Page 76 of Summer of '69
Blinding pain. Blair grits her teeth, counts to ten. It passes.
She and Jessie walk up Main Street, Blair holding on to Jessie’s arm for dear life. Right outside of Mitchell’s Book Corner, Blair feels another contraction coming on; it’s like a truck is about to hit her.
“We have to stop for a minute,” Blair says. There’s a bench outside the store and Blair hears Jessie asking her if she wants to sit but Jessie’s voice is faint and far away. There is only room in Blair’s head for her own thoughts and this searing white-hot pain. She doesn’t think sitting will help; it may make things worse—if anythingcouldbe worse than being in labor on Main Street in the broiling-hot sun.
The contraction barrels down. Blair’s knees buckle but Jessie holds her steady.
“Should I run for Mom?” Jessie asks.
Blair can’t talk until the contraction is past. “Andleaveme here? No, let’s go.”
They make it to the corner of Main and Fair, but another contraction is coming. Blair says, “You go. I’ll be right here.”
Jessie races up the street. Blair braces herself against a tree. The Quaker Meeting House is across the street—quiet, calm, serene. Blair wills herself to think about the Quaker Meeting House, but the pain is overwhelming. It consumes her. She’s crying and sweating and cursing the day she ever met Angus. Angus, who is a thousand miles away in Houston. Blair tries to recall today’s date. She thinks it’s the fifteenth, so the moon launch is tomorrow. Right? It doesn’t matter. Angus is so unavailable, he might as well beonthe moon.
A car pulls up and Blair casts her eyes down, willing it to move on. Her legs are sticky with fluid, the back of her dress is soaked, and she wants to disappear; what she fears most right now is a Good Samaritan.
“Blair!”
It’s her mother and Jessie in the Scout. Jessie hops out and walks Blair over to the passenger side, but how will she ever get up and in? She faces the car while Jessie pushes from under her buttocks and somehow boosts Blair up. Another contraction is coming.
“We can’t go down the cobblestones,” Blair says.
“What?” Kate says. “But darling, there’s no other way.”
“We! Cannot! Go! Down! The! Cobblestones!” Blair says in a voice that sounds nothing like her own. “Back up.”
“Back up?” Kate says. “Fair Street is one-way, darling.”
“Back up, Mom,” Jessie says. “No one is behind us. I’ll keep watch.”
Another contraction is coming. Blair howls.
Kate backs up.
“Keep going! Keep going!” Jessie says. “It’s clear all the way to Lucretia Mott.”
Thank you, God,Blair thinks. Lucretia Mott Lane to Pine Street, Pine Street to Lyons, Lyons to South Mill, which meets Prospect Street right across from the hospital. Kate screeches to a stop in the emergency room parking lot, and two orderlies appear with a stretcher.
“You’re not leaving me, are you?” Blair asks her mother.
“We’ll be right behind you, darling,” Kate says. “You won’t be alone.”
Blair closes her eyes. She won’t be alone. Kate and Jessie will be here. Someone is missing, Blair thinks. “Someone is missing,” Blair mumbles to the orderly.
“Oh yeah?” he says. “Your husband?”
Angus?she thinks.No.
The person missing is Kirby.
Blair is in labor for eighteen hours, which sounds grueling, although, truthfully, it’s only the beginning and the end of labor that are challenging. The contractions come fast and hard until Dr. Van de Berg arrives and instructs the nurse, Myrtle, to give Blair something to make her “comfortable.”
“Here comes your glass of wine,” Myrtle says as she shoots something into Blair’s IV.
She’s in twilight sleep much of the night. She wakes up at dawn when the nurse tells her it’s time to push.
Kate is there at the bedside and Jessie is sitting on a stool in the corner of the room. This would never be allowed in a big-city hospital, Blair knows, but she’s glad they bend the rules here a little. Jessie is wearing a surgical mask, which looks so funny on her that Blair actually laughs.
