Page 88 of One Shameless Weekend

I’m halfway down the hall when he calls after me, “Are you kidding?”

I stop in front of the elevator and smash the button repeatedly. “Nope!”

Traffic is a real mother fucker today. Way more than usual for this time of day. Or maybe it just feels that way becauseI need to be there.

I check my watch in the back of a cab that’s puttering and lurching along, and it’s beentwentyminutes.

Fuck.

I call Elle back, and it rings until it reaches voicemail, and then I feel my heart palpitate.

I hang up and try again.

She answers on the fifth ring. “Colin.”

“I’m stuck in traffic, but I’m close. How are you?”

“I’m…” Her voice sounds distant and like she’s in a cave. “I got in the tub. I feel a little better, but everything keeps…cramping.”

I know little to nothing about this sort of thing, but these symptoms she keeps mentioning are clanging in my mind as a worst-case-scenario that I don’t even want to think about.

“Cramping?” I gulp in an effort to counteract the fucking desert that is my mouth right now. “Are you still bleeding?”

“Um.” I hear a swirl of water. “No. I don’t think so. At least, not much if I am.”

I eye the line of cars waiting to make the corner. “Would it be better to call an ambulance and for me to meet you at the—”

“No!Don’t freaking flake out on me right now, Colin.I need you.”

It’s the fourth time she’s saidI need you, andyes, I am counting. Despite the fear of the unknown and being trapped in traffic from the pit of hell, it’s music to my ears.

“I’m not, Elle,” I say in my best soothing tone. “I’m on my way.” I peer at one of the street signs. “If the traffic doesn’t let up after this turn, I’m just going to get out and run.”

“If I were you, my friend,” the elderly driver speaks up in a Middle Eastern inflection, his russet eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror, “I would get out and runnow.”

I pull the phone away from my mouth. “Why? What’s going on?”

He points at the GPS screen, and I notice all the fuckingredfor the first time since getting in. “It is the St. Patrick’s Day parade. All of this will be backed up for a number of hours.”

I squint. “It’s St. Patrick’s Day?”

I am apparently areally badIrish-American.

He offers a sage nod and points at me with his thumb. “Do not be fooled by what they say about the first-born child. The labor does not always take a long time. It can be quick. You should probably run.”

I squint harder. “How do you know that’s what’s going on?”

He heaves a raspy chuckle and shakes his head as he wags his finger at me in the mirror. “The look in your eyes. You are a first-time father-to-be. I know that look because I saw my own face like that forty-two years ago. You should go.”

Over the phone, I hear Elle suck in a pained hiss. “Ow!”

Panic surges through me. “Whyow? What’s happening?”

“Ugghhh… God.” She pants. “I’m dying.”

I think my heart literally stops for a second. “What!”

“I mean…” She pants again. “OhGod. I think I’m gonna die.”