“Can’t wait,” I muttered.
Her phone buzzed on the table. “Will you get that for me?” I handed it to her, and she read the screen, relief washing over her. “Snake’s here. He’s in the lobby down the hall.”
Her dad got to his feet, towering over me—?my head was at his stomach. No wonder Carla blindly obeyed everything he said. He was a real-life giant. “He’s not going to be in here for the birth,” he reiterated, as if to remind Carla he was in charge of her child and her life and her ex-boyfriend and anything related to her at all.
“I know, Dad,” she groaned, making a shoot-me motion where only I could see. “Neither are you, so you can go wait with him now.”
“But I—”
“Go, Dad. Seriously.”
He scowled, eyeing Carla as if he were about to pitch a rebuttal like he was at one of his business meetings. Then he huffed and stormed out of the room toward the waiting area.
Carla sighed exaggeratedly. “I can’t believe he listened. I thought I was going to have to call my stepmom and have her threaten him.”
“He doesn’t seem easily intimidated.”
“He’s not. When it comes to my stepmom, however, he’s as easily manipulated as a five-year-old boy.”
She rested her head against the pillow and closed her eyes, both arms wrapped around her stomach as her forehead crinkled into a bunch of little lines. “This hurts so bad,” she moaned. “Finals are next week. He couldn’t have waited to come until after then? He’s been in there nine months; what’s another week?”
“I don’t think it works like that,” I said, leaning against the armrest. “And you might as well get used to having him around at finals, because he’ll be here for all your finals to come.”
“I asked you here to be encouraging, not to scare me to death.”
“I told you not to trust me.”
“Well, I do trust you.” She opened her eyes and looked at me, completely unguarded. “In spite of the whole Snake fiasco, you’re one of the few people I trust. Don’t go acting like we’re not sort of friends.”
I opened my mouth to counter with some sarcastic remark that would delay the inevitable truth that maybe she was right. But I never got the chance.
Two nurses appeared with the doctor, informing us that it was time to start the miracle process that was hardly a miracle when you considered the fact that an entire floor of the hospital was dedicated to women all doing the exact same thing and rearing the exact same result. But, whatever, we would go with miracle.
I sat beside her head and stared at nothing but the wall. I was sure that if I even thought about rotating at any sort of angle that would land me a glimpse of the unspeakable, I would turn into a pillar of salt like that lady from the Bible. Stuff started happening, and I mental-blocked every last bit of it. The only thing I didn’t forget was the way Carla looked at me and said, “I can’t do this. I’m scared to be alone.”
I smiled. She probably didn’t know how to handle a Reggie smile. I took her hand, and a tear slid down her cheek. She looked bewildered. And disoriented. And strangely okay.
“You’re not alone,” I told her.
The infamous miracle process lasted an extensive period of time, filled with tears and abnormal shrieking and scarring sounds I all but burned from my memory. One minute I was staring at a wall and wanting it to collapse on top of me to spare me the experience, and the next I’m hearing another shrieking, bloodcurdling cry. Except that time, it wasn’t Carla.
I looked at her face and had never seen her so tired and sweaty and worn out. She was wrecked, but her eyes were something else entirely. You would have thought someone had just handed her the key to happiness and the lock was attached to this gross, bloody baby the doctor placed in her arms.
I’d never believed in the maternal, love-at-first-sight propaganda people always tried to sell. Like, you see this underdeveloped mutant thing for the first time and it steals your love in an instant. But as it cried, and Carla cried, and it pressed its hand to her chest, I thought that maybe there was a chance it existed.
The doctor cleaned the baby off, wrapped him in a blanket, and put a tiny blue beanie on him. Carla held him in her arms, brushing his cheek with her fingertip.
“He’s beautiful,” she whispered, pressing her cheek to his forehead. “Ohmigod, I love him.”
“Someone’s here to see his little boy,” the nurse announced, stepping aside and motioning him in.
Snake stood in the doorway, dressed in his THE RENEGADE DYSTOPIA T-shirt that he had worn the first time I met him. This time, coupled with frayed jeans and dirty sneakers. He glanced at me and then at Carla, like he didn’t know how to process everything at once. His hair was messier than usual, his blue eyes drifting and overwhelmed. Carla looked at him and smiled, and he smiled back at her. A beaming Snake smile. Seeing it almost made the separation worth it.
He walked to the edge of the bed and caught a glimpse of the baby.
To that day, I had seen Snake at what I thought were his best moments. When he talked about the snake and the mouse with wonder and admiration. When he filmed the sky with pride in his ability to capture uselessness. When he sang like he didn’t care how terrible it sounded. When he stared at me, not wanting to waste his opportunities, not knowing why he couldn’t stop. All of those moments were happy and easy and as alive as either of us ever thought we would be.
But those fleeting pleasures paled in comparison to the Snake who looked at his shriveled little baby for the first time. He didn’t need a pill or me or Carla to give him a feeling. He wasn’t wanting too much. He wasn’t needing. He was fearless in his disposition, no matter how pointless it could be. He was as messy as the way he chose to love, but through it he was finding the greatest privilege of being alive.
Fearing nothing.
“You want to hold him?” Carla asked.
He nodded. Carla gently placed the baby in the nook he made with his folded arms. He couldn’t keep the dorky grin off his face when the baby opened his eyes and looked at him. “Bad news, Carla,” he said. It was the first time I’d heard his voice in nearly two weeks. It was also the first time I’d heard him call her anything other than babe. “He’s got blue eyes.”
“So?”
“So I have blue eyes. And you don’t.” He looked at her and smirked. “I think he’s going to look like me.”
“All babies have blue eyes when they’re first born. Give them time to darken.”
He lifted up on the hat. “Bad news part two. He has some hair, and it’s not red.”
“Shut up.” She smiled. “I’ll deal with his uncanny resemblance to you later.”