Free Arrive by Nina Lane

hungry.”
    I know I’m exhausted. I slip my hand into Dean’s, for comfort this time rather than the back-breaking need to get through the pain, and lean against the pillows.
    I spend the next few hours dozing, but I’m unable to sink into a deep sleep. The nurse lowers the lights. I sense her and another nurse coming in and out, the beeping of the machine, the remnants of pain.
    Fuzzy images that make no sense cascade through my mind—green apples, a needle and thread, the towers of a cathedral, a spiral staircase, an ant and a grasshopper. I remember that I was supposed to finish the café payroll. I have the irrational thought that we left the coffeepot on. I’m worried that Dean has to get to the university for office hours.
    I drag my eyes open. The room is quiet, dim. Dean is still beside my bed, his dark gaze on my face. He shifts, leans closer.
    “Hey,” he whispers. “How are you?”
    “Will I ever have this baby?”
    He strokes my hair. “You will. I promise.”
    I let my eyes close again. He never tells me something unless he means it. Unless he knows it.
    I doze again. When I wake, my mouth is parched, and I have a horrible combination of hunger and nausea. I suck on ice chips and imagine a chocolate milkshake.
    Dean sits beside the bed, paces the floor, and only leaves the room to get a cup of coffee. Dr. Nolan stops by intermittently to check on my progress. Twelve hours after I was first admitted, she looks up from another dilation check and smiles.
    “Are you ready to have your baby, Liv?”
    Dean is at my side in a flash. I tighten my hand on his and nod.
    “I’m ready.”
    *
    Our son comes into the world after both months and a second. One minute ago, our family was me and Dean, and then—despite the months of pregnancy, the hours of labor that seemed endless, and the final flurry of activity—our boy arrives in what seems like no time at all.
    The epidural continues to work its magic as I do everything I’m supposed to do. Even though I obey the nurses’ instructions about when to push, when to stop, when to breathe, it feels like part of me is floating above the bed, separate from the mechanics of giving birth but utterly secure in the knowledge that I’m doing everything right.
    As always, Dean is a constant, steady presence at my side, his deep voice a stream of love and encouragement in my ear. He leaves me only to check on the progress of things between my legs, and he is as fascinated with that event as he has been with everything else.
    My body strains with pressure, work, tension. I strain and sweat and grit my teeth and push, push, push. Then, when I can hardly inhale another breath, Dr. Nolan looks up at me.
    “One more, Liv,” she says. “That should do it.”
    I close my eyes and push. My heart pounds. The pressure releases, a sudden lifting, and then a baby’s cry fills the air, my heart, my soul.
    I open my eyes. Dr. Nolan holds up a damp, squirming baby boy, the umbilical cord still attaching him to me, and my breath stops in my throat. I stare at the baby, stunned, and then my son opens his eyes and looks right at me with eyes as black as night.
    In that instant, I’m both lost and forever found.
    I sink back against the pillows. Dr. Nolan hands the baby to one of the nurses, who says something about me needing to breastfeed right away, and there’s another bustle of activity and movement before Nicholas is wrapped in a blanket and placed in my arms.
    He’s both weightless and heavy, like an anchor securing me to the earth. A brilliant, golden streamer of love and hope unfurls, hugging us both in a warm, protective embrace. Not until this moment have I more clearly understood the meaning of the word wonder.
    “Shift him a little toward you.” Karen moves to my side, helping me get Nicholas to latch onto my breast. When he does, his eyes drift closed.
    There’s a movement at my side. I turn to where Dean is sitting beside the bed, his gaze on Nicholas’s face. For