they had begun the night before, as they had last week: contractions hard and soft, not quite steady. she gets an old mickey mouse watch we picked up when we were in florida with the little one last year. mine was already lost and abandoned, still ticking in a drawer somewhere in the den. she notes the time they begin and their duration. looking for rhythm, for a narrowing. sometimes ten minutes part, sometimes seven, then not for an hour or so. but she calls the doctor anyway, can we be squeezed in. late in the afternoon we go.
they strap the fetal heart monitor around her swollen belly, a seat belt over a skinned basketball. they give her a silver little handle with a button at its top and a cord that unwinds back to the machine. the baby’s heart beats mad as he muscles his way around her womb. its a seismograph of delivery, correlating baby’s heart to her contractions. after ten minutes or so, the doctor pops in, gets her in stirrups, snaps on some rubber gloves, and peeks underneath the tissue paper wrapped around her legs and hips.
she shakes her head, snaps off the gloves, “uh-uh. not yet ready yet. you’re not due until the ninth you know, but,” she shrugs, “you never know.” she looks at me and then back to her, “it’s your second one, so he might just pop out.”
any day now, literally any minute.