39 Weeks Pregnant, My Husband Refused to Make Me 1 Bowl of Soup but Made Her 101 Breakfasts novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Soup at Midnight
Maggie gives birth to Poppy alone, and Caleb brings the soup her husband would not make.
The nurse who took over my room asked me one question before she checked anything else.
"Who is on your list?"
"Nobody," I said. "My mother is four hours away and she can't get here until tomorrow."
"Is there a friend?"
I looked at my phone, where Troy's name sat at the top of my missed calls, fourteen times in a row.
Under it was one number I had saved at eleven o'clock the night before.
Ferris Diner.
I called it.
He picked up on the second ring.
"Ferris."
"It's Maggie Doyle from Birch Lane," I said. "I'm in labor at Little Pines Hospital, and I'm by myself."
The line was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, "What do you want to eat?"
I laughed so hard it turned into a contraction.
"Soup," I said. "Whatever you have."
"Chicken and rice. I'm coming."
"You don't have to."
"I'm already in the truck."
He hung up before I could say more.
The next five hours were the longest of my life, and the nurse held my leg for most of them.
Troy sent forty texts, and I read none of them.
A security guard stood outside my door with his arms folded, and twice I heard Troy's voice in the hallway, low and reasonable.
"She's confused," he said. "It's the hormones. Five minutes. That's all I'm asking."
"Sir, the patient said no."
"I'm her husband."
"Then you can be her husband out here."
About four o'clock, the pushing started, and I stopped listening to anything but her.
"One more, Maggie. You're nearly there."
"I can't."
"You can. You've been carrying her thirty-nine weeks by yourself. This is the easy part."
I pushed, and the world went white and loud, and then a thin hard cry filled the room.
The nurse put her on my chest, wet and furious and warm.
"Seven pounds, two ounces," she said. "Look at that. She's got a full head of hair."
I looked at my daughter.
She had a dark swirl on her scalp and a mouth open wide in a yell.
I had not cried once in the car, or at the school, or in the hallway.
I cried then.
"Hello, Poppy," I said.
I had picked the name in the fourth month, when Troy would not talk about names.
She cleaned her and weighed her and wrapped her in a striped blanket, and put her back in my arms.
The door opened a few inches.
The guard's voice said, "Ma'am, he says he's a friend."
Caleb Ferris stood in the gap with a paper bag in one hand and his cap in the other.
He still wore the apron under his coat, with flour on the front.
"Is it all right?" he asked the nurse, not me.
She looked at me.
"Let him in," I said.
He came in without looking at the bed for more than a second.
He set the bag on the tray table and took out a large container, a spoon, and a sleeve of crackers.
Then he opened the lid.
The room filled with the smell of chicken and rice and pepper.
I had not eaten since the soup the night before.
"I wasn't sure you'd want salt," he said. "So I brought both."
"Thank you."
"Eat it while it's hot."
It was the same thing he had said at my door, and I felt my eyes sting again.
He put the spoon in my hand.
The nurse made a noise and took the baby from me for a moment so I could use both hands.
I ate half the container in four minutes.
It was plain and hot and salty, and it was the best thing I had ever had in my mouth.
Caleb stood against the wall with his cap in his hands and looked at the floor.
"Your husband's in the hallway," he said after a while.
"I know."
"He asked me what I'm doing here."
"What did you tell him?"
"That I deliver soup."
I laughed, and the spoon shook in my hand.
"He wants in," Caleb said. "I told him it wasn't up to me."
"It isn't."
"No."
He looked at me then, a short level look, the kind you give someone you are not going to ask anything.
"Do you want me to stay?" he said.
"For a minute."
He stayed.
The nurse gave Poppy back, and I held her and finished the soup, and nobody said anything for a long time.
Outside, the guard's radio crackled.
Then a woman's voice rose in the corridor, and it was not Lacey's.
It was older and sharper, and I knew it from five years of Sunday dinners.
"I'm her mother-in-law," Troy's mother said. "I'm going in to see my granddaughter, and you can call whoever you like."
The guard said something.
She did not lower her voice.
"I have a letter from my son. It says how sorry he is. She is going to read it, and then she is going to let him in."
The door handle turned.
Caleb stepped back to the wall, and the nurse stepped forward, and I pulled the blanket up over Poppy's head.
Troy's mother stood in the doorway with a folded sheet of paper in her hand.
She looked at the empty soup container, and then at the man holding his cap.
"Who," she said, "is that?"
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