Page 41 of The Librarians
Sophie stops eating her imaginary revenge bonbons.
Jo-Ann sounds scared.
Jo-Ann is never scared. She is one of those individuals who glide through life certain of their specialness, convinced that nothing will ever stand in their way, not really. And people don’t maintain such attitudes in adulthood unless it’s been demonstrated again and again that life will always stand down where they are concerned and that they can always behave like kids going wild at a buffet.
“I was so sure I could handle this on my own, but now I don’t know anymore. Ahhhh! Oh, fuck. Ahhhh!” Jo-Ann wails.
“Breathe now. I know it hurts, but you need to relax and breathe,” says a woman. “You have to remain calm for the baby.”
Jo-Ann doesn’t exactly have a high tolerance for pain.
Sophie stands up.
“Oh, God, that was a motherfucker of a contraction and they won’t give me anything because I’m not five centimeters dilated yet. But Sophie, Sophie, listen, the baby is in trouble. I don’t know what’s going on. This whole pregnancy was so easy—I never even had morning sickness. But now they say her heart rate has dropped and they have to do an emergency C-section.”
Sophie falls back into her couch, her hand over her open mouth.
Black women in the United States are three times as likely to die from pregnancy and childbirth. But surely statistics don’t apply to Jo-Ann Barnes. That shit is for others, not Jo-Ann Barnes. Never Jo-Ann Barnes.
“Can you please come? I’m at St. Paul’s Hospital in Albany, room 435. Please help me. I know you don’t agree with this but please come. You’re already listed as my emergency contact—cuz you’re my sister, don’t you know, and—”
“Ms. Barnes, we need you to put the phone away. We have to sedate you right now.”
“Okay. Okay. Sophie, I love you. I love you. Please, if anything happens to me, please look after the baby. Her name is Elise—I wanted something beautiful and sophisticated like yours. You know you are family to me. Youaremy family. Please, Sophie—”
“Ma’am, you have to hang up now.”
“I’m sorry—I will. Just come, Sophie. Please. Soph—”
The message ends abruptly. Did someone yank the phone from Jo-Ann?
Sophie springs up. The time stamp on the message is fifteen minutes ago. How long does a caesarean take?
She turns on her desktop computer and looks it up online. Forty-five minutes to an hour.
So Elise is about to be born. Or maybe she’s already out of the womb and the medical team is just stitching Jo-Ann back up.
Sophie taps her fingertips against her phone. Her mom hates to see her fidget; Sophie deplores it no less. Thedak-dak-dakof keratin on hard plastic drives part of her up a wall, yet she cannot make herself stop.
After a few minutes, she finally sets her phone aside to google post-C-section care.
She is not going to get back with Jo-Ann. A woman who pulls a trick like this—having a baby and expecting that Sophie will eventually go along with it? Lord knows what else she might do in the future. Pop culture can preach spontaneity all it likes, but spontaneity is for people who can afford it, people who have comfortably situated parents and personal social standing to cushion them for when that spur-of-the-moment decision turns sour.
Jo-Ann’s spontaneity has cost Sophie a lot and she will not put herself through that again.
But she also doesn’t want Jo-Ann to be all alone after a major operation. And Baby Elise—Jo-Ann wanted her so badly, someone ought to take that child some balloons and a teddy bear, mementoes that she can point to, when she’s much older, that show she was welcomed into this world, heartily and with great joy.
Sophie makes up her mind and calls Jo-Ann. It immediately goes tovoice mail. The operation might be over, but Jo-Ann is probably still under anesthesia.
She listens to the message again to write down the name of the hospital.
Why did Jo-Ann choose to have her baby in Albany? Wouldn’t she have preferred to give birth at a hospital either in Manhattan or on this side of the Hudson River in New Jersey?
Sophie groans. Of course she isn’t the only person from whom Jo-Ann is keeping the pregnancy a secret. That four-month leave from work might have been devoted to pro bono work, but its ultimate purpose must have been to keep her law firm in the dark about her impending motherhood. After all, a woman with a child, especially an infant, is more likely to be passed over for major assignments and further promotion.
Jo-Ann, already a partner, is dead set on making managing partner. And as long as she still hopes that Sophie will come around, why not keep the maternity of the baby a secret so that later on she can say it’s Sophie’s, in the expectation that this way, having a baby won’t affect her career any more than it would any of her male colleagues?
To do that, she must give birth where those in her normal life are unlikely to run into her.
