The day after her visit to the doctor, Izzy felt the contractions start around nine in the evening, and then she experienced a weird double sensation that happened almost in unison, of being able to breathe so much more easily while also needing to pee with a sudden and embarrassing urgency. She walked up and down the hallway of the house, tentatively touching her belly, as if trying to pick up frequencies from the bottom of the ocean. She hesitated calling or e-mailing anyone, felt the immediate distrust of her own body, a reluctance to believe that she was about to give birth until she had definite proof. She went to a bookmarked page on the stages of labor, read it carefully, and then turned off her computer. Her father came home, though he did not even call out to check on her, simply deposited himself on the recliner and turned on the TV. An hour later, the contractions still coming, she checked her underwear and saw blood and, almost immediately, forgot everything that she was supposed to know about childbirth. She knew that it was probably time to get to the hospital and yet something was keeping her inside the confines of her room, some irrational fear that, by stepping out of the house, everything that had been held at bay would come rushing toward her, her undefined future becoming clear and vibrant. She hunched over her bed, as if she was praying, and counted the seconds passing, reminding her that she was alive and well.
Finally, unable to put off the reality any longer, she walked into the living room. “Dad?” she said, wondering why she was being so tentative, as she softly jostled him in an attempt to pull him out of his eight-beer coma. Izzy felt the contractions again and sucked on her teeth to keep herself from making a sound. Her father’s eyes were aggressively closed and his mouth was so wide open she could place her fist in it. Even if she managed to wake him, what then? He couldn’t drive her to the hospital; at best she would help shoulder him into her truck and he would sleep as she drove herself to Chattanooga. Jesus, she was fifty minutes away from the hospital, she realized. She did not have time to turn her father into the person she wanted him to be.
Instead, she walked back into her room, moving so carefully, as if the slightest move could dislodge the baby and she would birth him on this filthy carpet. She shouldered her duffel bag, which she had packed nearly a month earlier in preparation for this very moment. It helped reaffirm the fact that she was a capable person, that she could do this. She walked out of the house, the stars so bright and nothing moving in the entire world except her baby. She started her truck and pulled onto the street, and then another contraction hit her and she accidentally hit the horn and accelerated without intending to do so. She started to realize that she could not drive herself; she was vibrating with a weird rush of endorphins. She could not focus. She pulled to the side of the road and tried to think. Finally, no other option available, she called Mr. Tannehill and waited for the reassuring softness of his voice.
“Who is this?” he said, not at all reassuring or kind. It was, Izzy reminded herself, two in the morning.
“Mr. Tannehill, this is Izzy. I hate doing this; I hate it so much.”
“What’s wrong, sweetie?” he said.
“I’m having the baby,” she replied, and then she started breathing deeply, trying to catch her breath. “I need you to drive me to the hospital.”
“I’m leaving right now,” he said, and then the line went dead. She sat in the truck, thirty feet from her house, and regulated her breathing. For the past few weeks, she had been pleading with the baby to finally come and now, sitting in her truck, completely alone, she begged that he would hold on a little longer.
She heard the roar of Mr. Tannehill’s engine before she saw the headlights. As he sped down her street, she flicked her headlights to catch his attention and he pulled alongside the truck. He threw open her door and lifted her, not a hesitation or a struggle in his movements, into his arms. He gently placed her into the backseat and she stretched out, trying to get comfortable. “My bag,” she said, but he was already returning from her truck with the duffel bag. He was back in the car, shifting into gear, before she knew what was happening. “It’s been a long time coming, sweetie,” he told her. He reached into the backseat and she took his hand and squeezed it. “A hell of a long time coming,” he said, and then Izzy focused on the sound of the engine taking her somewhere safe and clean, which was, she imagined, the most that anyone could ask for in an emergency.
When they arrived at the hospital, Izzy having notified them of her impending arrival on the drive there, Mr. Tannehill opened the door and helped Izzy onto the sidewalk. By this point, the contractions were so intense that Izzy was making a low, moaning sound like a grizzly bear, and she was hobbling toward the entrance like someone who’d learned about walking from YouTube videos. Mr. Tannehill shouldered most of her weight, his car still running, the driver’s-side door wide open. “This way,” a nurse who had run out to meet them said. “Let’s get her a wheelchair,” the nurse said, but Izzy, for reasons entirely unknown to her, refused the wheelchair. “Let me just keep walking,” she said, as if she was about to finish a marathon and did not want assistance, and the nurse looked at Mr. Tannehill, shrugged, and gestured for them to follow her. When they made it to the reception desk, Izzy took the duffel bag from Mr. Tannehill and retrieved all of her information and forms for the nurse.
“Oh, I like it when they’re prepared,” she said to Mr. Tannehill, looking through the forms and nodding with satisfaction. “Okay, Isabel, let’s get you to a room. Is your father coming with you?”
Mr. Tannehill shook his head and said, “I’ll just stay in the waiting room, if that’s okay. Unless you want me there, Izzy?”