Twenty-Two
I don’t remember getting off the phone with Eric. It’s entirely possible I didn’t. Everything that happens in the next few minutes is a blur as I try to shove clothes in a bag as fast as I can and get dressed. Soon we are on the road, but the trip seems to stretch on impossibly long.
I’ve done this drive countless times. It’s never felt quite so much as if somebody has the other end of the road and is unfurling it like a piece of ribbon under my car. It feels as though no matter how fast I think I’m driving, I’m not actually getting anywhere.
“Don’t get too worked up,” Dean says as I let out a spiel of expletives when a light turns red in front of me. “Eric said it’s just the beginning. She’s still in early labor, and her doctors don’t seem to think that there’s any rush. We’re only about three hours away. Everything’s going to be fine.”
I try to take the words to heart, but all I can think about is the possibility of missing the baby’s being born. Bellamy has told me over and over since she announced her pregnancy how important it is to her that I’m there. And it’s important to me. Bellamy has been there for me through some of the hardest times of my adult life. She’s also seen me through my happiest times.
I want to experience this with her. Bellamy is as much family as my father, just like the others. This new baby is our next generation. She’ll carry on not just Bellamy’s and Eric’s genes, but the traditions and memories that come from the rest of us as well.
After we’ve been on the road for about an hour, I call Sam and let him know what’s going on. He’s closer to the hospital than I am, so we should be arriving close together.
“Try not to worry,” Xavier says. “Send good thoughts to the baby. Good energy. She is a brand-new person getting ready to start her journey on this Earth. Make a good impression for the rest of us.”
“Do you think I have some sort of cosmic connection to the baby so that it can feel my energy and know what I’m thinking?” I ask.
“I wouldn’t put it past you,” Xavier says. “You’ve talked to her a lot.”
“So have you,” I counter.
“Yes,” he says. “But I don’t feel we’ve truly bonded. It seems there’s a barrier between us, but I feel we are working through that.”
This is one of those moments with Xavier when I’m not sure if he’s being serious or telling a joke. He very rarely gives any sort of emotion or signal to let us know. Now he’s just staring out the window, so I don’t bother to react at all.
Another hour passes and we end up stuck in traffic, bringing our progress down to a crawl. In general, I try to hold myself together. I try to be at least somewhat in control of myself when in public. This is not one of those moments when it’s working out for me.
Slamming my hands against the steering wheel, I let out a growl of frustration and shout a few unflattering suggestions to the cars around me.
“They’re not going to move any faster withif you scream at them,” Dean tells me. “You’re not going to vaporize the cars so wecan get down the road more easily.”
“She might,” Xavier offers.
“I just don’t understand why people in this absurd town seem to completely lose their abilities to function and operate motor vehicles as soon as they are within the city limits. What is it about these streets that apparently removes driving capabilities?” I gripe.
“Their unforgiving and confusing wheel-and-spoke arrangement overlapping a classic grid layout?” Xavier suggests. “It’s difficult at best, homicide-inducing at worst.”
“These people have GPS systems built into their cars for the most part. They literally have little voices telling them what’s coming next and what to do at essentially every given moment. All they have to do is follow little lines and do what the voices tell them to do,” I say. “And yet we sit here for ever-increasing amounts of time waiting for people to figure out what the hell they’re doing.”
“Would it help you through if I sang a song to pass the time?” Xavier asks.
Without my answering, he bursts into a rendition of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”.
“Xavier,” Dean says.
“Not the right choice?” he asks. “How about an interactive song? Five hundred bottles of beer on the wall, five hundred bottles of beer. You take one down, pass it around,” he uses the back of his hand to smack the ceiling, window, and seat behind him in tempo. “Four hundred ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall.”
I’m not even going to try to stop him. It takes all the way to three hundred bottles of beer for us to get to the hospital. My parking is haphazard at best, but I toss my keys back in so Dean can straighten it out if he wants to, and I run inside. I get on the elevator to ride up to the maternity floor, trying not to think about the last time I was here.
When the doors open, I rush to the information desk and ask for Bellamy.
“I can’t send you back right now,” the nurse tells me. “But I will let them know you’re here.”
He gestures toward a brightly lit waiting room. I can already tell that’s not going to work out.
“Would you be able to lower the lights in there?” I ask. “Just a little?”
“Lower the lights?” the nurse asks.
“One of the people who’s going to be waiting with me is going to be up here in just a few moments and he doesn’t handle bright lights well. If we’re going to be here for a couple of hours, the light in there is going to push him right to the edge.”
An understanding nod and a flick of a couple of switches later,
