In the triage room, the contractions were coming quickly, every two minutes or so. The pressure monitor was a small disc, about two inches across, that had to stay pressed against the abdomen to do its job. This was accomplished with a cylinder of stretchy mesh, like a tube top for your pregnant belly.
Snaking from left to right on a monitor 3 feet above Hannah's head were two lines: one represented the baby's heartbeat and one the pressure in her uterus. The pressure line would usually waver around 5 or 10, and every two minutes it would rise (Hannah would start to wince, and Cameron would try not to be too overtly fascinated by the science) until it peaked at 80, and then 90, and then 100, which seemed like the top of the chart. After 30 seconds the line would drop back to 5 or 10 and the pain would subside.
In between contractions, Hannah said "So 100 is as high as it goes right? Like, that's as strong as the contractions can get?" Cameron, sensing a trap, hesitated before replying. "I mean, yeah, that's as high as it goes. On the machine."
"So the contractions can't go above 100, right? 100 is as high as they go."
Cameron thought: Are you trying to get me to say that your contractions won't get any worse? Because I will not say that.
"Well," he said, "I mean, maybe there are contractions that are stronger, but they just can't be measured by this machine."
"Right, but then why wouldn't they make the 100 higher. So they could measure all the contractions."
You are remarkably lucid and persuasive for a woman in active labor, Cameron thought. "That's true," was the safest thing he could think to say.
Hannah's contractions got stronger and stronger, more and more frequent. She was required to stay in triage on the monitor for 20 minutes. The time was marked on the scroll of paper that was spit from the bottom of the screen above Hannah's head, so this much is documented: Hannah was in triage from 6:30 to 6:50 am.
Somewhere in the middle of those 20 minutes, Cameron realized he had reached the limits of what he could do to help his partner. Mostly what he'd been doing was sitting by her side, trying to be silently supportive (he had been horrified by the videos of husbands shouting aggressive breathing instructions at their partners). But when Hannah, who was groaning in pain, shouted "Say something, Jesus!" he realized that silence was not actually the same as support.
Hannah needed something, and Cameron didn't know what it was. Maybe their doula Megan would know. But if Megan came in, Cameron would have to leave. And he didn't want to leave.
Cameron tried to tell himself that this was Hannah's decision. If she wanted him to leave so that Megan could come into the room, she would say so. Then he looked at Hannah and knew that he was lying to himself. She was groaning in pain, she was focused inward. She would never tell him to leave. Cameron would have to make a decision about what was best for her. Her partner or her doula?
As Megan went into the triage room, Cameron sat in the waiting area half-regretting his decision. He watched the quiet, calm couple across from him. The woman sat stiffly upright, neatly sipping on a bottle of water. The couple didn't look at each other, didn't speak. It seemed like the most proper, organized, and boring labor ever. (It turned out the woman was coming for an induction of labor because she'd gone beyond 42 weeks.)
Ten minutes later, a nurse came into the waiting room and told Cameron that Hannah had already moved to her delivery room. Apparently there was a back entrance to the triage unit.
When Cameron found Hannah she was standing in the hallway with Megan massaging her back. Cameron walked past the pair of them to deposit a load of bags in Room 22. He returned to the waiting room to get another load of stuff, passing his wife again and not stopping. He felt a little bad about this, and on his third time past he was almost overwhelmed by the urge to reach out and touch her, or at least say something. But there you are in the hallway of a hospital, with nurses and secretaries swirling past, and maybe she might even resent such intimacy in a semi-public space while she's feeling so vulnerable? Hard to say. Cameron kept walking, finishing delivering their luggage to the room.
When Hannah and Megan arrived in their delivery room, a nurse named Lisa was parked at the computer (yes, the delivery room had a computer. Looking back it seems obvious that this would be the case. But at the time it was surprising.) Lisa was overweight, but the type that seems healthy: she moved quickly and gracefully, the extra pounds muscle not blubber.
Lisa saw Cameron biting his nails and told him to stop. "You're making everybody anxious. You're injecting negative energy into the room." What about you, Cameron thought? How much negative energy are you injecting by saying that? But he tried to stop biting his nails.
Lisa took a medical history and clicked the answers into her computer. Cameron tried to answer as many questions as possible. Hannah was incredibly aware of what was going on around her: whenever Lisa asked a question that cameron wouldn't know the answer to, Hannah immediately jumped in with the answer: Any allergies? "Codeine, it makes my face swell up," Hannah said before Cameron even had a chance to turn to her.
Cameron knew that she was born on October 25, 1978, but he did the math wrong and told the nurse that she was 32. "I'm 31," Hannah shouted through a contraction. "For three more days," Cameron thought, but was not so stupid as to say.
Finally the formalities were out of the way. Now the labor could start.
Or so they thought. Cameron and Hannah would have been surprised to learn, at that moment, that the labor was half over. A baby would be in their arms before a screening of "When Harry Met Sally" could get to the part where Harry says that when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
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