She was New York City police, he saw as they trotted along together. He could see her badge. The nameplate on the pocket flap of her uniform shirt read “J. Truesdale.”
Raymond looked behind him for the tenth time at least, uneasy with leaving Mrs. G behind in the courtroom. She had told them to. She had promised to remain seated until Raymond returned. But it still made him deeply uncomfortable to leave her out in the world without his help.
Officer Truesdale left them standing in the lobby of the courthouse.
“My patrol car is parked around the corner,” she said. “Wait here and I’ll bring it around.”
Raymond held on to Isabel’s elbow. He felt, briefly, dizzyingly, as though he were the only thing holding her up. Her face looked bloodless and pale, tight with fear and pain.
“Contraction,” she hissed.
Her face contorted with the agony of it, and Raymond felt a sickening pain run down through his gut and then the insides of his thighs. A visceral reaction to what he was able to imagine.
“Okay,” Isabel said a minute or two later. “Okay.”
But it was only okay until the next inevitable contraction, and Raymond knew it.
He sat beside her gurney in the hospital labor room, feeding her ice chips from a tiny paper cup.
“You should go back,” Isabel said.
“You sure you’ll be okay?”
“Look around you, Raymond. I’m on a maternity ward. Everything that can be done to help a woman in labor is right here. I have a whole hospital staff to help me. But it was really sweet of you to make sure I got here okay. Thank you for that. I was scared, and I really needed somebody.”
Raymond felt around in his gut for what he wanted to do. He immediately felt himself torn in two directions at once. It felt like being ripped apart down the middle.
“Maybe I should wait until the baby comes.”
“It could be hours. It could be a day.”
“A day?”
“Maybe. We don’t know.”
“I guess I should get back to her, then.”
“When court shuts down for today, you can bring her back here. If I haven’t had the baby yet, you can wait with me. If I have, you can see him.”
Raymond rose to his feet as she spoke. He was just about to move to the door, but one word stopped his motion.
Him.
“You already know it’s a boy?”
“Yes. Don’t go for just a minute. There’s something I want to say.”
Reluctantly, Raymond sank back into the white plastic chair beside her gurney. He had set his internal clock for getting back to Mrs. G and the trial, and it hurt to delay that aim. But Isabel had something to say to him. So he worked to breathe more deeply, and he listened.
“Okay,” he said. “Go.”
“Almost the whole time I’ve been pregnant, I thought I knew what I was going to name the baby. I was going to name him Luis Jr.”
“That works.”
“I thought so, too. But it turns out I was wrong. Night before last I had this dream. I dreamed I was talking to Luis. For a long time. It felt like an hour, but I don’t know how long I was really dreaming it. You know how dreams are weird that way. They play tricks on you.”
“Right,” Raymond said, even though he wasn’t sure he did know.
“We talked about all different kinds of things. Just the way we used to in real life. And then at the very end, right before he got up and walked away, he said, ‘Don’t name the baby Luis.’”
“Why not? Did you ask why not?”
“Sure I did. He said it wouldn’t be fair to the boy. He said it would be asking him to be something—or maybe he said ‘someone’—that he could never be. Like asking him to fill that hole left by Luis’s . . . passing. And he said the kid would grow up sad because he could never be what everybody wanted him to be.”
“Oh. I guess that makes sense. Is that the kind of thing Luis would say in real life?”
“Just exactly. It was a very realistic dream.”
“So what are you going to name him?”
“Contraction,” Isabel said.
Raymond watched beads of sweat break out on her forehead. He wiped them away with a tissue from a box on a nearby tray table. A terrible sound burst out of her and chilled every inch of Raymond’s gut. Then she pushed panicky breaths in and out between gritted teeth for a painful length of time. Painful even to Raymond.
They were lasting longer now, the contractions.
How could anybody go through a thing like that for a day?
“Okay,” she said as the pain subsided. “Okay. No, I’m not going to name the baby Contraction, in case that’s what you’re wondering. I asked Luis. In the dream, I mean. The dream Luis. I said, ‘So what do I name him, then?’ He said, ‘Name him after that nice kid. Millie’s new friend.’”
“Me?” Raymond asked, his voice full of disbelief.
“That’s what he said.”
“Whoa. That’s really nice. But . . . Raymond is kind of a geeky name, though. Don’t you think? I always thought so.”
“Ray could be kind of cool, though.”
“Right,” Raymond said. “No wonder nobody ever calls me that.”
She laughed a little. As he had hoped she would.
Then a silence fell. Raymond braced himself against the announcement of another contraction. But it was probably too soon. He felt the pull of Mrs. G waiting for his return. He felt the burn and swell of the honor being bestowed on him.
“Just one thing, though,” he added. “Your other two kids have Spanish names.”
“This one can be different.”
“Kind of hard to be different from your own family. Take it from somebody who knows. Is there a Spanish version of the name Raymond?”
“Well. There’s Ramon.”
“That’s so much better. You should definitely name him Ramon.”
“You think so?”
“I’m sure of it. I’ll always know you named him after me. Which is incredibly nice, by the way. And he’ll feel like he fits in with the rest of the family. And that’s a big deal. Take my word for it.”
When Raymond arrived back at the courtroom, out of breath from running, he was startled to find the door to the room locked. He rattled the knob several times. Pushed against the door with increasing distress.