

“We?” Lily scoffed then hurriedly stuck the mouthpiece back into her mouth and sucked her way through another contraction. During this she grunted again.

The doctor smiled. “Sounds to me like someone needs to push.”