Chapter 8: The Baby Comes Early
Theo typed back: *I'm having coffee with a friend.
Talk later.*
He set the phone face-down.
"She knows," I said.
"She suspects.
There's a difference." He didn't look rattled, but something had shifted in his posture.
"I need to go see her today instead of next week.
Before this hardens."
We left the coffee shop twenty minutes later.
He gave me his number and told me to text if anything changed.
I drove home feeling, for the first time in three days, that I was not entirely alone in this.
That feeling lasted until 2:17 the next morning.
My phone rang.
Daniel.
"Mom." His voice was tight and fast.
"Megan's water broke.
We're at the hospital.
It's three weeks early — they're saying it's fine, the baby's fine, but it's happening now."
I sat up in the dark.
"I'm coming."
"Mom—"
"I'm not coming to fight, Daniel.
I'm coming to be in the waiting room.
I won't go anywhere I'm not invited.
But I am not sitting at home alone while my grandchild is born."
A pause.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay.
Room 4, labor and delivery.
Just — please keep it calm."
"I will."
I dressed in four minutes.
I drove carefully because my hands wanted to shake and I wouldn't let them.
The hospital waiting room was beige and bright and smelled like coffee from a machine that had been running since midnight.
I sat in a chair near the window and I waited.
At 4:30, Theo walked in.
He saw me and came straight over.
He looked like he'd also dressed in a hurry.
"She called you?" I asked.
"Daniel did.
Megan doesn't know I'm here yet." He sat down next to me.
"How are you?"
"Terrified and trying not to show it."
"Same."
We sat together in the waiting room, two people who had known each other for less than twenty-four hours, connected by the same woman and the same impossible situation and the same child who was making his or her way into the world down the hall.
At 5:52 a.m., Daniel appeared in the doorway.
He was wearing a paper gown over his clothes and he was crying, which he had not done in front of me since he was fourteen years old.
"It's a girl," he said.
"She's perfect.
Seven pounds even.
They're both okay."
I pressed my hand over my mouth.
Theo stood up and put his arm around Daniel's shoulders.
"Can I see Megan?" Theo asked.
"Yeah.
Yeah, she's asking for you."
Theo looked at me.
I shook my head slightly.
Not yet.
He nodded and followed Daniel down the hall.
I sat back down.
A girl.
I had a granddaughter.
I sat in that waiting room chair and I let myself feel it — all of it, the joy and the grief and the fear and the love — and I didn't try to manage any of it.
Forty minutes later, Theo came back alone.
He sat down next to me.
"How is she?" I asked.
"Tired.
Happy.
Scared in the way new mothers are." He paused.
"I talked to her."
"About me?"
"About everything." He looked at his hands.
"She cried.
She said she doesn't actually hate you.
She said she's terrified of turning into Diane and she's terrified of letting someone in who might hurt her and she doesn't know how to tell the difference anymore."
My throat tightened.
"What did you say?"
"I said that was the most honest thing she'd said to me in two years." He looked up.
"And then I asked her if she wanted her daughter to grow up watching her mother push away everyone who tried to love her."
The waiting room was quiet.
"She didn't answer," he said.
"But she didn't throw me out either."
Daniel appeared again in the doorway.
He looked at me for a long moment.
May you like
"Mom," he said.
"Do you want to meet her?"
