her; she could taste it in her mouth, a burnt taste like the smell of lighter fluid on charcoals. Her fingers were squeezed around the wheel so hard the veins were standing up in relief on the backs of her hands. Doug was on his way to see his girlfriend, and he was swinging the six-pack like an excited schoolboy. Laura reached for the door's handle and popped the door open. She wasn't going to let him get to that apartment thinking he'd pulled another one over on his dimwitted, compliant wife. Hell, no! She was going to fall on him like a sack of concrete on a slug, and when she was through with him, C. Jannsen would need a pooper-scooper to scrape him up.
She stood up, her face flaming with anger.
Her water broke.
The warm fluid flooded between her thighs and down her legs. The shock registered in her mind by the time the fluid reached her knees. What she'd been experiencing as back pain and occasional cramping all day long had been the first stage of labor.
Her baby was about to be born.
She watched Doug turn a corner, and he went out of sight.
Laura stood there for a moment, her panties drenched and the first real contraction beginning to build. The pressure soared into the realm of pain like a powerful hand squeezing a deep bruise, and Laura closed her eyes as the contraction's pain slowly swelled to its zenith and then began to subside. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Time the contractions, she thought. Look at your watch, stupid! She got back into the BMW and checked her watch by the courtesy light. The next contraction began to build within eight minutes, and its force made her clench her teeth.
She could not stay there much longer. Doug had someone. She was on her own.
She started the engine, backed out of the parking slot, and drove away from her husband and the Hillandale Apartments.
Two contractions later Laura pulled off the expressway and stopped at a gas station to use the phone. She called Dr. Bonnart, reached his answering service, and was told he'd be paged by his beeper. She waited, gripping the telephone as another contraction pulsed through her, sending pain rippling up her back and down her legs. Then Dr. Bonnart came on the line, listened as she told him what was happening, and he said she should get to St. James Hospital as soon as she could. 'See you and Doug there,' Dr. Bonnart told her, and he hung up.
The hospital was a large white building in a parklike setting in northeast Atlanta. By the time Laura had done the paperwork in Emergency Admitting and was moved into the LDR room, Dr. Steven Bonnart showed up in a tuxedo. She told him he hadn't needed to dress for the occasion. Formal dinner party for the hospital's new director, he explained as he watched the monitor that fed out a display of Laura's contractions. Wasn't much of a party anyway, he said, because everybody there wore beepers and the place sounded like a roomful of crickets.
'Where's Doug?' Dr. Bonnart asked as Laura had known he would.
'Doug's… not able to be here,' she answered.
Dr. Bonnart stared at her for a few seconds through his round tortoiseshell glasses, and then he gave directions to one of the nurses and he left LDR to get changed and scrubbed.
A Demerol drip was inserted into the back of Laura's hand with a sharp little stab. She was in a green hospital gown with an elastic belt around her waist that fed wires to the monitor, and she sat up on a table with her weight bent forward. The smell of medicine and disinfectant drifted into her nostrils. The nurses were fast and efficient, and they made chatty small talk with Laura but she had trouble concentrating on what they were saying. Everything was becoming a blur of sound and movement, and she watched the monitor's screen blip as the contractions built inside her, swelled and cramped, and finally ebbed again until the next one. One of the nurses began talking about a new car she'd just bought. Bright red, she said. Always wanted a bright red car. 'Easy breaths,' one of the others told Laura, laying her hand on Laura's shoulder. 'Just like they taught you in class.' Laura's heart was beating hard, and that showed up in erratic spikes on another monitor. The contractions were like trapped thunder, they shook through her body and foretold a storm. 'First child?' the nurse with the red car asked as she looked at Laura's chart. 'My goodness, my goodness.'
Dr. Bonnart reappeared, green-gowned and professional, and he parted Laura's legs to check her dilation. 'You're working on it,' he told her. 'Still have a ways to go yet. Hurting much?'
'Yes. A little.' Did apples hurt when they got cored? 'Yes, it's hurting.'
'Okay.' He gave directions to Red Car about ceecee something, and Laura thought, Time for the big needle, huh? Dr. Bonnart went to a table and came back with a small item that resembled a spring in a ballpoint pen, a wire trailing from it to a high-tech white machine. 'A little invasion,' he said with a quick smile, and he reached up into her with his gloved fingers. The spring-looking thing was an internal fetal monitor, she knew that from her class. Dr. Bonnart found the baby's head, and he slid the device under the flesh. The high-tech machine began to put out a ticker tape of David's heartbeat and vital signs. Laura felt a scraping at her lower back. The nurse was preparing her for the epidural. At least she wouldn't have to look at the needle. The force of the contractions was powerful now, like a fist beating at a bruise on her spine. 'Breathe easy, breathe easy,' someone urged. 'Little sting now,' Dr. Bonnart told her, and she felt the needle go in.
A little sting for him, maybe. The wasps were bigger where she came from. Then it was over and the needle was out, and Laura felt the skin on her lower back prickle. Dr. Bonnart checked the progress of her dilation once more, then he checked the ticker tape and her own signs. In another moment she thought she could taste medicine in her mouth, and she hoped the epidural worked because the contractions were fierce now and she felt sweat on her face. Red Car mopped her brow and gave her a smile. 'All that waiting for this,' the nurse said. 'Amazing how it happens, isn't it?'
'Yes, it is.' Oh, it's hurting. Oh God, it really does hurt now! She could feel her body, straining open like a flower.
'When it's time, it's time,' the nurse went on. 'When a baby wants to come out, he lets you know about it.'
'Tell him that,' Laura managed to say, and the nurses and Dr. Bonnart laughed.
'Hang in there,' Dr. Bonnart told her, and he left the room. Laura had a moment of panic. Where was he going? What if the baby came right this minute? Her heartbeat jumped on the monitor, and one of the nurses held her hand. The pressure built within her to what seemed like a point of sure explosion. She feared she might rip open like an overripe melon, and she felt tears burn her eyes. But then the pressure faded again, and Laura could hear her own quick, raspy breathing. 'Easy, easy,' the nurse advised. 'Thursday's child has far to go.'
'What?'
'Thursday's child. You know. The old saying. Thursday's child has far to go.' The nurse glanced up at a clock on the wall. It was almost nine-fifteen. 'But he might wait until Friday, and then he'll be fair of face.'
'Full of grace,' Red Car said.
'No, Friday is fair of face,' the other contended. 'Saturday is full of grace.'
This line of argument was not Laura's primary concern. The contractions continued to build, pound within her like waves on rugged rocks, and ebb again. They were still painful, but not so much so. The epidural had kicked in, thank God, only the ceecee was not strong enough to mask all sensation. The pain was lessened, but the fist-on- bruise pressure was just as bad. At just after nine-thirty, Dr. Bonnart came into the room again and checked everything. 'Coming along fine,' he said. 'Laura, can you give us a little push now?'
She did. Or tried, at least. Going to split open, she thought. Oh, Jesus! Breathe, breathe! How come everything had been so neat and orderly in class and here it was like a VCR tape running at superfast speed?
'Push again. Little harder this time, okay?'
She tried once more. It was clear to her that this was not going to be as simple as the classes had outlined. She could see Carol's face in her mind. Too late now, toots, Carol would say.
'Push, Laura. Let's see the top of his head.'
Another face came into her mind, behind her closed eyelids as she strained and the pressure swelled at her center. Doug's face, and his voice saying The end of just us. The end of Doug and Laura. She saw the Hillandale Apartments in her mind, and Doug's car sliding into the parking space. She saw him walking away from her, carrying a six-pack of beer. The end of just us. The end.
'Push, Laura. Push.'
She heard herself make a soft moan. The pressure was too much, it was killing her. David had hold of her guts, and he didn't want to let go. Still she tried, her body quivering, and she saw Doug walking away on the shadowfield of her mind. Walking away, farther and farther away. A distant person, becoming more of a stranger
