“You’re insane! You’re married! Do you know what the tabloids will do with this?”
“I don’t care. I’ve thought about this a lot, Cassie. You know as well as I do that you and I are not going to last forever. We may as well just cut our losses now. I want to try and make it work with Vicki and our child.”
“You’ll be very, very sorry Alex! You’ll rue the day you met that manipulative little tramp!”
With a low growl I didn’t even know I possessed I said, “You can call me what you like. Do not ever refer to my child as a “brat” again, or his mother as anything other than the beautiful lady she is.” Before she was able to spew any more ugliness, I hung up. Strangely, I felt better than I had in a very long time.
VICTORIA
The ambulance delivered me to the emergency room and from there I was taken to the OB/GYN wing of the hospital. A lady with a clipboard came and checked me in and I did the best I could answering her questions between my labor pains. When I finished with her, an elastic strap with a fetal monitor on it was attached around my abdomen. The nurse started an IV in my hand and took my vital signs.
“Take deeper breaths, honey,” she said. I tried. It was hard to breathe when your insides felt like they were being ripped out. She took the oxygen sensor reading again and still not satisfied she turned on a small oxygen tank and put the tubes in my nose and said, “Just relax and breathe normally.” Sure, relax… right. I wonder if she’d ever experienced labor. I wasn’t even that far into it and I was sure that there was going to be no relaxing for me.
After she did all of that, she put on her gloves and said, “We’re going to see if you’re dilated.” My feet were put into the dreaded stirrups and she did her checking. It was almost as uncomfortable as the labor pains. When she was finished, she snapped off her glove and said, “You’re only at about two. We’ll see how you progress. We might have to have you walk for a while to speed things along.”
Walking sounded like torture at the moment. My belly seized up into another pain and this one traveled across my back. The nurse watched me and looked at the monitor. “They’re about five minutes apart. They’ll get closer as you progress and you’ll dilate more. Are you going to want the epidural?”
“No,” I told her. “I want to do this all natural.” She raised an eyebrow but she didn’t say anything. She fussed around me a little more.
“Okay, I’ll be back in about half an hour. Press the call button if you need me before that. Is there anyone waiting that you would like me to send in?”
“No, no one thanks.” I hadn’t called Liz. There was no reason for her to leave work and sit here worried. I would call her after.
“Maybe I could call someone for you? Dad?”
Dad is in Belize with his wife. “No thank you,” I said, simply. Her eyes looked sad, but I’m sure she’d seen it before. She left and suddenly I was alone. I had another terrible cramp and I realized that the little man was trying to tell me that I was wrong. I wasn’t alone and after today, I never would be again. After the cramp passed I rubbed my belly and said, “You and me, kid. We can do this. We’re going to be okay.”
ALEXANDER
The flight seemed to take forever. It was almost a five hours. I wondered if I would get there in time, or if the baby would already be here. I wondered how much danger the baby was in by being a month early. I kept thinking about her going through this all alone. I could hardly stand the thought of it. All I knew of having a baby was what I’d seen in the movies and on television, but it looked very painful. No one should be alone in that kind of pain. Vicki shouldn’t be alone… in pain or not. I was going to do whatever I had to do once I got there, to make sure it never happened again.
I took out my laptop and typed in: premature labor and delivery. I read through a lot of medical sites. None of them seemed to worry much about a baby that was born at thirty-five weeks. It seemed that everything major would be developed and working by that time, the major concern would be weight and developmental milestones. After that, I read through some of the testimonials of people who had children born premature. One woman who’d had her baby at thirty-five weeks noted that at that point the child wasn’t even considered premature, but “pre-term.” She said he was four years old now and keeping up with his peers in both his growth and his development.
Another mother said her son was only three pounds at birth. The doctors thought he would be small and sickly most of his life. He’s fifteen now, she said and over six foot tall. Reading all of that made me feel better. It also made me feel strange. I knew I was getting attached to the idea of having a son. I just hadn’t realized how attached.