Chapter 10: Rory

Ansel drove with both hands on the wheel and said the same sentence four times.

"Breathe, Imogen. It's only a few blocks."

"I'm breathing," I said through my teeth.

"You're doing it wrong."

"Do you want to drive with my hand in your hair?"

"No," he said. "I'll shut up."

He ran two red lights, and he apologized to each of them aloud.

At the hospital doors a nurse met us with a wheelchair.

She looked at me, and then at the man beside me.

"Dad coming in?" she asked.

"Oh, I'm not," Ansel said. "I'm only the driver."

Another contraction took the rest of the sentence.

I grabbed his sleeve.

"Stay," I said.

He looked down at my fist, white around the cloth.

"I don't know what to do."

"Nobody does," I said. "Stay."

He stayed.

It lasted all night.

I remember the ceiling tiles, and a clock that ran slow, and a nurse who kept calling me sweetheart.

I remember saying the name Lachlan once, in a voice I did not recognize, and Ansel pretending he had not heard.

Around midnight the pain became simple.

It stopped being a wave. It became one task.

"Push when I say," the doctor said. "Now."

I pushed.

I thought of the terrace and the envelope and the green dress.

I thought of a hand pulling a sheet over someone's shoulder.

I pushed harder, and I thought of nothing at all.

"Once more," the doctor said. "One more. There he is."

The sound came first, thin and furious.

Then they laid him on my chest, wet and red and shouting at everyone in the room.

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