Chapter 5: Emergency Arrival
The car door shut with a rusted squeak, sealing them into a world of stale air and panic. Adam twisted the key; the Camaro’s engine coughed to life with a sound like shaking gravel in a can. He glanced over. Dixie was a statue, buckled into the passenger seat, her hands braced on the dashboard. Her knuckles were white. The braid he’d watched her re-tie with trembling fingers was already coming apart, blonde wisps stuck to her damp temples.
“Okay,” he said, more to himself than to her. He threw the car into drive. “Okay, we’re moving.”
The first few blocks were a study in brutal stillness. She didn’t make a sound. She just breathed, deep and controlled, in through her nose and out through pursed lips. The sunlight flashed through the cracked sunroof, illuminating the dust motes and the fine, golden hair on her forearms. She looked like she was concentrating on a difficult puzzle.
Then a low, vibrating hum started in her throat. It grew into a wordless groan that filled the small space of the car. Her body curled forward, the seatbelt biting into the monumental swell of her belly, straining against it.
“Fuck the belt,” she gasped, clawing at the strap.
“Don’t you dare,” Adam snapped, his eyes darting from the road to her and back. “Just hold on, Dixie. Breathe through it. We’re ten minutes out.”
“I can’t breathe through this,” she snarled. The groan deepened, turning into a raw, open-mouthed pant. Her head fell back against the headrest, her throat working. The contraction owned her completely. He could see the rigid outline of her uterus through her thin sweater, a topographic map of agony. It lasted an eternity. Seventy seconds by the clock on the dash. When it released, she sucked in a shattered breath and turned her face to the window, her cheek pressed to the cool glass. A single tear traced a clean line through the sweat.
“It’s not stopping,” she whispered. “The break… it’s not really a break anymore. It’s just… less.”
“We’re getting there.”
“It feels like it’s falling. Like everything is just… falling down.” Her voice was thin with terror. She shifted her weight, a clumsy, heavy movement, and a fresh, warm gush soaked into the passenger seat. The smell, clean and slightly metallic, mixed with the car’s old smells of weed and cheap air freshener.
“That’s okay,” he said, his own voice tight. “That’s just more fluid. It’s okay.”
“My body isn’t asking anymore, Adam,” she said, turning to look at him. Her eyes were huge, the blue almost swallowed by black. “It’s telling. It’s saying now.”
He pushed the accelerator, the car lurching forward. They hit a pothole. The jolt seemed to travel straight up through the chassis and into her pelvis.
She let out a sharp, wounded cry. “Oh, no. No, no, no.” Her hands flew between her legs. Her breath came in frantic little pants. “Something’s… something’s different. Something’s there.”
“What’s there? What do you mean?” He swerved around a slow-moving bus, his heart hammering against his ribs.
“I need to push.” The words were a quiet, horrified confession. “Adam, I need to push right now.”
“You can’t. You have to wait. Breathe. Pant. Like in the videos.” He was babbling.
“I can’t pant against this!” Her voice spiraled into a scream as another contraction seized her, no buildup, no warning, a total bodily hijacking. This one was different. It had a purpose. It was an expulsive force, a tectonic shift. She arched violently, her body lifting off the seat, held down only by the cursed seatbelt. A guttural roar ripped from her throat, shredding the last of her control. Her hand, flailing, found his thigh and gripped, her nails digging through the denim with a brutal, blind strength.
The car swerved. He righted it, his leg burning from her grasp. “Dixie, hold on! Just two more blocks!”
She wasn’t listening. Her world had narrowed to a single, overwhelming imperative. Her face was a rictus of strain, her lips pulled back from her teeth. She was bearing down, instinctively, helplessly, her body usurping all conscious thought.
“I’m pushing!” she shrieked, the sound muffled as she buried her face against her own shoulder. “I can’t stop it!”
He screeched the Camaro into the hospital parking lot, aiming for the Emergency Room awning. The world outside was a blur of concrete and reflective glass.
“Okay, we’re here! We’re stopping!” He slammed the car into park, the transmission groaning in protest.
She fell back against the seat, sobbing with relief, with terror. But the relief lasted only a second. Her body was already gathering for the next wave. She shook her head wildly, her hands pressing frantically between her legs. Her eyes, when she looked at him, held a primordial fear.
“Adam,” she whispered, the sound stark and clear in the sudden silence after the engine died. “Look.”
He unbuckled his own belt and leaned over, following her gaze. She had shoved her leggings and underwear down to her knees in the chaos. And there, between her blood-slicked thighs, bulging ominously, was a curve of something that was not her. A wet, dark cap of wrinkled flesh, maybe two inches wide, crowned with a matting of dark hair. It pulsed gently with the beat of her heart.
“Oh, fuck,” he breathed, the air leaving his lungs. “It’s crowning.”
The words made it real. Her scream this time was pure, undiluted panic. “GET IT OUT! GET IT OUT OF ME!” She arched again, that terrible, beautiful pushing arc, and he watched, hypnotized and horrified, as the tiny cap of skull advanced, stretching her impossibly wider, a slick, perfect circle of their child emerging into the afternoon light filtering through the dirty windshield.
He moved without thinking. He was out of the car, running around the hood, the asphalt hot under his thin soles. He yanked open her door. The sight was more shocking up close. The intimacy was brutal, public, and dazzling. He dropped to his knees on the asphalt, his hands hovering, unsure where to touch, what to do.
“Don’t push!” he begged. “Just breathe, baby, just pant!”
“I HAVE TO!” she roared, and her body obeyed her. The head pushed forward another half-inch with a grunting, animal sound from her. The stretching was mesmerising. Her tissue was thin, shiny, a dusky purple ring around that dark, wet hair.
A security guard inside the glass doors noticed. He pointed. Then he was running out, a walkie-talkie squawking.
Dixie panted, short and sharp, fighting the reflex with everything she had. Tears and sweat and snot ran down her face. “It burns,” she sobbed. “Adam, it burns like fire.”
“I know, I know,” he murmured, his hand finally settling on her knee, a point of contact. “They’re coming. Just hold on.”
But she couldn’t. The next urge was a tsunami. Her chin dropped to her chest, a deep, resonant groan building in her chest. The head surged forward, turning slightly, and all at once, it was out. A whole, perfect, tiny head rested in her perineum, face down, eyes tightly closed, lips a soft, blue-ish pout against her swollen flesh.
Time stopped.
Adam stared. The baby’s head was right there. Living. Real. Its ear was a tiny, perfect seashell pressed against Dixie’s thigh. A loop of cord, grey-blue and pulsing, was visible around the neck.
Dixie looked down, her cries ceasing. Her face transformed, wrath and fear dissolving into stunned wonder. “My baby,” she whispered.
Then chaos descended. Two nurses in blue scrubs and a man in green rushed out with a gurney. “Sir, step back!”
Adam stumbled to his feet, his knees popping. The professionals swarmed Dixie, their voices a blend of command and calm. “Okay, mama, we’ve got you. One more big push for the shoulders, okay? On the count of three.”
Dixie’s eyes found Adam’s over the shoulder of a nurse. She nodded, a fierce, determined set to her jaw. She bore down.
It was fast. With a slick, slippery rush, the rest of the tiny body slid out into the waiting hands of the man in green. A long, limp cord followed. There was a moment of suspended silence, the baby a bluish, mottled lump, unmoving.
Then a sharp slap. A gurgling, indignant cry pierced the air, thin and miraculous. The baby pinked up instantly, limbs flailing.
“It’s a girl,” the nurse said, smiling broadly as she laid the squirming, wet creature on Dixie’s heaving stomach.
Dixie’s hands came up, trembling violently, to hover over the tiny back. She didn’t touch her yet. She just stared, her mouth agape, breath coming in huge, shuddering sobs. “A girl,” she echoed, the words a prayer.
They were moving then, transferring Dixie and the baby onto the gurney, covering them with blankets. The baby, still attached by the cord, lay on Dixie’s chest, her cries settling into a disgruntled, hiccuping wail.
As they wheeled her away, Dixie’s hand shot out, grabbing Adam’s wrist. Her grip was weak now, exhausted. Her eyes, red-rimmed and exhausted, held his. She didn’t say thank you. She didn’t say anything. She just looked at him, and in that look was everything—the apartment, the couch, the car, the crowning—their entire compressed, terrifying, sublime history.
Then she was gone, swallowed by the automatic doors.
Adam stood alone in the parking lot, the sun beating down on his neck. The driver’s side door of his Camaro hung open. The passenger seat was a dark, soaked ruin. He could smell it from here—birth, and life, and the end of one world.
He slowly walked around to the passenger side and looked in. There, on the stained fabric, was a single, perfect, bloody smear.
He leaned against the hot metal of the car, pulled out a half-crushed cigarette from his pocket, and lit it with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. He didn’t go in. Not yet. He just stood there, smoking, watching the doors where she had disappeared, listening to the echo of that first cry still ringing in the silence of his own skull.