Circles Collide

Chapter 21: The Cadence of Life

Coos Bay, Oregon

November 30, 1997

It was dark in the room, a bit chilly since one of the windows was partially open, and Laura Kingsley was on her right side, listening to the rhythmic sounds of the ocean waves crashing outside and her husband’s slow, steady breathing from right next to her. She was having trouble sleeping—a rarity for her—because she just could not seem to get comfortable tonight. Yes, she was as big as a freaking whale (not really, she was actually quite petite for such an advanced state of pregnancy, but this was her self-impression) and had been in a constant state of discomfort for the past several weeks, but it had not hampered her sleeping ability until now.

She shifted herself from her right side to her left, a difficult operation indeed, and one that momentarily caused a disruption in Jake’s breathing pattern. She thought he might wake up, but after a few moments he settled back into the sleep pattern. She took a glance at the digital alarm clock on the nightstand. It was 1:33 AM. There was still a lot of sleep time left, and it was Sunday, the last day of the Thanksgiving break, so she did not have to get up early anyway. But still, she did not like being awake in the middle of the night while everyone else slept. It was not a familiar situation to her. She took a deep breath, snuggled into Jake a little bit more to capture his body heat, and tried to close down her mind and listen to the waves breaking.

Just as her mind finally started to unplug the connections and drift off toward the first level of sleep, Cadence gave her a particularly enthusiastic kick right in the bottom of her rib cage, jolting her back up. She groaned a little, silently chastising her unborn daughter. Cadence had been doing that a lot lately, particularly over the past few days. She rubbed her belly right over Cadence’s butt, hoping that would sooth her. It did not. She was rewarded only with another kick in the ribs. She took a deep breath—that one had hurt—and then rolled onto her back, even though she was not supposed to do that because the size and weight of her not-so-little passenger could compress her vena cava, thus hampering blood return to her heart. Still, it felt good to be on her back, even if it was just for a few moments. But this pleasure was offset by the realization that she had to pee again. This was also something that had developed over the last week or so. Cadence’s head was now fully engaged in her pelvis, which had relieved the pressure from her diaphragm, making it easier for her to breathe, but compressed her bladder, making it hold only about half of what it normally did before the urgency sensation started.

Knowing that she would become extremely uncomfortable in the next ten minutes if she did not address the situation, she pulled the covers back and began the little rolling back and forth motion she needed to employ when getting out of bed. After only three rocks, she was able to get her bare feet on the floor and she stood up. She was dressed in her green maternity pajamas, her favorite pair. She waddled her way over to the bathroom attached to the master suite and turned on the light. She dropped her pajama bottoms and the thick maternity panties she wore and sat down on the cold seat. As she started to pee, she took a look at the maxi-pad that was stuck to the inside of the panties. She had been having a slow but steady flow of secretions ever since losing her mucous plug. She decided that the pad could use a change so she ripped it free and dropped it into the garbage can. As she was pulling a replacement from a box that sat next to the toilet, she felt a cramp ripple through her abdomen, moving from back to front.

“Ow!” she moaned as it struck her, making her wince. It lasted maybe fifteen seconds and then eased off and disappeared completely. It had not been horrible—just a little more intense than a period cramp—but it definitely caught her attention. Could it possibly be a labor pain? She was overdue at this point in the game so that seemed a distinct possibility. But she also had not pooped in three days now—thank you again little Miss Cadence, destroyer of routine bodily functions—so it might be a bowel cramp. She had had a few of those lately, as well as sporadic Braxton-Hicks contractions over the last month, but this had not really felt like either of those things.

She finished up her business, wiping herself (with some difficulty thanks to her belly) and replacing the pad. She pulled up her panties and her bottoms and then washed and dried her hands. She stood there for a minute, waiting to see if another one of those pains would come or perhaps there would be the urge to move her bowels. Nothing happened. She turned off the light and then went back to bed, crawling in and cuddling up to Jake once again.

Just as she was starting to think that the pain she had felt had been another Braxton-Hicks, or perhaps a figment of her imagination, it happened again, not quite as strongly this time, but of longer duration. It too faded away. She raised her head up and looked at the clock display again. It was now reading 1:46 AM. She made a mental note of that time and went back to relaxing against Jake’s body.

She waited until three more pains came and went before she woke him up. They came at 1:57, 2:08, and then 2:20, each lasting about twenty or thirty seconds. She no longer thought they might be Braxton-Hicks contractions or bowel cramps. Neither of those two things occurred at regular intervals. No, I think it’s finally happening here, she thought, feeling a mixture of excitement and anxiety competing for top billing. I’m in labor.

She put her hand on Jake’s shoulder and gently shook him. “Sweetie,” she said. “Wake up.”

He groaned and grunted a few times and then came awake, shaking the sleep off fairly quickly. He glanced at the clock for a moment and then turned to her. “What’s up?” he asked. “Are you having contractions?”

“I’m pretty sure I am,” she said. “I’ve had five of them over the past forty-five minutes or so. They’re coming about eleven or twelve minutes apart.”

Jake sat fully up in bed now. He was shirtless and wearing only his underwear. “Okay,” he said slowly, just a hint of nervousness in his voice. “Should we start getting ready to move?”

“Let me see if another one comes,” she said. “If it’s labor, the next one should happen in another ten minutes or so, around 2:31 or 2:32. It I get that one, I think we should go.”

“Okay,” he said. “Sounds good.”

They stayed cuddled together, both of them watching the clock in silence as the minutes ticked off agonizingly slow. Finally, it clicked over to 2:31. Sure enough, within ten seconds of the turnover, another pain rippled through her from back to front, making her wince a little, making her breathing hitch.

“You’re having one?” Jake asked, noting the tensing of her body, the change of breathing.

“Yeah,” she said through gritted teeth. “A pretty good one too.”

They stayed in position until it released. And then Jake sprung to his feet and turned on the light. “All right,” he said. “Let’s do this thing. I want to be in the air in under an hour.” He picked up a pair of jeans that had been folded on the chair next to the bed and began putting them on.

Laura, watching him, suddenly had a wave of fear wash over her. Their plan to fly all the way to San Luis Obispo at the onset of labor had seemed reasonable when they had first come up with it, had seemed reasonable only an hour before when she had been lying awake and turning it over in her restless mind, but now that she was actually feeling contractions, now that she was actually facing the prospect of squishing little Cadence out of her body soon, it seemed the most asinine thing she had ever heard of.

“Sweetie,” she said hesitantly, “is this really a good idea?”

He stopped in the middle of buttoning his pants and looked at her. “Flying home?” he asked.

She nodded, chewing on her lip a little. “Now that this is actually happening ... well ... it seems like maybe it might be safer just to stay here and deliver at North Bend Medical Center.”

Jake took a slow breath. “We could do that,” he said softly. “They have a labor and delivery department there. We don’t know the doctors here, but I’m sure they know what they’re doing.”

“It’s something we should think about,” she said hesitantly. “I’m getting scared about this flight, sweetie.”

Jake nodded. “It’s your call to make,” he said. “Just remember, they have no NICU services at North Bend, so if anything is wrong with Cadence they’ll have to put her on a helicopter over the mountains to Eugene.”

She chewed her lip a little more. She did know this little fact as she and Jake had looked into the capabilities of virtually every hospital between Coos Bay and San Luis Obispo over the past six weeks. Not every hospital had a NICU, or neonatal intensive care unit, which was designed, staffed, trained, and equipped to take care of sick newborns. North Bend Medical Center was one of the hospitals that did not have such a unit. They could deliver routine babies and care for routine newborns, but could not do much for sick ones except transfer them out by air. “That is a good thing to consider,” she allowed.

“I think Cadence will be just fine no matter where we deliver,” he said, “but I think it would be better if we at least got her into range of a place with a NICU if we can, just in case. How about we follow the plan for now? We get up in the air. If labor is progressing too fast, it’s only a fifteen-minute flight to Eugene and we can divert there. If it’s not progressing, we go for home. If anything happens anywhere along the way, I have that chart I put in the plane with every diversion airfield and its proximity to every hospital and that hospital’s capabilities.”

She knew Jake had done all the research and she had even helped with a fair portion of it—mostly the hospital parts while Jake had concentrated on the airport parts. She knew that what he was saying made perfect sense, and now that she heard it all told to her again, she actually started to feel a little better. She was still scared as hell, still thought that maybe they had not thought this through as much as they should have, but knew that getting up in the air was probably the best option.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go with the plan.”

“Right,” he said. “Get yourself dressed in your traveling clothes. They’re right there next to the bed.”

She nodded. Her traveling clothes and her maternity bag she would need at the hospital had both been sitting there waiting for two weeks now. “Okay,” she said.

“I’ll get Celia up and then start loading up the car.”

“All right,” she said, pulling her pajama top off and tossing it in the general direction of the hamper. She had no bra on underneath—sleeping in a bra was something she never did, pregnant or not—but there was a stretchy sports bra as part of her traveling clothes. She rolled over and got her feet on the floor so she could shuck her bottoms. Jake, meanwhile, had put on his shirt and was tying his shoes. Once he was done with this, he did not head out of the room toward Celia, but went the other way. “Where are you going?” she demanded.

“I gotta pee before we go,” he said.

“Well hurry up!” she barked.

Jake took her harsh tone in stride. He was used to her irrational outbursts by this point. “Will do,” he said simply.

Jake was a master of preplanning and the egress from the house to the airport went smoothly. He, Laura, and Celia were all dressed and ready to travel in less than ten minutes. All of them had travel bags full of clothes, phone chargers, insurance cards, and even travel snacks pre-packed and waiting. All of them had travel clothes waiting next to their beds. They left the house in Jake’s BMW at 2:45 AM and were at the airport by 3:00 AM. During that time period, Laura had three more contractions. Celia used her watch to time them and had a sheet of paper to record them. They were staying consistently at eleven to twelve minutes apart and about twenty to thirty seconds in duration.

“Your water hasn’t broke yet?” asked Celia as Jake pulled the Avanti out of the hangar using the electric tug.

“Not yet,” she said. “Dr. Niven says that in more than half of cases it doesn’t break until well into labor.”

Jake loaded their baggage into the cargo compartment and then sealed it up. He then used a flashlight to complete his exterior preflight inspection. He had deliberately left the plane more than half full of fuel so they would not have to worry about having to gas up before making the flight. He opened up the plane and turned on the batteries to power up the lights inside. While Celia and Laura settled into the seats behind the cockpit—Celia would remain at Laura’s side for this flight—Jake drove the BMW back to the general aviation terminal, parked it, and then went inside to file the flight plan he had already come up with weeks before. He made a last check of the weather on their route—he had routinely been doing that twice a day for two weeks just in case—and saw that it was partly cloudy with moderate winds through southern Oregon and northern California (the result of a low-pressure system sitting just off the coast of southern Washington), but became clear and reasonably calm once they got to the northern fringes of the Sacramento Valley. What this meant was that there were no dangerous conditions along their way, but it would undoubtedly be bumpy for the first third of the flight.

He jogged back to the aircraft and climbed inside, sealing it up behind him. He fired up the engines and then quickly input his flight plan into the flight manager. The route he had chosen was about ten minutes longer than the fastest route, but kept them within fifteen minutes of an emergency landing field at all times. He ran through the preflight checklist, forcing himself to do it slowly and carefully despite the fact that his wife was in labor behind him. He would not do them any good if he rushed through it, missed something, and crashed them all into the side of a mountain somewhere. That would certainly be counterproductive to the passing on of his genetic code.

Finally, at 3:33 AM, he called for IFR clearance and was assigned his requested final altitude of thirty-one thousand feet. The actual tower was not operating at this time of the morning so he simply broadcast that he was taxiing to Runway 22 so he could take off into the twenty-knot onshore wind.

“How are we doing back there?” he asked his passengers. “Go for the mission?”

“Contractions are still eleven to twelve minutes apart,” Celia reported. “I think we’re go.”

“How about you, hon?” he asked Laura. “Go mission?”

“Go mission,” she said, holding tightly to Celia’s hand. “Let’s get this shit over with.”

He taxied to the head of the runway and roared into the sky at 3:42 AM, going out over the ocean and then turning back to the southeast and going feet dry again. Almost immediately, the turbulence began to batter them as they climbed out over the coastal mountains.

“It’s the bumpies,” Celia said nervously, using Laura’s lighthearted, generally unconcerned term for clear air turbulence they encountered.

“Yeah,” Laura said sourly. “I could really do without the bumpies on this flight.”

“Sorry, hon,” he told her as a particularly nasty bumpy shuddered the entire aircraft. “We’re gonna have to deal with the bumpies at least until we get south of the jet stream over the Sac Valley.”

“Awesome,” she said.

Amazingly enough, Laura still fell asleep well before they reached cruising altitude, this despite the fact that she was having labor contractions and the plane was being battered around in the unstable air. Whenever a contraction would hit her, she would wake up briefly, hold her stomach and wince a bit, and then go right back to sleep as soon as it relaxed. Celia kept one hand entwined with Laura’s and the other on Laura’s belly. She found she could actually feel when the contractions came as her fundus would tighten up. She would check her watch with each one and then note it down on her sheet and then go back to holding hand and belly.

Jake let the autopilot control the aircraft while he constantly looked at his chart of diversion airfields and hospitals as they bumped and bounced along. He kept up a constant diversion plan in his brain as they approached and then passed each waypoint. Medford, Oregon, which had a NICU equipped hospital; Crescent City, California, which had a hospital with L&D services but no NICU; Siskiyou County Hospital, which had L&D but no NICU either. They then passed over the southern Cascade mountains on the border of Oregon and California. The turbulence increased considerably at this point, bouncing them around like a ping-pong ball and making everything shudder. One of the booze bottles in the bar came loose from its restraint band and fell to the floor, thankfully not breaking.

“I have to pee!” Laura cried.

“I think you should wait a few more minutes if you can,” Jake advised. “We’re pitching around like a freakin’ boat in the ocean here.”

“I can’t wait,” she said. “I go now, or I pee my pants.”

“It might be safer to just pee your pants,” Celia said. She was quite clearly terrified by the sheer violence of the turbulence.

“I am not going to pee my pants!” Laura said defiantly. She unbuckled her seatbelt and started to rise. A big jolt sent her crashing right back down. “Goddammit!” she screamed, and then burst out crying.

Celia then unbuckled herself as well. “Let me help you, Teach,” she said, standing up, holding carefully to the seat as she did so. She then held out her hand and helped Laura rise up to her own feet.

“Be careful, you two,” Jake told them. He knew the turbulence itself presented no actual danger to the aircraft—the Avanti could handle unstable air that was three or four times worse than what they were now experiencing—but having unsecured passengers during it was actually quite dangerous. Particularly when one of them was pregnant and in labor.

“We’ll try,” Celia replied. “Come on, Teach. Let’s do this.”

She put her arm around Laura’s waist and the two of them slowly made their way to the back of the plane, supporting themselves with the seatbacks as they went. The plane continued to bump and bounce with no predictable rhythm, but they managed to keep their feet beneath them. Celia opened the door to the toilet and locked it in that position so it could not slam back shut. She helped Laura unbutton her pants and pull them down. Once that was accomplished, she held onto her arms so she could ease down on the toilet. She remained standing there while Laura peed.

“You have a pad on,” Celia told her. “Don’t bother wiping.”

“I’m sorry,” Laura said, “but I am not going to skip wiping. That’s gross.”

“Okay,” Celia told her, “but hold onto me with one hand while you do it.”

Laura nodded. “This is so undignified,” she said miserably.

The ladies made it back to their seats without falling down or being slammed up to the ceiling, but it was a close thing. They sat back down and strapped in. Jake breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the buckles click shut.

The unsecured booze bottle continued to bounce and jump and slide all over the place but miraculously did not break. Eventually, it worked its way down the aisle and over to where Celia could grab it. She held it up and looked at it for a moment. It was a bottle of sixteen-year-old Bushmills single malt. She pondered it for a moment and then popped the cork and took a large, healthy swig directly from the bottle.

“Ahh,” she said. “God does provide.” She put the top back on and then stowed the bottle in the seatback pocket on the back of Jake’s seat.

Jake saw an expanse of orange and white city lights in the distance. That was Redding, the northernmost city in the Sacramento Valley. It was still better than forty miles ahead of them, but he welcomed the sight, nonetheless. There were two hospitals in Redding, both of which had NICU services. And after Redding there were no more long stretches between cities and hospitals. And once they were out of the mountains and over the valley itself, the turbulence would likely die down considerably.

“Just a few more minutes and the ride should smooth out some,” he told his passengers.

“Thank God,” Celia said, wondering if just one more slug of the Bushmills would be too much.

Laura said nothing. She was already back asleep.

As predicted, the turbulence eased up once they crossed over the last set of mountains and flew out over the valley. It did not go away completely, but it was no longer violent and continuous, just an almost gentle bumping from time to time. Redding passed beneath them and the next closest hospital was in Red Bluff. After Red Bluff, the familiar outline of the Heritage metropolitan area came into view. Heritage had three hospitals equipped with NICUs. After Heritage came the Sacramento area, which had multiple NICU equipped facilities, including the UC Davis Medical Center and Sutter Memorial Hospital, which were both regional specialty centers for high-risk deliveries and neonatal care. If there was anywhere along their path where it would be optimum to divert, Sacramento would be that place.

But they did not need to divert. Laura’s contractions had advanced a bit since they had taken off, but were still nine minutes apart—well within the safety margin. Jake began to feel more confident that they were going to make it home.

They passed over Stockton and then Modesto before their route took them further to the west, where the south San Francisco Bay Area came into range. From here, they could easily land in San Jose if needed. Beyond San Jose was Hollister and Salinas. Laura kept contracting regularly, but stayed in the nine-minute range. Just past Salinas, Jake began his descent, bringing them down from thirty-one thousand to four thousand at a rate of two thousand feet per minute. By the time they passed over Pasa Robles—the last possible diversion airfield with a NICU in easy striking distance—Jake knew they were going to make it.

He entered the familiar pattern for San Luis Obispo Regional, taking them offshore over Morro Bay and then turning for an ILS landing on Runway 11. He did not do many night landings as a matter of course, but he had done enough to be comfortable with it. The sky was clear and he could see the lighted runway from more than ten miles out. The ILS brought him down the glideslope smoothly. At five hundred feet above the ground, he disconnected the autopilot and took over control of the plane. He touched down neatly at 5:13 AM.

“We’re here,” he said, unnecessarily since both of his passengers were awake (Laura, like usual, had awakened when the flaps came down prior to landing).

“Thank God,” Laura breathed.

“Amen to that,” Celia echoed.

Jake did not bother taxiing to the hangar. Instead, he simply parked in the general aviation area and shut down the engines. He quickly tied down the plane while Celia unloaded the luggage from the cargo compartment. Jake jogged over to the hangar and opened it up. Inside was Laura’s Lexus that usually stayed in Granada Hills but that had been driven to SLO just for this mission. It was hooked up to its own trickle charger and fully fueled. He pulled the electrodes off the battery and got inside. The keys were in the glove box. He started up the engine and pulled out. After closing the hangar door and securing it, he jumped back in the car and drove quickly back to the terminal.

“All right,” he said as he got out and started picking up their bags. “How we doing?”

“I just had another one,” Laura said. “A little stronger this time.”

“What’s the timing?” Jake asked Celia.

“Still at nine minutes,” she reported.

“Cool,” Jake said relieved. “Let’s get our asses to the hospital.”

They loaded the trunk and climbed in, Laura in the front next to Jake, Celia in the back seat. Jake drove them quickly through the nearly empty streets and arrived at the entrance to the women’s and children’s center at Baptist Hospital of San Luis Obispo at 5:45 AM.

“I’ll go grab a wheelchair,” Celia said when Jake brought them to a stop in the circular entryway.

“I don’t need a fucking wheelchair,” Laura said testily. “I can walk.”

“Well ... yeah,” Celia said, “but I thought you were supposed to bring pregnant women in that way.”

“I can walk,” Laura repeated, stepping out and putting her feet on the pavement. “If someone would just grab my bag for me.”

“I’ll get it,” Jake said. “C, you stay with her. I’m going to go park.”

It took him the better part of five minutes to find a parking space and then jog back to the entrance. Once he was there, the three of them went through the sliding door and into the labor and delivery building. They were in a foyer with a few chairs scattered about and a large semi-circular desk staffed by a female registration clerk in scrubs and a male hospital security guard. There was nobody currently sitting in the chairs. The three of them walked up to the desk.

“Hello,” the female greeted. “Checking in?”

Jake looked at his two companions for a moment and then back at the clerk, irritation plainly visible on his face. A man and two women, one of whom was quite obviously in late pregnancy and holding her belly in a painful manner, come strolling into the labor and delivery department at 5:50 AM and she wants to know if they are checking in. He did not say what was on his mind, however. “Uh ... yes, we’re checking in,” he told her. “My wife seems to be in labor.”

“Okay,” the woman said brightly. “You’ve come to the right place then. Are you pre-registered here at Baptist?”

“Yes, I am,” Laura said. “Dr. Niven is my OB.”

“Okay,” she said. “Your name?”

“Laura Kingsley,” she said.

That caught the woman’s attention. The security guard’s too. They both stared at her for a moment, recognition showing in their eyes.

“Oh ... Mrs. Kingsley, of course,” she said. “How exciting for you!”

“It doesn’t feel all that exciting at the moment,” Laura said sourly.

“I’m sorry,” she said with seemingly sincere sympathy. “If I could just have your date of birth to look you up in the computer?”

“April 11, 1965,” Laura said.

She tapped on her computer keyboard for a moment and then looked at her screen. “Okay,” she said. “There you are. I see you’re already overdue.”

“Yes,” Laura said, “I...” she winced and grabbed her belly. “Oh God, here comes another one.”

“Let me just call the nurse to get you back into the triage room,” the woman said. She picked up a phone and dialed a number. After a moment, she spoke to someone on the other end. “Laura Kingsley is here checking in.” A pause. “That right ... Laura Kingsley. Jake Kingsley and a visitor are with her. She is reporting contractions.” Another pause. “Okay, will do.” She hung up the phone. “The nurse will be right out.”

“Very good,” Laura grunted, breathing a little heavily as the contraction faded.

While they were waiting, she took Jake’s name for the record and then asked who the visitor was.

“I’m Celia Valdez,” Celia told her.

The woman’s eyes got even bigger upon hearing this. She looked at Celia in awe for a moment. “Oh my God,” she said. “It is you! I thought you looked like you, but I didn’t think it really could be you. Wow! This is so amazing!”

“Thank you,” Celia said. “Laura and I are very good friends. She plays saxophone for me, you know.”

“I’ve heard that,” the woman said.

“It’s true,” Jake said. “Now, is there some visitor badge or something you’re supposed to be making for us?”

“Oh ... right, of course,” she said. She bent to her computer and went to work. A minute later, Laura had an armband on her wrist and Jake and Celia both had visitor stickers with their names and Laura’s name stuck to their shirts. A moment after that, one of the side doors opened and a middle-aged nurse in blue scrubs came through. She was pushing an empty wheelchair.

“Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley?” she asked.

“Yes,” Laura said.

“I’m Arlene, one of the L&D nurses. I’m going to get you triaged and see how you’re doing.”

She insisted that Laura sit in the wheelchair even though Laura insisted she was perfectly capable of walking.

“It’s hospital policy,” Arlene said simply. “We don’t want you falling down.”

“A little while ago I walked to the back of an airplane that was bouncing around like a moth on a porch light,” Laura told her. “I didn’t fall then.”

“You were in an airplane?” Arlene asked, her eyebrows coming up.

“That’s right,” Jake said. “Two and a half hours ago we were in Coos Bay, Oregon. We flew down here when labor started. It was a bit of a bumpy ride for the first part of the flight.”

The nurse was now looking at them as if they were insane. “You flew down from Oregon in the middle of the night while you were in labor?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Laura told her. “That was our plan all along. It worked out.”

“Wow,” Arlene whispered. “Anyway, as I was saying, it’s hospital policy that you sit in the chair. If you would just take a seat?”

Laura took a seat. She was wheeled back through a secured entrance and into a hallway, Jake and Celia trailing behind. From there, she was put in a room labeled TRIAGE. The triage room had two gurneys in it separated by a curtain. Monitoring equipment filled the back wall. Arlene directed Laura to sit on the left gurney (the right one was unoccupied currently). She then took her temperature, hooked her up to a blood pressure cuff and a pulse oximeter, and then asked her a few questions about when her labor pains started, what they felt like, if they had been timing them, how far apart they were. Laura answered everything and Celia even provided Arlene with her paper record of the contraction times and duration. Arlene was impressed with the document.

“Well, well,” she said. “It looks like you went from twelve minutes to nine over the past few hours. Has your water broke?”

“Not yet,” Laura said.

“And have you lost your mucous plug?”

“A few days ago,” Laura replied.

“Very good,” Arlene said. “We need to see how advanced your labor is. I’ll need you to undress completely and put on one of our gowns. After that, I’ll hook you up to the monitor and do an internal exam to see how dilated you are.”

“Wonderful,” Laura said with a frown. She reached for her blouse and began undoing the buttons.

Arlene looked over at Celia. So far she had given no indication that she knew who Celia was. “What is your relationship to Mrs. Kingsley?” she asked.

“We’re good friends,” Celia told her.

“My best friend,” Laura put in.

“That’s right,” Celia said with a smile. “Best friends.”

“Okay then,” Arlene said. “Well, she’s about to disrobe and then have me put my hand up inside of her vagina. If either of you are uncomfortable being in each other’s presence while that happens, you might want to step out of the room for a little bit.”

“It’s all right,” Laura said. “She’s seen me naked before.”

“I see,” Arlene said slowly.

“I had to help her pee in the airplane,” Celia said.

“I see,” Arlene said again. “In that case, here’s your gown. I’ll give you a few minutes to disrobe.”

Laura took her clothes off (except for her socks) and put on the gown. She laid down on the gurney while Jake and Celia sat in the chairs next to it. Arlene returned a few minutes later carrying a stretchy band with several round devices attached to it and wires coming from the devices.

“This is the CTG,” Arlene explained. “It straps around your belly and tells us when you’re having a contraction and gives a constant readout of the baby’s heart rate. Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“It’s a girl,” Laura said.

“Have you picked a name yet?”

“Cadence,” Laura said. “Her name is Cadence.”

“That’s a pretty name,” Arlene said, though her tone suggested that she always said something like that, no matter what name a mother told her. Adolf? That’s a good solid name. Saddam? I like the sound of that!

“We think so,” Jake said.

She rucked up Laura’s gown and installed the device by wrapping it around her belly. She then fiddled with the positioning a bit while staring at the monitor screen on the wall behind Laura’s head. Finally, she seemed to like what she saw.

“Baby looks good,” she said. “Fetal heartrate is one-forty-two right now, right where it should be. Let me know the next time you feel a contraction so I can see if it correlates with the monitor.”

“Will do,” Laura said.

Arlene pulled her gown back down and then scribbled some notes on a chart paper for a few minutes. While she was doing this, Laura tensed up and gripped Jake’s hand on one side and Celia’s on the other. “I’m having one,” she said.

Arlene looked at the monitor and nodded. “You certainly are,” she said. “Let’s see what we got here.” She stared at the screen, which was spitting out a paper copy of what was on it.

“Which one of those lines is the contraction?” Jake asked.

“The bottom one,” Arlene said. “The top is your baby’s heart rate. I’m seeing a mild to moderate contraction here, tracking like a true labor contraction and not a Braxton-Hicks. The fetal heart rate is staying steady. That’s a good thing. We don’t like to see that number drop during a contraction.”

Jake, used to reading complex instruments in a cockpit and on an audio mixing board, quickly picked up on the ins and outs of the display. He could see where the danger zones for both the contractions and the fetal heart rate started on both ends of the spectrum. Laura’s line was nicely and completely in the safe zone. So was Cadence’s.

“That was a typical stage one labor contraction,” Arlene said once the line dropped back down to the base. “No fetal heart rate change. Now, we’ll see how dilated and effaced you are and watch to see the frequency of your contractions.”

“Okay,” Laura said, obviously feeling a little better now that she was in the care of professionals. Jake understood. He was feeling more comfortable now too.

Arlene gloved up and smeared lube over her right hand. She then directed Laura to open wide. Laura did so, wincing in advance. Arlene slipped her lubed hand inside of her, pushing in everything but the thumb. She felt around in there for a few moments, nodding her head at what she was detecting, and then withdrew.

“Okay,” she said. “You’re two centimeters dilated and about twenty percent effaced.”

“What does that mean?” asked Celia.

“It means she’s still pretty early in the process,” Arlene said. “She needs to be ten centimeters dilated and one hundred percent effaced to deliver. We’re still quite a ways out from the moment of truth here.”

“How far out?” Laura asked.

“Twelve hours, minimum,” Arlene said. “Probably as much as eighteen. You are barely into first stage labor here.”

“Barely in?” Laura asked. “It feels like someone is squishing my guts every time I have a contraction.”

“You can thank Eve for that,” Arlene said lightly. “Hang in there. We’re going to monitor you for an hour or so and get a good track on your regularity.”

“And then what?” Laura asked.

“And then we’ll make a decision based on that,” she said. “Hang tight in here. There’s a call button if you need me for anything. After an hour, we’ll examine you again and see where we’re at.”

“Are you going to call Dr. Niven?” Laura asked.

Arlene chuckled a little bit. “Not until you’re in well into second stage labor,” she said. “The docs only come in for the grand finale, not the warmups or even the main event.”

This was an analogy that the musicians understood quite well.

An hour went by. Jake watched his wife and the monitor, which he now knew how to read. Laura continued to have contractions every nine minutes like clockwork. Cadence’s heart rate stayed consistently between 130 and 145 whether Laura was contracting or not. Everything seemed to be copacetic. No one came in and started an IV on her. No one offered her any pain medication or anything else. No one even came in the room at all.

Jake found he could get a cell phone signal in the room so he called his parents when the clock ticked past 7:00 AM. His mother answered the phone, sounding a little sleepy.

“Hey, Mom,” he said. “It’s me.” He did not bother identifying himself by name, of course, since there was only one male voice in the world who would call her Mom.

“Hey, Jake,” she replied. “What’s happening? Is it time?”

“It’s time,” he said. “She went into labor about two-thirty this morning. We flew to San Luis Obispo and made it here safe. We’re in the women’s and children’s center at SLO Baptist right now.”

Mary Kingsley immediately perked up at this news. “That’s wonderful!” she exclaimed. She had been in the camp of those opposed to the flying-to-SLO-from-Oregon plan. “When will she deliver?”

“We don’t know that yet. The nurse seems to think we’re still at least twelve hours out and she seems like she knows what she’s talking about. Do you and Dad still plan to come out?”

“Of course we do,” Mary said indignantly. “When should we leave for your house?”

“Probably not until after she delivers and we go home,” he told her. “That way, we’ll be somewhat settled in by the time you get here.”

“Okay,” Mary said. “But you keep us informed. I want to know as soon as my new granddaughter is born.”

“You’ll be the first ones we call,” Jake promised.

“We’d better be,” Mary said. “Love you two!”

“We love you too, Mom,” Jake told her.

Before he could call Elsa to let her know the situation, a nurse came in. It was not Arlene, but an older and wizened woman who looked like she just might have helped deliver Jesus Christ Himself. She introduced herself as Judy and told them that Arlene had gone home and that she would now be caring for them.

“Arlene told me you folks are those death metal musicians that live up on the cliff,” she said, a clear expression of distaste showing through her nurse face and exuding in her tone of voice.

“Well ... we are musicians,” Jake said. “But we do not do death metal.”

Judy looked at them for a moment, the expression of distaste deepening. “I guess you can call it whatever you want,” she said bluntly. “Anyway, your contractions are holding pretty steady at eight and a half to nine minutes. I’m going to do another pelvic exam and see if the dilation and effacement has advanced.”

“Ugg,” Laura grunted.

Judy shrugged without the least bit of sympathy. “It’s the only way we can tell,” she said. She pulled on the glove and then opened the little lube pack. A moment later, she was hand deep in Laura’s body and feeling around. She shook her head at what she felt. “You’re still only two centimeters and twenty percent. No change from an hour ago.”

“Okay,” Laura said. “What does that mean?”

“It means we’re going to send you home,” Judy said.

“Send her home?” Jake asked, sure he had misunderstood or that Judy had a strange sense of humor.

But it was neither of those things. “That’s right,” she said. “You’re still in first stage labor. We can’t take up a birthing suite with you until you’re well advanced into second stage labor.”

“Seriously?” Jake asked. “We just got up in the middle of the night, flew here from Oregon, getting bounced around like a fly in a bottle, drove here from the airport, and you’re sending us home?”

“That is correct,” Judy said. “In a low-risk delivery such as yours, you are not supposed to come into the hospital until contractions are regularly occurring five minutes apart and lasting for at least a minute for a period of one hour. I’m sure Dr. Niven told you this, did she not?”

“Well ... yes,” Jake said, “but ... uh...”

“But you didn’t think that applied to you because you’re rich and famous?” Judy asked lightly.

“No, not at all,” Jake said, feeling a mixture of embarrassment and anger. “It’s just that after we flew all the way here, it just seemed that we should get to the hospital right away and have her checked.”

“Yes,” Judy said, “your plane flying over my house this morning woke me up—and not for the first time either. And just because you arrive by airplane because you’re rich enough from selling your death metal to afford one, does not mean you are granted special privileges or allowed to circumvent the clear and concise directions I am sure Dr. Niven and the nurse who did your pre-registration gave you.”

“Hey,” Laura said, her irritation clearly showing now, “cut us a little slack here. This is our first time having a baby.”

Judy looked at her pointedly. “Perhaps you should have thought that decision over a little more carefully,” she suggested.

“I beg your pardon?” Laura asked, flushing now.

“If you cannot keep a simple set of instructions in your combined heads,” Judy told them, “then maybe you should not be raising children.”

Jake’s eyes darkened dangerously as he heard this outrageous suggestion. His fists clenched in anger and he had to take a deep breath to keep himself under control. How dare this bitch question their worth as parents! She doesn’t know us! He opened his mouth, unsure what was going to come out, but Judy beat him to the punch.

“It’s a little too late to change that decision, I realize,” she said, “but the fact remains that you are still far too early in the process to be admitted. So, you are going to have to go home for now and then come back when the contractions are five minutes apart, lasting one minute in duration—that is sixty seconds—and—this is the most important part—have been doing so for one hour—that is sixty minutes.”

And with that, she unceremoniously began removing the monitoring equipment from Laura’s belly and arms and fingers.

“That’s it,” Jake said. “I want to talk to your charge nurse right now.”

“I am the charge nurse,” Judy said with a little smile. “And I have talked to you.” She pulled off the last monitoring wire and dropped it behind the head of the gurney. “Now, if you will get dressed and make your way out.”

“No,” Jake said, shaking his head. “I want to talk to whoever is in charge of you then.”

“That would be the department manager,” Judy said, “and she is in a meeting and unavailable currently.”

“We’ll wait until she is available,” Jake returned.

“I’m afraid that is not possible.”

“Anything is possible if you make the effort,” Jake said lightly. “We’ll stay here until we talk to her.”

Judy was starting to look a little less sure of herself now. “You are forcing me to call security and have you escorted out,” she threatened.

“Do what you need to do,” Jake told her, “but you are digging yourself and this hospital a deeper and deeper hole here. How about you just go pull that manager out of her meeting, have her come talk to us for a minute, and then we’ll go. Doesn’t that seem the easier course of action than possibly fomenting a nasty little confrontation?”

Judy sighed. “Wait here,” she said. “In the meantime, I would ask you to get dressed. You will still be leaving.”

“Understood,” Laura said, trying to keep tears of anger and frustration at bay.

Judy turned and left the triage room, shutting the door behind her.

“Madres de Dios,” Celia said, shaking her head in disbelief. “What a puta!”

“Yeah,” Jake said, putting his arm around Laura’s shoulders and pulling her into a hug. “Don’t worry hon. I will deal with this.”

“I know,” she said, a tear finally slipping down now. “I just can’t believe she talked to us like that right to our faces! I mean, we’ve had the press say some nasty things about us, but that’s their job!”

“I know,” he said again.

The two of them helped Laura put on her underwear, her pants, her sports bra, her blouse, and then her socks and shoes. Right about the time they finished the project, the door opened up and a middle-aged woman in a white lab style coat came in. Two members of the hospital security team, both male, followed her in.

“Hello,” the woman said, her eyes looking at the trio a little warily. “I’m Margaret Stowe, the manager of the L&D and Postpartum department.”

“Thank you for seeing us,” Jake said politely.

“I was told by Judy,” Margaret said, “that you are having some issues about being discharged home?”

“That’s what she told you?” Jake asked.

“She said that you do not meet the requirements for admission to a birthing suite currently and that you are refusing to leave.”

“That is an interesting take on the situation,” Celia said, shaking her head a little.

“Then you are not refusing to leave?” Margaret asked.

“No,” Jake told her. “As you can see, we are dressed and ready to go. I asked to speak with you so we could discuss the way we were spoken to and treated by your nurse Judy a few minutes ago and come up with a solution so that something like that does not happen when we return.”

Margaret’s eyes darkened a bit. “The way you were spoken to and treated?” she asked.

“Yes,” Jake said. “I don’t know if Judy dislikes us in particular or is just not a fan of the human race in general, but she clearly had an attitude about us from the moment she walked into the room and was not afraid to share her thoughts and opinions with us.”

The darkness in Margaret’s eyes got a little darker. Jake began to suspect that this was not the first such conversation that she had had regarding nurse Judy. She turned to the two security guards and told them that they could go. They went and shut the door behind them. She then turned back to Jake. “Tell me what happened, Mr. Kingsley.”

He laid it out for her. Laura, who was still fighting tears, put in a few contributions as well. Celia corroborated the story and expressed her opinion that she had never met a more unprofessional health care worker in her life.

Margaret sighed once the tale was told. “I’m sorry this happened to you,” she said. “I will have a word with Judy about this, of course.”

“You have your word with her,” Jake said. “That is not my concern. I understand that this is a he-said/she-said situation, that she is not going to agree with our version of events, and that you have no way to verify our story or hers. We’re not asking or expecting that she be fired or disciplined. What we are asking is that—number one—she not be the one assigned to us when we return.”

“I will absolutely see to that,” Margaret promised. “She likely will not even be on shift when you return anyway.”

“Cool,” Jake said, “but that’s only number one. Number two: I trust we will be treated with dignity and respect by whoever is assigned to us when we do return.”

“We try to treat everyone with dignity and respect,” Margaret assured them.

“A good goal that you just failed in,” Jake said. “We understand that a lot of people in this town don’t care for us. We’re rich musicians who live up on a cliff outside of town and probably have drug and sex orgies up there on a nightly basis and fly our noisy airplane over the town all the time waking people up. We corrupt America’s youth, we advocate Satanism and are trying to destroy any family value that exists. The fact that we donate heavily to a variety of town projects, school programs, and law enforcement support groups is only because we’re trying to make you like us. We get it. We’re unlikable people.”

“Nobody is saying anything like that, Mr. Kingsley,” Margaret assured him.

“A whole bunch of people are saying things like that, Margaret,” Jake said. “And Judy just spouted off some of it to us a few minutes ago. That’s fine. We’re not here to try to change anyone’s opinion of us. We’re here to have a baby—our first baby. And even if your staff thinks this baby was conceived at one of those sex orgies we have, or that Bigg G is the one who actually fathered it, are we not entitled to the respect and compassion that any other expectant couple in this facility is entitled to?”

“Of course you are,” she said.

“Thank you,” Jake said. “I am sure that we are not the first couple having their first baby who has showed up here before meeting the parameters for admission, correct?”

“Correct,” she said. “It is a daily occurrence, as a matter of fact, and not just with the first-timers.”

“And are all these women treated the way we were just treated?” Jake asked.

“No,” she said. “They are not.”

“Very good,” Jake said. “All we are asking is to be treated like everyone else. We are not asking for special treatment because we’re rich and famous, just normal, everyday respect. It does not even have to be sincere. Just give us someone who can fake it well and will not make my wife feel like she did something wrong or accuse us of being unfit for parenthood.”

“I will make sure that this experience will not be repeated,” Margaret promised. “And, once again, I apologize for what happened and I assure you I will be speaking to Judy as soon as I leave this room.”

“Very good,” Jake said. He turned to Laura. “Does that work for you, hon?”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “That works for me.”

“Okay,” Jake said. “We’ll be on our way then.”

It was well after Judy’s shift ended—nearly nine o’clock that evening—before Laura’s contractions met the parameters established. She grunted and groaned and was generally uncomfortable for hours, switching between sitting on the couch, laying down in bed, even taking a bath. Elsa and Celia both fussed over her as much as Laura would allow them to. Jake notified everyone who needed to be notified that Laura was in labor—G and Neesh, Joey and his family, Pauline and Obie, Matt, even Bobby Z—and tried to get a little sleep but was unable.

Finally, the time came that the contractions were consistently five minutes apart and one minute in duration. They did not wait for this condition to actually go on for a complete hour (“that’s sixty minutes,” nurse Judy told them), but only long enough to determine it was, in fact, continuing. Jake, Celia, and Laura then got back in the Lexus and drove back to Baptist of SLO.

The nurse assigned to them this time was the complete opposite of Judy the grump. Her name was Danielle, and she was a young, pretty brunette with a baby bump of her own and a modest diamond ring on her left ring finger. She proclaimed that she was a huge Celia Valdez fan who had seen her in concert in Los Angeles on both tours and loved Laura on the saxophone. She was also a Jake Kingsley fan though she had not been able to go to the TSF because she was a new nurse and had been working that weekend, but had seen Intemperance during the Lines on the Map tour back when she had been in high school. Her mother thought, to this day, she declared proudly, that she had been at a sleepover with her friend, which she had been, but Mom did not know the sleepover was in a Los Angeles hotel room because they were going to a heavy metal concert. She told them it was an honor to take care of them and she hoped that Laura would deliver before her shift ended at 7:00 AM so she could be a part of it.

Laura only spent about fifteen minutes in the triage room this time, just long enough for Danielle to determine that she was indeed contracting five minutes apart and that they were indeed lasting a minute or more and that she was now dilated to four centimeters and sixty percent effaced. At that point, the three of them were moved to one of the elaborate birthing suits and Laura was tucked in and hooked up to all the devices in there. Danielle then started an IV on her and told them that she was going to call Dr. Niven and give her an update.

“What about the epidural?” Laura asked. On the advice of Pauline, Sharon, and Dr. Niven, she had decided she wanted one. Her decision was reinforced by the pain she was feeling and the knowledge that it would only get worse as the experience went on. She had come to the realization that she was not a fan of pain.

“I’ll call the anesthesiologist once I talk to Dr. Niven,” she promised. “Hopefully we can get that going in the next hour or so.”

“How far out do you think we are from this?” Jake asked her.

“It’s hard to say for sure,” Danielle said, pulling from the depths of her fourteen months of experience as an L&D nurse, “but I would guess four or five hours.”

They accepted this. She went off to make her phone calls, leaving Laura to contract away and Jake and Celia to hold her hands and watch the monitor screen.

Danielle had told them she was allowed to take care of two patients simultaneously by hospital ratio but that Laura was her only patient at the moment and that, unless the department became seriously inundated by delivering mothers, this would remain the situation throughout. Jake suspected that his discussion with Margaret the manager before leaving earlier had a lot to do with this decree and Danielle’s assignment to them. He did not feel guilty about this or that he was taking advantage of name-dropping or his celebrity status. He had just played the cards that life had given him to play in response to the hand he had been dealt.

The result was that Danielle absolutely doted on them and treated them like royalty. She spent a large amount of her time in the room with them, checking on Laura frequently, and always keeping them updated on what was going on. Over the next few hours, they got to know the young nurse fairly well. She was married to a Department of Forestry firefighter who worked at one of the stations near Jake and Laura’s house. She was due to deliver their first baby—also a girl—in late March. She even hinted about the talking-to that Judy the grump had been given by the manager of the department about her attitude. She shared that Judy was not well-liked in the department and that pretty much everyone was looking forward to when she retired sometime in the next year. She also shared that she had a younger sister named Meghan who had been a junior at Cal Poly working on her degree in psychology before deciding she did not want to go into that field after all and dropping out to figure out what she wanted to do with her life.

“What is she doing now?” asked Laura, who was between contractions currently and temporarily out of pain (though not discomfort).

“She’s working at the KinderCare daycare center over by the campus,” Danielle said.

“Does she like that?” Laura asked.

“She likes taking care of kids,” Danielle said, “but they don’t pay very much. Just a little over minimum wage. She’s still living with my parents. She’s starting to think about maybe getting into nursing like I did. She’s already got about half of the prerequisites for the program. I think she’d be good at it. She’s a good kid, smart, has her head on straight.”

Jake and Laura looked at each other for a moment and then back at Danielle. They were able to pass a little silent marital communication between them despite the circumstances. Is this some kind of a setup? Laura asked. Jake shook his head a little. No, I don’t think so, was his reply. And he truly believed this. The conversation about Danielle’s sister had come up because of something Celia had asked, not because Danielle herself had brought it up. And, though Danielle seemed smart—they had learned that nurses tended not to be dumb—she was very young and probably not experienced enough with life to manipulate on so advanced a level.

“You say your sister is a good kid?” Jake asked.

“Yeah, she really is,” Danielle said with a smile. It was obvious that she was close to her only sibling. “She’s just drifting a little right now is all. She’ll find her way.”

“And ... uh ... she likes taking care of kids?” Laura asked.

“Oh yes,” Danielle said, obviously with no hint whatsoever what they were driving at. “She loves them.”

“Hmmm,” Celia said with smile, easily picking up where they were headed with this.

“Why do you ask?” Danielle enquired, now starting to realize their odd interest in this subject.

“Uh ... well ... I think maybe we’d be interested in meeting her after Cadence is born,” Jake said.

Danielle’s look of surprise could not be construed as anything other than genuine. “Meet her? What for?”

“We’re going to need a nanny at some point,” Laura explained. “Not until after we’re done recording up in Oregon, but certainly after that.”

“A nanny?” Danielle asked.

“Yes,” Laura said. “Someone to ... oh my God! Here comes another one!”

They all looked up the monitor. Sure enough, another contraction was rippling through Laura. Cadence’s heart rate stayed steady throughout, hanging in there at 136 beats per minute. Laura gripped Celia’s and Jake’s hands hard enough to hurt. She clenched her teeth and closed her eyes tightly.

“Breathe through it,” Danielle encouraged gently, patting her bare leg just above the knee. “It looks like a good one. Still going up. Breathe ... breathe.”

“Oh ... fuck me!” Laura grunted. “I don’t ever want to do this shit again, sweetie.”

“I know, hon,” he said comfortingly. “Just breathe through it. Keep on top of it.”

“Keeping on top is how I got this way!” she barked.

Jake had to suppress a laugh as he heard this. So did Celia and Danielle.

Finally, the contraction peaked and eased off. Laura, a little sweaty, panted for a few moments. She then looked back over at Danielle. “Anyway, like I was saying,” she continued as if nothing had happened, “once we get back from Oregon, Jake and I will both need to spend a lot of the week in Los Angeles. We could haul Cadence there and back with us every day if we have to, but if we had a nanny who could take care of her during the day, it would make things a lot easier on her and us.”

“Wow,” Danielle said. She could not seem to think of anything to follow it up with.

“Do you think your sister would have the slightest interest in something like that?” Jake asked. “I know that a lot of people don’t care for us. They don’t know us at all, but they still don’t care for us based on reputation and rumor. We would understand if she said no on that basis.”

“I would have to ask her,” Danielle said, “but I don’t think she would be opposed. She loves your music Jake, both Intemperance and your solo stuff. Oh ... she loves your stuff too, Celia. She was always stealing my CDs when I lived there.”

“Well, all right then,” Jake said. “We’re not promising her a job or anything right here and now, but we would like to meet her when we can.”

“I will give her a call tomorrow,” Danielle promised. “I think she will be absolutely thrilled to meet you.”

Dr. Jacobs, the anesthesiologist, installed the epidural in Laura’s spine a few minutes later. This served to reduce the pain of the contractions down to a mere uncomfortable pressure. He then put a little fentanyl into the epidural. This served to put Laura into a happy, euphoric mood that was much closer to her actual personality.

“This stuff is all right,” she said dreamily as she watched an episode of Seinfeld on the television set.

“I am definitely jealous,” Jake said.

The hours rolled on and her contractions continued to slowly become longer in duration and closer together. About once every hour, Danielle would stick a gloved hand up inside to see how the cervix was doing. By the time midnight ticked past and November 30 gave way to December 1, she was dilated to seven centimeters and was seventy percent effaced. Her contractions were now three minutes apart and lasting nearly ninety seconds.

“Okay,” Danielle said. “I’m going to call Dr. Niven in now. We’re starting to get close.”

Dr. Niven arrived at 12:35 AM. She came in dressed in green scrubs with one of those hairnet caps on and blue covers over her shoes. She immediately apologized for the behavior of Judy the nurse.

“You heard about that, huh?” Jake asked.

“I heard about it,” she said sourly. “Absolutely unacceptable behavior and I will be composing a complaint about it once I hear the details from you.”

“That’s okay,” Jake said. “What’s done is done. Danielle here has more than made up for Judy.”

Niven smiled. “Yes, Danielle is the best,” she said, making the young nurse beam. “I enjoy working with her tremendously.”

She then went about doing her own internal exam of Laura’s cervix.

“I can’t even count how many hands have been up my hoo-hoo at this point,” Laura said, though with a good-natured smile. She had just gotten a fresh dose of fentanyl.

“Nine centimeters now,” Niven said. “More than ninety percent effaced. We’re getting close.”

Close turned out to be another thirty-five minutes. After a final exam, Dr. Niven announced that Laura’s cervix was now fully dilated and one hundred percent effaced. “I can feel the baby’s head now,” she added.

“Really?” Laura asked, fascinated by the thought.

“Really,” she said. “Now this is the part where I’m going to have you start pushing when your contractions are at their peak. I know you have the epidural in, but you can still tell when you’re contracting, right?”

“Oh yes,” Laura assured her. “It’s not all that painful, but I can feel the pressure.”

“Very good,” Dr. Niven said. “Let’s get your legs back into position now and have ourselves a baby here.”

Jake took charge of one leg, Celia the other. At Niven’s direction, they pulled them open and then moved her knees back so she was spread widely, opening herself up. Jake saw that her vagina was swollen and inflamed, a drool of juices leaking out of it onto the pad beneath her butt. One of the first things that Dr. Niven had done upon arriving was artificially break Laura’s water with a long, skinny metal rod that had a sharp hook on the end.

The door opened briefly and another scrubbed woman entered the room. She was only a little older than Danielle. She introduced herself as Lisa, the neonatal nurse who would be taking care of the baby when she finally showed herself.

Niven had, by this point, donned a disposable gown to cover her scrubs, a face shield to protect her face, and had opened an obstetrics kit on a table next to her position on a stool between Laura’s legs. She looked up at the monitor screen above Laura’s head. “Okay,” she said, “a contraction is starting right now. When I tell you to, push hard.”

“Okay,” Laura said nervously.

Jake watched the now-familiar line that marked the contractions. When it reached the top and leveled out, Niven told Laura to start pushing. Danielle, who was standing just behind the doctor, encouraged as well.

Laura grunted and groaned and her face turned red, but otherwise nothing happened. The contraction eased off and she was told to relax.

“That’s the cycle,” Niven told her. “Push on the peaks and then relax between. That’s how we get babies out of there.”

Twenty minutes went by, with the contractions now lasting for ninety to a hundred seconds apiece with about two minutes between them. Laura pushed with each one. She began to get sweaty and more uncomfortable. Jake and Celia had trouble keeping their grips on her knees to hold them into position. It was at this point that Jake, looking between her legs, got his first glimpse of his daughter. Laura’s vagina was now widely open and there was a reddish fuzz showing from between the lips.

“Is that Cadence’s hair?” he asked.

“Yep,” Niven confirmed. “She’s almost out now.”

“You can see her hair?” Laura asked, panting, but excited.

“We can!” Celia said, just as excited. “It’s red, Teach! The same color as yours!”

“Oh my God!” Laura cried.

“I guess that puts the rumor about Bigg G being the daddy to rest,” Jake observed with a smile.

Niven, Lisa, and Danielle all looked alarmed for a moment until they saw Jake, Celia, and even Laura laughing companionably. And then another contraction started.

“Oh shit,” Laura said. “Here comes another one!”

“That’s right,” Niven said, now using her fingers to widen Laura’s vaginal lips even further. “Push, Laura.”

“Uhhhhhggg!” Laura cried.

“You’re doing good, Laura,” Danielle encouraged. “Push your baby out! Push your baby out!”

She tried to push her baby out, but Cadence was a little reluctant to poke her head out into the world. The top of her head would emerge about half an inch or so with each push, but then suck right back inside once the contraction and associated pushing came to an end. Niven kept trying to spread the vaginal opening out to make it just a little bigger, but after six or seven tries, she finally shook her head.

“I’m sorry, Laura,” she said. “I’m going to have to perform an episiotomy here. That’s a little cut I’ll make on the vaginal opening to make it just a bit bigger.”

Cut her vaginal opening? Jake thought, the thought more than a little disturbing. Make it bigger?? I don’t want it to be bigger! “Is that really necessary, doc?” he asked.

“I’m afraid that if I don’t do it, she’ll tear,” Niven said. “If I make the cut, I can control exactly where it is. If I let nature make the cut, it could be anywhere and of any size. It could even damage a nerve and hamper future sexual sensations to some degree.”

“Oh, hell no!” Laura barked. “Make the cut!”

She made the cut, using a pair of sterile scissors to open a neat line about half an inch long at the seven o’clock position of Laura’s now quite circular hoo-hoo. A little blood gushed out to join the rest of the oozing liquids on the pad. The procedure was effective. On the next contraction, when Laura pushed with everything she had, Cadence’s head slipped neatly out of the opening and into the air. She was face-down, her head liberally covered with that copper-colored fuzz, her skin bluish white. To Jake, the head looked enormous emerging from between his wife’s legs, so big it seemed impossible that it had come out of that tiny little hole.

“All right,” Niven said, picking up a bulb syringe and suctioning out Cadence’s nose and then her mouth. “The hard part is done. Look down between your legs, Laura and see your baby’s head.”

Laura, drenched in sweat, her face contorted in pain, craned her neck forward and got her first glimpse of what she was bringing forth into the world. He grimace turned immediately to a big smile. “Oh my God!” she cried. “There she is!”

“There she is at last,” Celia said. She had tears running down her face as she gazed upon the miracle of life.

“Okay,” Niven said, “the next one is starting. One more good push oughtta do it, Laura. When I say go, give me one more!”

“Okay,” Laura said, leaning back and bracing herself.

“Now!” Niven commanded. “Push her the rest of the way out.”

She gave a push and an entire baby came slipping and slurping out of her body with a gush of juices and blood. The white umbilical cord trailed back into Laura’s vagina. Niven caught the baby neatly and then used one hand to grasp the baby’s ankles. She lifted up, putting the baby in a head down position. She then used the syringe to suction more secretions out of the nostrils and the mouth. After two or three such suctions, the baby took in a small gasping breath—the first of hopefully a billion or so. She hitched a few times and then issued out a soft, raspy cry. This was followed quickly by another, stronger cry.

Jake, watching this unfold, was suddenly overwhelmed by the strongest outpouring of emotion he had ever experienced in his life. Stepping up on stage for the first time had nothing on this. Getting laid for the first time had nothing on this. Even hearing himself on the radio for the first time could not even begin to compare. It was a mixture of anxiety, awe, excitement, but, more than anything else, a deep, heartfelt sense of love. That was his child that had just come out of his wife’s body. His child! It had his genes and chromosomes, and he and Laura were responsible for guiding it through life. He felt the emotions build to a climax and tears began to run down his face, tears of joy, tears of love, tears of fear.

“She’s beautiful,” he said, wiping at the tears. “Uh ... she is a she, right?”

Dr. Niven opened the squirming baby’s legs just a bit and then nodded. “She’s a she,” she confirmed. “A healthy looking baby girl. What’s the time?”

“One-fifty-five AM,” said Lisa, the newborn nurse. “Already noted.”

“Very good,” Niven said. She now had a blue towel in her hand and was drying Cadence off. “We have a birth APGAR score of one, two, one, one, one for a total of six. That’s pretty normal and she’s already pinking up.”

“Got it,” Lisa said, writing it down on a folding piece of paper.

“Does she have all her fingers and toes?” asked Laura.

“She has all her fingers and toes,” Danielle assured her. “She’s a beautiful baby, Laura.”

“Can I see her?” she asked.

“You can do better than that,” Niven said. “You can hold her. I’m going to put her on your chest in just a moment so we can keep her warm. Just let me clamp the cord real quick.”

While Danielle unceremoniously unbuttoned the sleeves on Laura’s gown and pulled it down to her lower stomach, Niven put two little clamps on the umbilical cord—one just about an inch from Cadence’s belly button, the other about four inches closer to Laura. Once they were clamped, she took the now screaming baby and set her belly down on Laura’s stomach, so her little mouth was near Laura’s right breast.

“Little girls are screamers, aren’t they?” asked Lisa with a smile.

“That’s the truth,” said Danielle, also smiling. It was obvious that both of the nurses particularly enjoyed this moment of their jobs.

Laura beheld the little life now snuggled against her for the first time. She was crying and smiling at the same time. “I did it,” she whispered happily.

“You did it, hon,” Jake said, tears still in his eyes as well. “Look at how tiny she is.”

“She didn’t feel that tiny coming out,” Laura said with a laugh of relief.

“You said you were planning to breastfeed her, right, Laura?” asked Niven, who was opening up another sterile package from her toolkit.

“Yes,” she said.

“Why don’t you give it a shot now then,” Niven suggested. “Lisa will help you.”

“Really? Right now?” Laura asked, excited.

“Right now,” she said. “She should have the instinctive urge to feed. And the suckling will stimulate oxytocin release. That will help your uterus contract down to normal so you can expel the placenta and clamp off anything that might be bleeding in there.”

“Okay,” Laura said. “I’ve never done this before though. Not with a baby anyway.”

“Uh ... yes, of course,” Niven said. “Like I said, Lisa will help you, In the meantime, Dad, how about you cut this umbilical cord for me.”

Jake did not respond at first because he had never been called “Dad” before. It took him a moment to realize that she was talking to him. And then another wave of emotion washed over him when he realized the terminology was correct. He was a dad now. That was his daughter there and someday she would call him that.

“Me ... you want me to do it?” he stammered.

“If you don’t mind,” she said, handing him a small pair of scissors. “I’ll show you where to do it.”

He took the scissors in his right hand. The hand was shaking a little. She pointed to a spot almost exactly midway between the two clamps on the cord. He put the cord between the blades and made the cut. It was harder than it seemed like it should be, but he managed to do it.

“There we go,” Niven said. “Good job.”

He handed the scissors back to her and then looked up at his daughter again. Lisa had shown Laura how to get her to latch on to the nipple and she was now suckling at it, weakly, but clearly suckling. Her crying had stopped.

Celia came over and put her arms around Jake, hugging him against her. She still had tears running down her cheeks. “This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she told him. “Thank you for letting me be a part of it.”

“You belong here, C,” he told her, returning the hug. “You know that.”

“I do now,” she said. “I do now.”