“You had a twinge?”
“A surge.”
“Twinge” and “surge” and “pressure” were the euphemisms that a lot of the people in the natural childbirth community had been using for contractions. And Josie got it, she understood. It was a way to train the mind to think of the pain differently. “Searing, fibrous, ripping pain that makes you want to eat morphine-laden donuts and drop acid to avoid it” wouldn’t make anyone want to have a baby, right?
So surge it was.
“All right. It wasn’t a surge,” Laura admitted. “It feels like somebody is reaching into my belly, and twisting it, wringing it like you would wring a wet shirt.”
“And how long did that last?”
Laura glared at her. “You’re trying to figure this out, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Time to be blunt, Josie thought.
“I’m not in labor,” Laura said.
“And I’m not eighty-three,” Madge said as she walked by.
Ambling out the front door, Josie kept Laura on track, one step at a time. “Let’s just go for a walk. You’ve got plenty of water in you, plenty of food in you, and a walk will help you stretch out and just be—uh, feel more pleasant.”
“Okay.” Laura perked up. “And we can talk about the business.”
“The business,” Josie said.
“Yes.”
“The weirdo threesome matching business that you want me to run.”
“You were listening,” Laura said with relief.
“Oh, I was listening. That doesn’t mean I agree.” She said it lightly, though.
Her sarcasm meter had to be dialed down to zero as far as Laura was concerned. So many snappy comebacks, so many wisecracks that just pressed against her lips and teeth. She wanted to make bad, crude jokes about threesomes and dating services. About what was already happening and what was coming. But she couldn’t. Her own coping strategies had to be put on a back burner for her friend.
Josie calculated out lead time. Mike would need a minimum of a half-hour to forty-five minutes to get into the city to reach the nearest hospital that they could choose in an emergency. This didn’t seem to be an emergent situation, though—not yet. Laura’s contractions were coming at a steady pace, at ever-decreasing intervals, and in ever-increasing duration. By the time it really was time, there would still be plenty of time for Mike and Dylan to get there.
Early May in the Boston area was a crap shoot. It could be seventy degrees and sunny, or thirty-five degrees, overcast with the lingering threat of very rare snow still in the air. A few years before, one winter had seemed to stretch into three, culminating in a Mother’s Day sprinkling of flakes. This year, though, May had begun spring in earnest. The baby would be born in the perfect month for new beginnings.
“Did you ever notice how blue the sky is, Josie?” Laura asked as they waddled along the city streets. Passersby shot Laura some very nervous looks, especially the moment her hands cradled the bottom of her enormous abdomen and she shouted, “Oh my God! Make it stop!” If it weren’t really happening it would have made a fabulous prank. Why didn’t we try this before? Josie wondered. A pillow and a loose dress and they could have had some fun poking at worried passersby.
This, though, was all too real.
Crouched down in a near-fetal position, amazing even Josie with her dexterity and ability to limbo as low as she limboed, Laura defied gravity as she squatted, the contraction overwhelming her. A placid look and long, even breaths in and out attested to her hypnosis training, but Josie wondered: If it took this much effort to control one of the earlier, deeper surges, what would a tsunami feel like?
Trying to inject a little humor into the situation, Josie knelt down and sang the limbo song, which yielded only a prompt, ferocious glare from a thoroughly unamused Laura.
“I don’t think I practiced my breathing well enough,” Laura moaned, the sound of her voice shifting from a groan to a whimper as the contraction peaked.
“Just take a deep breath in,” Josie intoned, breathing for her, providing an example. Laura followed and then breathed out—and soon the contraction subsided. Josie’s mental math began a steady chatter of alert inside her head. Time to assume they were going in.
She knew that Laura knew this, that forty-five seconds to a minute, five minutes apart meant that you might want to consider heading to the hospital. She also knew, however, that if she suggested to Laura that they head off to the hospital, Laura would freak. And so, rather than poking the laboring bear, she decided that the most prudent action would be to play along with Laura’s fantasy.
Walking with as much purpose and gusto as she could muster, Laura managed to get a few leg lengths away, her rounded ass enormous now and stretched by the baby, by the added fluid, by the pregnancy—and not just a few trips to Jeddy’s. But Laura’s time in the gym before the pregnancy showed; Josie still had to hustle to catch up.
“I think we can do a two-mile loop. What do you think, Josie?” Laura said, walking so fast that Josie almost burst into laughter at the level of delusion that her friend was in.
This baby was coming now, and if Laura wasn’t ready, nature didn’t give a shit. Josie sure as hell wasn’t ready. The last thing she needed was to be reminded how far behind she was when it came to love, and relationships, and being a grown-up. Never one to dwell on the long term, she found a balance in life that involved picking a goal, focusing singlemindedly until it was accomplished, and only figuring out how she felt about that goal afterward. Then squaring herself toward the next goal, and moving on from there.
It's how she had escaped her little town in middle-of-nowhere, Ohio, full of people who lived in trailers and who thought that a high school diploma was a sign of an elite education, a few, though, choosing college. What others thought of as their first two years of college had taken her four, going to classes part-time at the local branch of a smaller state university and then finally transferring to the school where she and Laura had met. Being the poorest kid was something that she was accustomed to but ready to put behind her, so her first goal had been finishing college and getting a degree in something useful, something highly employable. Nursing had been it. Her second goal had been to never, ever have to move back to a place where Friday night fun meant boozing it up at the local VFW and a fancy dinner involved cloth napkins and a higher cut of prime rib, with bits of bacon in the green beans they served on the side.