Page 31 of The Progressions

“Let me see,” he repeated, and he held out his hand and jiggled it impatiently.

“No!” I repeated, and then I realized that it was ringing, anyway. “It’s Iva,” I said and then, “Hi—ok, ok! No, I’m coming. I’m coming!” I yelled. “I’m coming right now! Iva, I’m coming to help you, don’t worry!” She had hung up before I’d said those last words, but it wasn’t as if saying “don’t worry” had ever helped anyone. “It’s the baby!” I told Tyler.

“She’s having it now?”

I tossed the phone on my desk. “Yes, Iva is having her baby!” I shouted.

“I can hear you pretty well. Why’d you throw your phone like that?”

“No reason. Panic,” I confessed. “I get—I have to go.” I grabbed my bag and rushed out to the lot, then remembered to go back and lock the door. Tyler had turned out the lights.

“You’re all right to drive?” he asked.

“Yes!” I said. Of course, definitely. I ran to my car, started it with shaking hands, and put it into reverse. Then I hit the gas,flew backwards, and struck a light pole, one that had just gotten new bulbs installed. I heard the crunch and I smashed back against the headrest, then jerked forward against my seat belt.

“God damn, Kasia!” My door flew open. “Why are you going so fucking fast in a parking lot?”

“I’m sorry!” I told him, like he needed an apology. I got out and looked at the damage. “Sweet Jesus, my car…” It was bad, very bad back there. And this was terrible, very terrible for me. Then there was Iva—she needed a ride, right now. “I have to go. Give me your keys,” I told Tyler.

“There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I would let you drive my car. Come on,” he said, and loped over toward the giant yellow vehicle. I gave mine one more panicked, heartbroken look before I also ran over and got into the passenger seat. I spat out her address and told him to hurry.

“Funny,” he remarked as he turned out of our lot. “I would have thought you’d be good in a crisis. You’re pretty calm about most things and even when you get pissed off, you keep solving the problem.”

“Do I? Can you go faster?” I pressed my feet on the floor. “Seriously, you need to go faster.”

“Isn’t having a baby a natural thing?”

“Easy for you to say, man with a penis who can’t ever have one,” I snapped. “She’s not due yet. The baby isn’t supposed to be here for another month.”

“Shit. What does that mean?” he asked.

“I don’t have that information! And yes, I know I’m bad at stuff like this, this particular kind of problem. I can deal with Oren masturbating against a dryer, I can deal with some woman messaging me my own address and saying that she’ll see me later. It’s the medical stuff that gets me. Because I was the one who found my dad after his stroke.”

“Who masturbated where? And who got your address?”

I waved away those questions because the answers didn’t matter anymore. “He’s ok now, mostly, but he could have died. It was awful and if something happens to Iva or her baby—it better not!” I told Tyler, as if I was daring him. Then, just like when I’d found my dad, I started praying in the way he had taught me, in Polish like my mom had taught him.Ojcze nasz, którys jest w niebie, swiec sie imie Twoje. Prayers were all I knew from the language, although my dad told me how she used to speak it to me all the time. He was always telling me how much she had loved her baby…I thought of Iva.

“Can you please, please go faster?” I asked Tyler, and he increased his speed to four miles per hour instead of three. But he got us there after carefully following his phone’s directions to her house, and then I wasn’t as careful. In my hurry to get to her, I fell getting out of his car, right into her driveway. She came through the door as I stumbled back to my feet, and he went to take her bag from her.

“Kasia, you get in the back. Ma’am, I’ll help you up,” he told her, and he lifted her into the front seat. She was crying and telling him and me that it was too soon.

“Maybe they can stop it,” I said, trying to be soothing. “They can do so much stuff, Iva!” They had saved my father from certain death, and even if he wasn’t happy with—

“My water already broke! Oh, no…” She moaned and clutched her stomach.

“It’s all right,” Tyler told her. He reached and took her hand and she clutched that, instead. “Squeeze if it hurts—damn! It’s that bad?”

It was bad. They took her right back when we got to the emergency room and I could hear her screaming. I put my hands over my mouth, as if I might have screamed along with her. It was too soon, and she was alone—I had to get ahold of her boyfriend.

“The dad needs to know,” I said, and got out my phone.

“Where is he?”

I hadn’t filled in Tyler on the situation, because it was personal to Iva and also awful. Stupid Dominic was, supposedly, in New Jersey with most of their furniture, but I had serious doubts about that.

“I think he’s in the Detroit area,” I answered. “Someone withdrew almost everything in their account at an ATM in Novi, which is northwest of the city.”

“All their money?”

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