Page 75 of Anatomy of a Meet Cute
“You could do it without us. But you don’t have to,” Kaiya said, flashing a kind smile between Sam and her patient before adding, “You’re stronger than you know.”
Sam took a deep breath, then tried again. “Thank you, Sheila. I’ll see you soon.”
What no one tells you,Sam thought as she slumped onto the couch in the lounge,is how long it takes to actually deliver in an emergency labor. On TV they make it look like patients just turn up, and BAM, someone sprints them into a magically prepped operating room and screamsScalpel,and then there is a happy crying baby.
In real life, you induce someone, and roughly fifteen different hospital personnel watch every blip on a giant vitals monitor for both the baby and the person delivering. Then a light in the delivery room needs to be changed, and that takes two hours. Plus, the person delivering has about fifty pounds of paperwork to do. Eventually there is local anesthesia administered, and someone is gently wheeled into a new delivery room—where the light is working—while wide awake and chatting about knowing they have legs but not really feeling them. Then the doctor and everyone else in the room goes on high alert for thirty-five minutes. Only then does a baby start crying.
Then the parents start crying. And then everyone around them also wants to cry because everything about a premature birth is overwhelming, even when you know what you are doing. Plus, there is the relief that the baby is small but, in this case, wonderful and fine.
And that was how Sam found herself in the staff lounge twelve hours after she’d walked into the hospital, dangerously close to crying. It had been a roller coaster of a day, but somehow she had managed to push all the Anjo stuff aside and pull off a lifesaving delivery. She wasexhausted and exhilarated and ... simply too tired and overstimulated to deal with anything other than the cup of coffee sitting in front of her.
Smiling to herself, she decided to do a little mindless scrolling through social media until the caffeine kicked in. This time of night, Muni didn’t run frequently, so she had a few extra minutes to waste. Taking her phone out of Do Not Disturb, she’d flipped over to a video about a French bulldog who jumped around like a frog when the phone in her hand started to buzz with missed calls and text messages. For a moment, Sam considered ignoring the messages, but then she thought better of it. What if Jehan had locked herself out of the apartment or Duke needed her to settle a basketball-based dispute?
Deciding to start with the texts, Sam clicked on a message from Duke that said:
I was super hungry and I ate your balsamic vinegar and coffee ice cream
(you were right. It sounds gross but is delicious).
I tried to buy more of it just now, but Melvin’s was out. I just got a gallon of regular coffee almond to replace it.
Sorry and you’re welcome.
Sam snorted and shook her head at the phone. Of course Duke would eat her ice cream and replace it with the wrong ice cream. At least he had tried to replace it. How was he to know that he needed to go to Carver’s, the other corner store, to get it? Really, that was Sam’s job in their little threesome. Duke had a car and charm, Jehan had ChapStick and a plan, and Sam had dessert and big ideas. It was better for the dynamic if he never figured out how the ice cream got there. Smiling at the phone, Sam typed her response:
Thanks for trying.
And don’t doubt my superior ice cream taste again!
Sighing, she clicked over to her missed calls and saw that all three were from her mother. Sam debated whether or not she wanted to listen to the voice mails. There was more than a 50 percent chance that she’d been calling to complain. Then Sam stopped.
Her mom’s party was just a few days away. If it was a problem, Sam would hear about it eventually. If it was a rave review about the show she was supposed to see at SFMOMA, then Sam could be pleasantly surprised.
She bounced her knee up and down a few times as the phone rang. She had just started to think that maybe her mom wouldn’t pick up when Diana’s voice came over the line.
“Sammy. I left you three voice mails.”
“Sorry, Mom. I had an emergency delivery.”
“Oh,” Diana said flatly as if Sam being busy saving a life was a bit of an unwelcome surprise.
“Baby is fine. A little smaller than I would have liked, but the family will be fine.” Sam finished the story as her blood pressure began to rise. What did her mother think she was doing when she didn’t answer her calls? Laughing like an evil villain while she pressed “Ignore Call” and flipped through a magazine?
“Right.” Her mother let a beat of uncomfortable silence hang in the air, then plowed ahead. “Well, the reason that I was trying to get a hold of you is that I realized we really can’t just have cheese boards for the catering. The more I think about the venue, the more I believe we need to up our game.”
“What?” Sam said, her tone sharper than she meant it to be.
“Plus, your brother is doing something more robust.”
“We already went over this,” Sam said flatly. Had her mother seriously called her three times in order to get her way after Sam said no last night?
“I mean, what if our friends from San Diego talk to our friends from Monterey? Our Monterey friends will feel shortchanged.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Sam said bluntly.
“Why wouldn’t that happen?”
“Because, Mom, no one is going to talk about the food. They’ll reminisce about the pictures you took and how good it is to see you.” Sam stood up and paced the empty lounge, trying to shake off the excess jitters the call had reignited.
