“Andrew, of course,” she says, sparing me from having to say it.
He walks over to her, kisses her on the cheek, and says, “Thank you.”
Tears well up in my best friend's eyes. “No. Thank you.” She squeezes his shoulders. “Take care of her.” Looking at the doctor, her eyes narrow, mouth set firm. “And you most of all. I hope you're as good in surgery as you were coaching my husband to catch my baby in an elevator.”
“I'm even better with a scalpel and a plan,” he says with assurance, eyes cutting to Andrew, then me. “It's time.”
“Can you call my Mom?” I call out to Shannon, who waves near the electric doors.
“Pam's on her way. Already texted her. I texted my mom, too.”
“You invited Marie to come?” I gasp, horrified.
“Invited? God, no. I texted her a warning not to come.” Shannon gives me a careful hug. “Next time I see you, you'll have my twin nephews in your arms. You get to meet your children!”
We both burst into tears, a quick hug necessary.
And I’m wheeled away, going through double doors that feel like a birth canal.
Chapter 21
Andrew
For most men, watching your children being born involves staring between your partner's legs.
For me? It means trying very hard not to stare at a screen displaying her organs, spread out before her like an advanced biology lab project.
It's not that I'm squeamish. I actually love science, but that's my wife's large intestine on the other side of that screen. If I'm going to be intimately acquainted with a body part of hers, that's not at the top of my list.
“We're dealing with adhesions,” I hear Dr. Derjian say to someone else in scrubs, then complex language about organs. It's tempting to sit just a little taller on this metal stool and peek over the drape they use as a curtain.
Too tempting.
Declan never had to go through this equivalent of the marshmallow test. He may have delivered his child in a broken elevator, but my two children are being cut out of their mother while I keep her company and try not to look at the string of slimy balloon animals that are her intestines.
Hah. Beat that, bro.
“Adhesions?” I ask.
“Nothing's wrong,” he says smoothly. “Sometimes women have tissue, a little scar tissue, that makes this a little more complicated.” He flashes Amanda and me a confident smile. “I've seen it before. Just means we'll be here for a little longer.”
Amanda made me watch enough videos of c-sections that I understand the basics of what he's doing. Now the placenta needs to be removed. Each baby has a team, and beyond the surgical table I see the babies being lifted up, rubbed with towels, weighed and talked to, thin little cries whinnying out of them.
In duplicate.
“I need to see them again,” she whispers to me, as if wanting that isn't okay.
“Give us five seconds,” Dr. Derjian says, pausing with his hands to give Amanda a compassionate look. “I promise.”
“Remember that article I told you about, the maternal assisted c-section?” Amanda says to me.
“The one where the midwife asked the OB to let the mom pull the baby out herself?” Dr. Derjian asks calmly. He moves with coordinated grace, but I can't bring myself to look over the drape.
“Yes!” Amanda replies.
He pauses. “Are you asking to do that? Because the babies are already on the–”
“HELL, NO!”
He chuckles. “Try not to use your abdominal muscles like that. Message received.”
“At least she got to hold her baby,” Amanda grouses. Her head is obviously connected to the rest of her, but she feels disembodied, detached. Her lower half is cut open and she's chatting away up here as if blood and organs weren't being rearranged like a game of Three-card Monte a few feet away.
“Dad! Want to cut the cords?” someone calls out. I stroke Amanda's hair and smile.
She looks at me, eyes slowly shining as they fill with tears. “Don't you want to?”
“Want to what?”
“Cut the umbilical cords?”
“What? That wasn't me they were asking.”
“Of course it was,” Dr. Derjian says, happy eyes meeting mine over our surgical masks. “They said Dad. That's you.”
Amanda nods me on. “Go help them.”
“William,” one of the nurses says, and I realize that's my child. My child. I have two, both squeaking and crying, sounding like billy goats with muzzles. On legs made of helium and concrete, I move to the staging area where William is screaming, eyes shut tight, arms out, naked and new to the world, the umbilical cord bulging and clamped with two clamps, a two-inch spot centered.
I'm handed a pair of scissors.
And I perform the ritual. I'm surprised by the feel of cutting it, how much effort it takes.
The nurse takes him and rubs him with a blanket, then wraps him like a burrito, another nurse moving me to Charlie, who could not be more different from his brother.
Brother. Amanda and I made brothers.
Charlie is calm, almost preternaturally so, staring up at me with dark eyes that take in everything.
As I reach for the scissors, eyes on him, his hand brushes mine, clinging to my glove-covered pinky.
“Shhhh, Charlie. Shhhhh.”
“Daddy's here,” one of the nurses says.
I've spent the entire labor and birth carefully restraining my inner turmoil, emotions there but pushed off to the side, in a sector with firm boundaries. Saying my son's name, giving him comfort, having him reach out to me like this–it's permission.
Permission to feel.
Tears don't come naturally to McCormick men. We're taught from a young age not to show emotion. The tacit message is: Don't express.
Even better?
Don't feel at all.
I'm breaking that cycle right now, letting the tears come, feeling them roll down my cheeks, tears of joy and gratitude, of connection and transition. I'm no longer the keeper of my genes, roaming
