Jodi Picoult - Harvesting the Heart

Two hours later, I knew something was not quite right. My water had not broken, not the way they’d said it would in Lamaze class, but a thin trickle of fluid ran down my legs every time I sat up. “Nicholas,” I said, my voice trembling, “I’m leaking.”

Nicholas rolled over and pulled his pillow over his head. “It’s probably a tear in the amniotic sac,” he murmured. “You’re a whole month early. Go back to sleep, Paige.”

I grabbed the pillow and threw it across the room, fear ripping through me like the violence of winter. “I am not a patient, goddammit,” I said. “I am your wife.” And I leaned forward, starting to cry.

As I padded toward the bathroom again, a slow burn crept from my back around my belly and settled deep under my skin. It didn’t hurt, not really, not yet, but I knew this was the thing the nurse at Lamaze could not describe-a contraction. I held on to the Corian counter and stared into the bathroom mirror. Another gripping knot shook me, hands deep inside me that seemed to be clutching from the inside, as if they would surely pull me into myself. It made me think of a science trick Sister Bertrice had done when I was in eleventh grade-she’d blown smoke into a Pepsi can until none of the oxygen was left and then capped the top with a rubber stopper, and when she lightly touched the side of the can it crumpled, collapsing just like that. “Nicholas,” I whispered, “I need help.”

While Nicholas was on the phone with my doctor’s answering service, I started to pack a bag. It was an entire month before my due date. But even if it had been May, I knew I wouldn’t have had a bag packed. That would have been admw i t‡itting the inevitable, and right up till the last minute I did not truly believe that I was destined to be a mother.

Lamaze class had taught me that early labor lasted for six to twelve hours; that contractions started irregularly and happened hours apart. Lamaze had taught me that if I breathed the right way, in -two-three-four, out -two-three-four, and pictured a clean white beach, I could surely control the pain. But my labor had come out of nowhere. My contractions were less than five minutes apart. And nothing, not even the previous contraction, could prepare me for the pain of the next one.

Nicholas stuffed my bathrobe, two T-shirts, my shampoo, and his toothbrush into a brown paper grocery bag. He knelt beside me on the bathroom floor. “Jesus Christ,” he said, “you’re only three minutes apart.”

Oh, it hurt, and I couldn’t get comfortable in the car, and I had started bleeding, and with every grasp of the fist inside me I gripped Nicholas’s hand. The rain whipped around the car, screaming as loud as I did. Nicholas turned on the radio and sang to me, making up words to the songs he did not know. He leaned out the window at the empty intersections, yelling, “My wife’s in labor!” and drove like a madman through the blinking red lights.

At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, he parked in a fire zone and helped me out of the car. He was cursing about the weather, the condition of the roads, the fact that Mass General had no maternity ward. The rain was a sheet, soaking through my clothes and plastering them to me, so that I could clearly see every tightening of my belly. He pulled me into the emergency admitting area, where a fat black woman sat picking her teeth. “She’s preregistered,” he barked. “Prescott. Paige.”

I could not see the woman. I twisted in a plastic seat, wrapping my arms around my abdomen. Suddenly a face loomed-hers-round and dark, with yellow tiger eyes. “Honey,” she said, “do you have to push?”

I couldn’t speak, so I nodded my head, and she jumped to attention, demanding a wheelchair and an orderly. Nicholas seemed to relax. I was brought into one of the older labor and delivery suites. “What about those modern rooms,” Nicholas demanded. “The ones with nice drapes and bedspreads and all that?”

I could have given birth in a cave on a bed of pine needles; I did not care. “I’m sorry, Doctor,” the orderly said, “we’re full up. Something about the atmospheric pressure of a hurricane makes women’s waters break.”

Within minutes, Nicholas stood to the right of me, a labor nurse to my left. Her name was Noreen, and I trusted her more than my own husband, who had saved the lives of hundreds. She rustled the sheet between my legs. “You’re ten centimeters,” she said. “It’s show time.”

She stepped out of the room, leaving me alone with Nicholas. My eyes followed the door. “It’s okay, Paige. She’s going to get Dr. Thayer.” Nicholas put his hand on my knee and gently massaged the muscles. I could hear the steady rasp of my breathing, the hot pulse of my blood. I turned to Nicholas, and with the clarity and clairvoyance that pain brings, I realized I did not know this man at all and that the worst was yet to come. “Don’t you touch me,” I whispees.€ I red.

Nicholas jumped away, and I looked into his eyes. They were ringed gray, surprised and hurt. For the first time in my life, I found myself thinking, Well, good.

Dr. Thayer blustered into the room, her scrubs flying untied behind her. “So you couldn’t wait another month, Paige, eh?”

She squatted down in front of me, and I was vaguely aware of her fingers probing and flattening and stretching. I wanted to tell her I could wait, that I had been willing to wait the rest of my life rather than actually face this child, but suddenly that was not the truth. Suddenly I just wanted to be free of the throbbing weight, the splitting pain.

Nicholas braced one of my legs and Noreen braced the other while I pushed. I felt for sure I would crack in two. Noreen held a mirror between my legs. “Here’s the head, Paige,” she said. “Do you want to feel it?”

She took my hand and stretched it downward, but I pulled away. “I want you to get it out of me,” I cried.

I pushed and pushed, knowing all the blood in my body was flooding my face, burning behind my eyes and my cheeks. Finally, I sank back against the raised table. “I can’t,” I whimpered. “I really can’t do this.”

Nicholas leaned close to me to whisper something, but what I heard was the muffled conversation between Noreen and Dr. Thayer. Something about a special care team, about the baby not coming fast enough now. Then I remembered the books I had read when I was first pregnant. The lungs. At the end of the eighth month, the lungs have just finished development.

Even if he ever got here, my baby might not be able to breathe.

“One more time,” Dr. Thayer said, and I struggled up and bore down with all the energy I could summon. Quite clearly I could feel the nose, a tiny pointed nose, pressed against the tight seal of my own flesh. Get out, I thought, and Dr. Thayer smiled up at me. “We’ve got the head,” she said.

After that it all came easily: the shoulders and the thick purple umbilical cord, the long skinny creature that lay, howling, between my legs. It was a boy. In spite of what I knew, I had hoped till this last moment that I would be having a girl. For some reason it still came as a shock. I stared at him, unfolded, wondering how he had ever fit inside. Doctors took him away from me, and Nicholas, who was one of them, followed.

It was at least a half hour before I got to touch my son. His lungs were pronounced perfect. He was thin but healthy. He had the familiar newborn features: flattened Indian face, dark rat hair, obsidian eyes. His toes curled under, plump like early peas. On his belly was a red birthmark that looked like a funky scribbling of the number twenty-two. “Must be the stamp of the guy who inspected him,” Nicholas said.

Nicholas kissed my forehead, staring at me with his wide-sky eyes, making me regret what I’d said before. “Four hours,” he said. “How considerate of you to finish all tyer€fy"he hard work in time for me to do my morning rotations.”