Nineteen Minutes Read online

  The catharsis ended the moment Alex handed the cashier her credit card and heard Logan Rourke's voice in her mind. Bleeding heart, he'd called her.

  Well. He should know.

  He'd been the first to rip it to pieces.

  *

  All right, Alex thought calmly. This is what it's like to die.

  Another contraction ripped through her, bullets strafing metal.

  Two weeks ago, at her thirty-seven-week visit, Alex and Lacy had talked about pain medication. What are your feelings about it? Lacy had asked, and Alex had made a joke: I think it should be imported from Canada. She'd told Lacy she didn't plan to use pain medication, that she wanted a natural childbirth, that it couldn't possibly hurt that much.

  It did.

  She thought back to all those birthing classes Lacy had forced her to take--the ones where she'd been partnered with Lacy, because everyone else had a husband or boyfriend assisting them. They'd shown pictures of women in labor, women with their rubbery faces and gritted teeth, women making prehistoric noises. Alex had scoffed at this. They are showing the worst-case scenarios, she'd told herself. Different people have different tolerance for pain.

  The next contraction twisted down her spine like a cobra, wrapped itself around her belly, and sank its fangs. Alex fell hard on her knees on the kitchen floor.

  In her classes, she'd learned that prelabor could go on for twelve hours or more.

  By then, if she wasn't dead, she'd shoot herself.

  *

  When Lacy had been a midwife in training, she'd spent months walking around with a little centimeter ruler, measuring. Now, after years on the job, she could eyeball a coffee cup and know that it was nine centimeters across, that the orange beside the phone at the nurses' station was an eight. She withdrew her fingers from between Alex's legs and snapped off the latex glove. "You're two centimeters," she said, and Alex burst into tears.

  "Only two? I can't do this," Alex panted, twisting her spine to get away from the pain. She had tried to hide the discomfort behind the mask of competence that she usually wore, only to realize that in her hurry, she must have left it behind somewhere.

  "I know you're disappointed," Lacy said. "But here's the thing--you're doing fine. We know that when people are fine at two centimeters they will be fine at eight, too. Let's take it one contraction at a time."

  Labor was hard for everyone, Lacy knew, but especially hard for the women who had expectations and lists and plans, because it was never the way you thought it would be. In order to labor well, you had to let your body take over, instead of your mind. You revealed yourself, even the parts you had forgotten about. For someone like Alex, who was so used to being in control, this could be devastating. Success would come only at the expense of losing her cool, at the risk of turning into someone she did not want to be.

  *

  Lacy helped Alex off the bed and guided her toward the whirlpool room. She dimmed the lights, flicked on the instrumental music, and untied Alex's robe. Alex was past the point of modesty; at this moment, Lacy figured she'd disrobe in front of an entire male prison population if it meant the contractions would stop.

  "In you go," Lacy said, letting Alex lean on her as she sank into the whirlpool. There was a Pavlovian response to warm water; sometimes just stepping into the tub could bring down a person's heart rate.

  "Lacy," Alex gasped, "you have to promise . . ."

  "Promise what?"

  "You won't tell her. The baby."

  Lacy reached for Alex's hand. "Tell her what?"

  Alex closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against the lip of the tub. "That at first I didn't want her."

  Before she could even answer, Lacy watched tension grip Alex. "Breathe through this one," she said. Blow the pain away from you, blow it between your hands, picture it as the color red. Come up on your hands and knees. Pour yourself inward, like sand in an hourglass. Go to the beach, Alex. Lie on the sand and see how warm the sun is.

  Lie to yourself until it's true.

  *

  When you're hurting deeply, you go inward. Lacy had seen this a thousand times. Endorphins kick in--the body's natural morphine--and carry you somewhere far away, where the pain can't find you. Once, a client who'd been abused had dissociated so massively that Lacy was worried she would not be able to reach her again and bring her back in time to push. She had wound up singing to the woman in Spanish, a lullaby.

  For three hours now, Alex had regained her composure, thanks to the anesthesiologist who'd given her an epidural. She'd slept for a while; she'd played hearts with Lacy. But now the baby had dropped, and she was starting to bear down. "Why is it hurting again?" she asked, her voice escalating.

  "That's how an epidural works. If we dose it up, you can't push."

  "I can't have a baby," Alex blurted out. "I'm not ready."

  "Well," Lacy said. "Maybe we ought to talk about that."

  "What was I thinking? Logan was right; I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I'm not a mother, I'm a lawyer. I don't have a boyfriend, I don't have a dog . . . I don't even have a houseplant I haven't killed. I'm not even sure how to put on a diaper."

  "The little cartoon characters go on the front," Lacy said. She took Alex's hand and brought it down between her legs, to where the baby was crowning.

  Alex jerked her hand away. "Is that . . ."

  "Yeah."

  "It's coming?"

  "Ready or not."

  Another contraction started. "Oh, Alex, I can see the eyebrows . . ." Lacy eased the baby out of the birth canal, keeping the head flexed. "I know how much it burns . . . there's her chin . . . beautiful . . ." Lacy wiped off the baby's face, suctioned the mouth. She flipped the cord over the baby's neck and looked up at her friend. "Alex," she said, "let's do this together."

  Lacy guided Alex's shaking hands to cup the infant's head. "Stay like that; I'm going to push down to get the shoulder . . ."

  As the baby sluiced into Alex's hands, Lacy let go. Sobbing, relieved, Alex brought the small, squirming body against her chest. As always, Lacy was taken by how available a newborn is--how present. She rubbed the small of the baby's back and watched the newborn's hazy blue eyes focus first on her mother. "Alex," Lacy said. "She's all yours."

  Nobody wants to admit to this, but bad things will keep on happening. Maybe that's because it's all a chain, and a long time ago someone did the first bad thing, and that led someone else to do another bad thing, and so on. You know, like that game where you whisper a sentence into someone's ear, and that person whispers it to someone else, and it all comes out wrong in the end.

  But then again, maybe bad things happen because it's the only way we can keep remembering what good is supposed to look like.

  Hours After

  Once, at a bar, Patrick's best friend, Nina, had asked what the worst thing he'd ever seen was. He'd answered truthfully--back when he was in Maine, and a guy had committed suicide by tying himself with wire to the train tracks; the train had literally cleaved him in two. There had been blood and body parts everywhere; seasoned officers reached the crime scene and started throwing up in the scrub brush. Patrick had walked away to gain his composure and found himself staring down at the man's severed head, the mouth still round with a silent scream.

  That was no longer the worst thing Patrick had ever seen.

  There were still students streaming out of Sterling High as teams of EMTs began canvassing the building to take care of the wounded. Dozens of kids had minor cuts and bruises from the mass exodus, scores were hyperventilating or hysterical, and even more were in shock. But Patrick's first priority was taking care of the shooting victims, who lay sprawled on the floor from the cafeteria to the gymnasium, a bloody trail that chronicled the shooter's movements.

  The fire alarms were still ringing, and the safety sprinklers had created a running river in the hallway. Beneath the spray, two EMTs bent over a girl who'd been shot in the right shoulder. "Let's get her on a sled," the medic sai