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10 Years Ago:
“Aaron, you have to stop the car. We’re not going to make it.” Gretchen Samuels hated the weakness and panic in her voice, but the pain ripping through her lower back made it difficult to speak any other way.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” her husband said. “I can’t stop.” In fact, he accelerated to a speed their twelve-year-old sedan certainly couldn’t handle.
As another labor pain tore through her, tears spilled from Gretchen’s eyes. She didn’t want to have her first child on the side of the road, miles from nurses and antiseptic and baby warmers. And medication. She really needed a fast-acting painkiller.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. Aaron hated living out on her granddad’s lavender farm, but the housing was cheap and he was almost done with his online securities degree. Their plans for a future in Seattle while he led the data security team at a top technology firm were months from coming to fruition.
“Don’t be sorry.” He glanced at her, and she disliked the panic in his eyes too, and the white-knuckle grip he had on the steering wheel certainly wasn’t comforting.
Her breath caught in her throat as it seemed like this baby was going to claw its way out of her no matter how much she willed the little girl to hold on a little longer.
“Call 911,” she said. “Please.” She must’ve infused the right amount of emotion into her voice, because Aaron slowed the car and eased it onto the gravel shoulder. He leapt from behind the wheel, left his door open, and sprinted around the front of the car.
“Let’s get you into the back.” He supported her—the way he’d been doing for the four years they’d been together—and helped her into the backseat before pulling out his phone and making the emergency call.
Gretchen’s pain eased with the new position, but it didn’t go away. She wondered if it ever would, or if this degree of agony would hover in her muscles like a ghost forever. “Hang on,” she whispered as she put her hand on her very pregnant belly. “Just a little while longer.”
“They’re on their way.” Aaron poked his head back inside the car. “They said to get any blankets, towels, napkins, anything we have. You’re supposed to stay lying down and try to relax.”
Gretchen couldn’t help the snort that escaped. “Relax?” She let her head fall back as she focused on the car’s ceiling. She hadn’t been able to relax for months, not since her stomach had grown so large she couldn’t see her toes. Simply getting up from the couch had grown increasingly difficult as the days had passed.
She hadn’t minded, because she and Aaron had wanted this baby more than anything. The tears that heated her eyes this time were from desperation. A shiver ran over her body as the wind snaked its way into the car.
“Aaron, can you close the doors?” She lifted her head but couldn’t see him anywhere. Fear flowed through her. “Aaron?”
The trunk slammed, and he came to the door closest to her head this time. “We don’t have a blanket in the trunk. I found this jacket though.” He balled it up and put it under her head before shrugging out of the one he was wearing too.
Gretchen steeled herself to deliver her baby and wrap it in her husband’s polar fleece. Her range of emotions felt ridiculous as a wave of injustice slammed into her. “Close the doors, please,” she said through tight teeth. “I’m cold.” Should she be cold? What if she was going into shock or something?
Her jaw worked against the rising terror as he complied, going around the car—which had all four doors open—and shutting the wind out before sealing himself behind the wheel again. Gretchen thought the silence in the car might be worse than the wind, and she didn’t want to bring her baby into the world under such a cloud of awkwardness.
“Remember when we first met?” she asked him, glad when his low, soft chuckle met her ears.
“You said my hair looked like a gorilla.”
She giggled too, though the motion made her stomach muscles tighten uncomfortably. She hitched in a breath and held it. Aaron had been a freshman on campus though he was twenty-three years old. Gretchen had just finished her business management degree. His dark hair was swooped to the side, very much like the cartoon gorillas Gretchen had spent a lot of time watching while she nannied to pay for school.
He reached back and threaded his fingers through hers. “What if they don’t make it?” he asked, his voice barely higher than a whisper. “I don’t know how to deliver a baby.”
And Gretchen knew there was more than just a baby that needed to come out. “They’ll make it.” She spoke with as much confidence as she could, the way she always did when Aaron confessed his worries to her.
You’re the best in your class, she’d tell him. You’ll be able to find a good job.
Don’t worry about anything here, she said to him when he had to go to Seattle to take his tests, attend interviews, or deliver dissertations. I’ll be fine. Just watching the lavender grow.
She closed her eyes and imagined herself in the fields of lavender now, the fragrant scent of the herbs wafting through the slow, blue sky. The same smile that had always accompanied her assurances when he left drifted across her face now.
Her next labor pain stole all the peace from her, and her eyes shot open and a moan ground through her whole body. Aaron’s fingers on hers squeezed, and everything seemed clenched so tight, tight, tight.
The contraction seemed to last a long time before subsiding. Gretchen only got what felt like a moment’s reprieve before the next one began. Time marched on, seemingly unaware of the pain she was in, the desperate way she cinched everything tight to keep the baby inside.
She wasn’t sure how many labor pains she’d endured, or how much time had gone by, before Aaron said, “They’re here,” with a heavy dose of relief in his voice. He once again jumped from the car.
Moments later, the door by her feet opened and a gust of ocean air raced in. The scent of brine she normally loved only reminded her that this wasn’t a hospital, there were no drugs, and she could do absolutely nothing about it.
“Ma’am, my name is Andrew Herrin, and I’m going to take good care of you.”
She managed to look over her belly to a man who couldn’t be older than twenty. A zing of alarm raced through her.
“Drew?” She couldn’t believe she cared if the man whose family lived next door to her—who she’d walked with in lavender fields as a teen—delivered her baby. He had a bag of medical supplies. A faster ride to the hospital. And a kind face, with a calm smile.
“You’re going to be fine, Gretchen.” He snapped a pair of gloves on and touched her ankle. “So let’s see what we’ve got.”
