Matchmaking for Beginners(37)

And me saying, don’t worry I’m coming soon please wait for me Houndy love wait because I’ll be there I promise.





FOURTEEN





MARNIE


I text Brian as the ambulance pulls up.

“It’s okay, it’s going to be okay,” I hear myself saying. Two EMTs jump out and come inside the building to Natalie, who is now panting with each contraction and swaying on the bench just slightly. Her lips look a little white to me, and sweat is pouring off her forehead even though she’s shivering.

It’s hard for me to let go of her, but these guys know what they’re doing. They squat down next to her and take her pulse and blood pressure, and ask a lot of questions. “When is the baby due? When did you last eat? What hospital are you using? How far apart are the contractions? When did your water break?” And then they put her on a stretcher and take her inside the back of the ambulance, and one EMT slaps an oxygen monitor on her finger, and the other starts an IV. The radio crackles news of other people, but they are intent on Natalie. One of them talks into the handset for a minute, but I can’t pay attention to what he’s saying.

I sit beside her, trying not to freak out in front of her. Also, I’m trying to help her breathe through contractions, which she is not doing such a hot job of. She keeps looking like she’s going to pass out.

“Okay, Natalie, my name is Joel, and I’m going to help you get your breathing under control,” says one of them, leaning down close to Natalie’s face. He is young and ruggedly handsome with kind eyes and large, capable hands. “I think you’re hyperventilating, sweetheart, so let’s try to slooow down your breathing, okay? Take . . . it . . . easy . . . like . . . this.” He demonstrates how to breathe slowly and deeply, and then gives her a paper bag to put over her mouth. “My wife just had a baby,” he tells me. “Trust me, she’s going to be fine.”

“I’m not—” says Natalie, and then she lets out a yell that I haven’t heard from her since she got a B minus on a research paper in seventh grade, on sea lions, after she had read four books about them. I grab her hand, and Joel says to me, pleasantly as if we’re discussing soccer goals, “Yeah. That was a big one. Okay, Natalie, let’s get ready to ride the next one. They’re coming about forty seconds apart now, so just rest for a minute . . . and okay now, be ready!”

“Are we going to the hospital?” I say to him, and he nods.

“Just want to get her stabilized first,” he says, holding on to her wrist.

Natalie suddenly makes the most unearthly sound I’ve ever heard—and I’m stunned when the other EMT guy, Marcus, slams the back door of the ambulance and comes over to us. Joel leaps into action and starts ripping off her pants, which are wet from that water-breaking incident, and hard to get off, and Joel motions for me to help him, because we seem to be suddenly in a huge hurry.

He exchanges a word I can’t hear with the other EMT, who takes out a tray of something from a drawer. There are towels and cloths and some silver equipment-looking things. I don’t know, but I think we’re about to deliver a baby. My sister’s eyes are closed, and her face is all scrunched up.

“Breathe. Ride the contraction,” says Joel. “It’s fine . . . you’re doing great, Natalie.”

Suddenly it hits me that Brian is possibly going to miss his own child’s birth unless he gets here fast. I turn to say that to Joel, as though there’s something he might be able to do: delay things or something—who knows? But before I can say it, Natalie starts screaming her head off, and Joel motions something to me, and I suddenly understand that this is it. This is it. There isn’t going to be a ride to the hospital—we’re going to deliver this baby right now, in the parking lot, just these two guys and me.

Well, mostly the two EMTs.

But I am here, too. No one is going to turn to me and say, “Um, miss? Could you please get out of here? I don’t believe you’re authorized for this kind of activity, are you? Did you take the baby delivery test? No? Then I’m sorry, you’ll have to leave.”

And I know nothing about this! In fact, I don’t even know what you’re supposed to read to get ready for something like this. It’s like that dream where you signed up for a course and then forgot about it so you didn’t do any of the required reading, and now you’ve realized your mistake but it’s too late to withdraw . . .

“AARRRUUUUUUUUUGHGHGHGHGH,” my sister says.

I take her hand, and when I look down, I see that there is the top of the baby’s head. Like, coming out of her.

“Crowning. She’s crowning,” Joel says. “Amazing, isn’t it?”

My sister’s face is all red and contorted and her eyes are squinched closed. I am thinking a ridiculous thought—that she is not going to like the fact that she didn’t get to have the birth plan she wanted. She was so emphatic about the whole thing. Natalie is swamped by another contraction, and she yells and grabs my hand and grips it so hard that I’m halfway certain that my fingers are going to turn black and fall off by Wednesday.

Joel instructs her on one final push—“Give me a good one, a nice steady push!”—and then, my God, somehow a tiny human, gray and mottled and covered in what looks like cottage cheese, comes sliding out, guided by Joel’s gloved, capable hands. A baby! Oh my God, there’s a baby girl! With eyes open! Looking around! And little fists, curled up tight, legs folded in so compactly, now stretching out, kicking, yelling, breathing like a champ. Joel is holding her in the crook of his arm.