Chapter 9: The Long Drive and the Running Man
The soup was still cold in the middle.
Amira had reheated it twice already, and both times the microwave had dinged before the broth was hot enough, leaving her with a bowl of lukewarm lentils and a growing irritation she couldn't justify. She stirred it with a spoon and watched the steam rise in thin, pathetic ribbons.
Seven o'clock. He'd said ten. He'd said it that morning with his toothbrush in his mouth and his scrubs already on, standing in the bathroom doorway looking at her like he wanted to apologize for something he hadn't done yet.
"Full roster," he'd said. "And I've got a gallbladder at six."
"Okay."
"Amira."
"I said okay."
"You're doing the thing."
"What thing?"
"The thing where you say okay and mean something else."
She'd handed him his coffee and kissed his cheek and told him she was fine, she was always fine, and he'd looked at her for a second too long before he left. That was eight hours ago.
Now she stood in the kitchen with one hand on the counter and the other on her lower back, where the ache had settled in sometime around five and hadn't left. Her feet were swollen. Her wedding ring didn't fit anymore, so she wore it on a chain around her neck, and the chain had left a red mark on her skin from where she'd been tugging at it without thinking.
Thirty-seven weeks. The doctor had said any day now, with twins, and had said it like he was delivering good news instead of a threat.
The soup wasn't working.
She dumped it back in the pot and turned on the stove, because standing was easier than sitting and doing something was easier than waiting, and she was reaching for the salt when she felt it — a strange, internal popping, like a knuckle cracking somewhere deep inside her body.
She froze.
Then the water came.
It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't the movies. It was just a sudden, warm, unmistakable rush that soaked through her leggings and pooled on the kitchen tile, and Amira stood there with her hand still on the salt shaker and thought, very clearly: oh.
She set the salt down.
She turned off the stove.
She looked at the clock — 7:04 — and then at the puddle on the floor, and then at her phone on the counter, and then she picked up her phone and called Zayn.
Voicemail.
She left a message that she didn't remember leaving, something about water and coming home, and then she called the clinic.
"Dr. Haddad's office, how can I help you?"
"This is his wife. I need to speak to him."
"One moment, please."
The hold music was some soft jazz nonsense that she normally wouldn't have minded, but right now it felt like sandpaper against her nerves. She counted the seconds. Forty-two. Forty-three.
"Ma'am? I'm sorry, Dr. Haddad is in with a patient. Can I take a message?"
"Tell him his wife is in labor."
A pause.
"Of course. I'll — I'll get him the message as soon as he's out."
Amira hung up.
She called again ten minutes later. Voicemail. She called again at 7:30. Voicemail. She texted him: Water broke. She texted him: Contractions starting. She texted him: I'm okay.
Then she put the phone down and got on the floor.
The rug in the living room was the only soft thing in the house that wasn't the couch, and the couch was too high, wrong angle, made her back scream. So she knelt on the rug with her forehead pressed into the seat cushion and breathed the way the prenatal class had taught her — in through the nose, out through the mouth, long and slow and steady.
The first contraction hit at 7:40.
It wasn't like the Braxton Hicks she'd been having for weeks, those gentle tightening sensations that came and went like waves lapping at the shore. This was different. This was a fist closing around her entire abdomen and squeezing until she couldn't think, couldn't speak, couldn't do anything but press her face into the cushion and ride it out.
It lasted forty-five seconds.
She came up gasping.
"Okay," she said to the empty room. "Okay. That's fine. We're fine."
She checked her phone. Nothing from Zayn.
The second contraction came seven minutes later.
Between them, she packed. Not logically — she'd had a bag ready for two weeks, sitting by the door with tiny folded onesies and nursing pads and a folder of paperwork. But the bag was downstairs and she was upstairs, and going up and down the stairs felt like climbing a mountain, so she just added things to it as she thought of them. Phone charger. Snacks. The stupid affirmation cards Zayn had printed off the internet because he thought she'd find them funny, and she had, and she wanted them now even though she hated them.
Contraction. Kneel. Breathe. Up.
Text: Contractions 7 min.
Text: I'm okay.
Text: I love you.
She didn't know if he was seeing them. She didn't know if his phone was in his locker or his pocket or on the counter at the nurses' station. She just kept sending them, one after another, because it was the only thing she could do that felt like reaching for him.
By nine, the contractions were five minutes apart and lasting a full minute, and she'd stopped being able to talk through them.
By nine-thirty, they were three minutes apart, and she was on her hands and knees in the hallway with her forehead on the floor, and she knew — the way you know things in your body before your brain catches up — that she needed to go.
She called Zayn one more time.
Voicemail.
"Hey," she said, and her voice cracked in the middle of the word. "I'm going to the hospital. I'm — I'm okay, the babies are okay, I just — I can't wait anymore. Room 312. I'll see you there. I love you. I love you so much. Okay. Bye."
She hung up.
Then she stood up, and she grabbed the bag, and she waddled to the car.
The garage was cold. February cold, the kind that got into your bones and stayed there. She held onto the wall for support, one hand on the concrete, the other clamped around the strap of her bag, and she made it to the driver's side door and stared at it for a long moment.
She hadn't driven herself anywhere in months. Zayn drove. Zayn always drove. Her belly didn't fit behind the wheel anymore, and the seat was pushed all the way back and it still wasn't enough, and she had to wedge herself in with her knees splayed wide and her back pressed flat against the seat.
She started the engine.
The radio came on — some pop song she didn't recognize — and she turned it off immediately because the noise felt like an assault.
Then she pulled out of the garage.
The streets were mostly empty. That was the only mercy. She drove with both hands on the wheel and her teeth clenched and her eyes fixed on the road, counting between contractions, counting between streetlights, counting the blocks until the hospital.
At the red light on Königstraße, a contraction hit that made her vision go white at the edges.
She gripped the wheel and breathed through her teeth and said, out loud, to no one: "You're fine. You're fine. You're fine."
The light turned green.
She drove.
The hospital parking garage was a nightmare. She circled twice before she found a spot, and then she sat there for a full minute with her forehead on the steering wheel, waiting for the contraction to pass, waiting for her body to give her enough of a break to move.
Then she got out.
The walk to the entrance was maybe two hundred meters. It took her fifteen minutes.
She stopped every fifty steps. She leaned against pillars and benches and once, humiliatingly, a stranger's car, and she breathed and she waited and she kept going. A security guard asked if she needed help. She said no. She said she was fine. She said thank you.
The maternity ward was on the third floor.
The elevator took forever.
When the doors opened, a nurse was already waiting — someone must have called ahead, or maybe they just knew, maybe women in labor had a look about them that was unmistakable. She was young, maybe twenty-five, with a ponytail and kind eyes and a hand that reached out immediately.
"Mrs. Haddad?"
"Yes."
"Let's get you into a room."
They put her in a gown. They hooked her up to monitors. The straps were tight around her belly, and for a moment she wanted to rip them off, wanted to be free of the pressure, but then the sound came through the speakers and she stopped wanting anything at all.
Two heartbeats.
Two distinct, steady, galloping heartbeats, one slightly faster than the other, filling the room like a drumline. Like a song. Like the most beautiful thing she'd ever heard.
She started crying.
"Both strong," the nurse said. "Both good."
"Okay."
"You're doing great."
"Okay."
"Dad on his way?"
Amira laughed, wet and broken. "I hope so."
She asked for her phone. The nurse handed it to her, and she typed with shaking thumbs: At the hospital. Room 312.
Then she put the phone down and closed her eyes and let the monitors sing to her.
Twenty minutes later, the door slammed open.
She didn't see him at first — just heard the impact, the sound of something hitting the wall, and then footsteps, fast and heavy and desperate, and then he was there.
Still in scrubs. Still wearing his badge. His hair was wild and his face was flushed and he was breathing like he'd run a marathon, and he crossed the room in three strides and gathered her against his chest.
She felt his whole body trembling.
"I'm here," he said into her hair. "I'm here, I'm sorry, I'm here."
"You're here."
"I'm so sorry. I didn't see my phone, I didn't—the surgery, and then I came out and I had seventeen missed calls and I—"
"Zayn."
"I ran from the parking garage. I think I knocked over a wheelchair."
"Zayn."
He pulled back and looked at her. His eyes were red. His hands were still shaking.
"I'm here," he said again.
"I know."
"I'm sorry I wasn't—"
"I know." She reached up and touched his face. "I'm okay. We're okay. The babies are okay."
He looked at the monitors. At the two heartbeats. At her.
"Twins," he said, like he was reminding himself.
"Twins."
"Two of them."
"Two."
He laughed — a strange, cracked, exhausted sound — and pressed his forehead to hers.
"We're going to have two of everything," he said. "Two cribs. Two car seats. Two college funds."
"Two of everything," she agreed.
"That's insane."
"Completely."
"We can't afford this."
"We definitely can't."
He kissed her. Soft, quick, desperate.
"I love you," he said. "I love you so much. I'm never leaving my phone in my locker again. I'm never — I'm going to quit my job. I'm going to become a stay-at-home dad and follow you around with a phone in my hand for the rest of our lives."
"You'd be terrible at that."
"I'd be amazing at that."
"You'd reorganize the pantry every day."
"That's called being helpful."
She laughed, and then the laugh turned into a gasp, because another contraction was rolling through her, hard and fast and undeniable, and Zayn's hand found hers and held on.
"Breathe," he said. "Breathe with me. In through the nose."
She breathed.
"Out through the mouth."
She breathed.
"Good," he said. "Good. You're doing so good."
When it passed, she slumped back against the pillows and looked at him. He was still in his scrubs. His badge was crooked. There was a stain on his sleeve that looked like coffee.
"You look terrible," she said.
"You look beautiful."
"Liar."
"Absolutely not." He kissed her hand. "You're the most beautiful person I've ever seen, and I'm not just saying that because you're currently squeezing my fingers hard enough to break them."
She looked down. She was, in fact, squeezing his fingers hard enough to break them.
She let go.
"Sorry."
"Don't be." He flexed his hand. "I've got two of these. I can spare one."
The nurse came back in, checked the monitors, checked Amira, said things were progressing well, said the doctor would be in soon, said everything looked good. Zayn asked questions — real questions, medical questions, the kind that came from years of training and a lifetime of caring — and the nurse answered them patiently, and Amira lay there with her eyes half-closed and listened to the two of them talk about her body like it was a case they were both working on.
It felt good. It felt like being held.
When the nurse left, Zayn pulled a chair up to the bed and sat down and took her hand again, gentler this time.
"Your message," he said. "The last one."
"What about it?"
"You said you loved me."
"I do."
"You said it three times."
"I meant it three times."
He looked at their hands. At her fingers wrapped around his, still pale from the pressure, still trembling a little.
"I don't deserve you," he said.
"Stop."
"I'm serious."
"So am I." She turned her head on the pillow to look at him. "You ran from the parking garage. You knocked over a wheelchair."
"I did."
"You're still wearing your badge."
"I forgot to take it off."
"You forgot to take off your badge because you were running to me."
He didn't say anything.
"That's the whole thing," she said. "That's you. That's why I married you."
He leaned forward and rested his forehead on their joined hands.
"Two babies," he said.
"Two."
"We're going to be so tired."
"So tired."
"We're going to fight about who gets up at 3 a.m."
"We're going to fight about everything."
"I'm going to love you anyway."
"I know."
Another contraction came, and this one was different — lower, deeper, a pressure that felt less like a fist and more like a freight train. She gripped his hand and breathed and didn't make a sound.
When it passed, she looked at him.
"I think," she said, "this is happening soon."
He looked at the monitors. At the numbers. At the door, where the doctor would come through any minute, where the nurses would come, where the whole machinery of it would start moving and not stop.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay?"
"Okay." He stood up and kissed her forehead and held her face in both hands. "Let's have some babies."