Page 155 of Set Me On Fire

“Meeting us en route.”

What boys were meeting us where, I didn’t get a chance to ask, another contraction hitting me. I gripped Noah and Charlie’s hands tightly as we raced away from my parents’ house, but once we got on the main road, my mouth fell open. A phalanx of fire trucks converged around us, sirens wailing. I made a strange sound, part laughter, part moan of pain.

“How…?”

“We are gonna get in so much shit when the minister finds out,” Charlie explained. “But you can’t expect a bunch of firefighters to take any chances when their newest recruit is being born.”

“I worked it out with the fellas,” Knox said from the front seat. “Anyone on call and not needed on a job would drive out to help us get to the hospital fast.”

Loud horns blared from the truck closest to us, and I looked across to see Rhett and Gareth grinning from the front seats.

“Is that… Brent?”

Sure enough, my old boss was in the back.

“Jesus, someone must’ve brought him in on the deal,” Noah said. “Well, I guess if we’re all going down, we may as well go down together.”

Cars parted like we were Moses and they were the Red Sea, letting us all pass. I don’t know if anyone ever got to a hospital faster. Then it was all a blur, of stumbling out of the car and into the hospital, being put on a gurney and taken up to the maternity ward. A very nice midwife introduced herself to everyone, but Knox rather abruptly asked her to examine me. She lifted my sodden dress and then her eyebrows shot up.

“Well, looks like things are moving fast. I’ll page the doctor.”

They were.My dress was removed and replaced with a surgical gown. A heart rate monitor was strapped around my belly. All the while, I sat half-hunched, half-lying on the bed, gripping Knox’s and Charlie’s hands.

“You’ve got this, babe,” Noah said, rubbing big circles on my back, which both soothed and irritated me in turns. I was counting, counting through each wave of pain, lost in the numbers.Just get to the end of this one, I told myself furiously, face screwing up.This one and the next.

And the next and the next and the next.

I’d done some calm birthing classes and liked their philosophy, but there was a massive difference between intellectually listening to the instructor and living it. I could only count for so long, and it was beginning to feel hopeless. Time felt like it stretched on and on, broken up into tiny, sixty second increments. I just wanted, no, needed for this to end, and that’s what I sobbed out.

“I can’t…” I whimpered, finding a flush-faced Knox staring at me wide eyed. “I can’t Knox. It hurts too much.”

“I know, baby, but?—”

“No, you don’t!”

I didn’t mean to snarl that at him, but how could he think he knew anything about this? I was locked in a battle it felt, one where only one of us would survive. That’s when tears started to roll down my cheeks and the midwife stepped in.

“We might need to look at some pain relief.”

“Millie said she didn’t want that,” Charlie snapped. “She said over and over that she didn’t want narcotics in the baby’s bloodstream when she’s born.”

“We make a lot of decisions before the birth and not all of them are ones we can stick to.”

“Birth trauma.” Knox said the words grimly. “I read all about that. Women get it if they don’t have the birth they want. That’s not happening here.”

“I’m not telling you it's something you have to do,” the midwife said. “I’m just saying it's an option. Millie is hurting.”

“Millie?” Noah’s face appeared out of nowhere, those hazel eyes studying mine. “Mills, baby, we need to know what you want to do.”

“She told us what she wanted to do,” Charlie growled.

Noah wiped my face with a blessedly cool rag and I panted madly, trying to catch my breath. I was in that brief window between a contraction, but whatever clarity I had possessed was long gone. Everything was an angry red haze, and I could barely see them through it.

“Let me check her progress again,” the midwife said and then drew up my gown. Our daughter was about to make the decision for me. “OK, it’s go time. Let’s get her off the bed and onto a birthing stool, let gravity do the work.”

I was lifted up, moved gently, so gently, as I writhed, then was eased down into a squatting position, the stool supporting me.

This, I remembered this.

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