Sweet Little Thing(34)

The moment I crossed in front of his truck, he honked and laid on the horn for several seconds. I stopped. I could feel rage coursing through my veins. I watched Tyler roll the wheelchair to the car and then walk toward me.

In an eerily calm voice, I said, “Tyler, tell Jenny to take Mia in. I’ll be in there in two minutes after I kill this f*ckstick.” I jutted my thumb back in the idiot’s direction.

Tyler, still severely drunk, clapped his hands and said, “Let’s do this.”

I’m not proud of it, okay. A lot of things were running though my head. I was moments away from sending my wife into surgery and moments away from becoming a father. My life would never be the same. That’s not an excuse, because if anything that would be the time to become a law-abiding citizen. I wasn’t thinking straight.

I walked to the guy’s door, very casually opened it, reached up, and pulled the idiot down onto the concrete.

“What are you doing?” he yelled.

He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old and only about five foot seven inches tall, and that’s if I’m being generous. Without his ridiculous SUV, he was just a pansy-ass.

I held his neck hard. “I’m gonna spare your life, okay, but I’m gonna kick you in the stomach first and then I’m gonna go watch my baby be born.” I stood up and kicked him right in the gut with only half the force I had in me. “Have some manners, you little dickf*ck!” I said and then turned and ran toward the entrance.

Tyler high-fived me on the way. When we got inside, I saw Jenny wheeling Mia through the giant double doors into the main hospital. Jenny moved out of the way for me to grab the handles of the wheelchair as we followed a nurse to the labor and delivery floor.

“We’re going to take you into a triage room and check your vitals and cervix, and because your baby was breech, we’ll do an ultrasound,” the nurse said.

At that point, Mia was really out of it. I’ve never seen someone in so much pain in my life. Tyler and Jenny went off to the waiting room to call Mia’s mom.

Once in the triage room, Mia stood up from the wheelchair and stripped off all her clothes. I put one of those wonky hospital gowns on her and then helped her up on the bed. Another contraction came right at that moment and splat! A gush of blood and water came out of her and onto the floor.

“Is that normal?”

“I don’t know,” she cried.

Having had a history of panicking in certain situations, I was amazed at how calm I was.

“Lie back, baby, you’re doing so good.” It must have been all those pregnancy books. I was nothing if not prepared.

The nurse arranged the table in front of the bed and then put a thick blue band around Mia’s belly to monitor the baby’s heartbeat. “Scoot your bottom down and spread your legs, honey.” She reached down to check Mia’s cervix while she simultaneously stared at the lines on the screen. “You’re at ten centimeters and fully effaced. I can feel the head. We need to get him out.” She turned, picked up the phone, and mumbled something about fetal distress into the receiver.

“So his head is down?”

“Yes, he must have turned, but his heart rate is decreasing rapidly. We need to get him out. The doctor is on her way up from the second floor,” the nurse said before continuing to prepare the room hurriedly.

The look on Mia’s face was pure horror. My heart started racing and my hands went numb. When an alarm went off on the fetal monitor, Mia started crying. She was moaning and crying at the same time; it was so terrifying to see her losing it like that. All I could think of was that the baby was already two weeks early, and he was in distress, and my wife was lying there as scared as I was and in complete pain. Then it hit me, the thought that I could lose them both right there on that table. The fetal heart rate continued going down quickly. From the many books we’d read, Mia and I knew it was dangerously low. I squeezed her hand.

“Do something!” I yelled to the nurse.

Another nurse entered the room, still no Dr. Cho. I ran for a pair of latex gloves. I was going to deliver my baby, goddammit.

I looked over my shoulder and saw Mia grab the back of her legs. Yanking them toward her body, she began pushing on her own.

One nurse went to the end of the table while the other was preparing the baby station behind us. “That’s good. Keep pushing,” the nurse said.

“Are you going to catch him?” Mia could barely talk; she was practically hyperventilating.

“Of course I’m going to catch him, sweetheart.” The nurse, who was preparing to catch our son, was a very petite woman.

Between Mia’s legs, I could only see her from the shoulders up. Although I was relieved I wouldn’t have to catch little Junior, I kept my latex gloves on just in case.

Martha entered the room, thank God. It should have been the doctor. I didn’t know what was taking Dr. Cho so long, but I was happy Martha was there. I held one of Mia’s legs back and Martha held the other so Mia could lean forward and push with everything she had.

With her other hand, Martha brushed the hair out of Mia’s face, but she didn’t say anything. The room was completely quiet except for the whimpering and mewling sounds Mia was making. At one point Mia screamed.

“His head is out,” the nurse said.

From where we were standing, both Martha and I could see the baby’s head. He was completely blue. I started to cry.