The nurse typed quickly and glanced at the screen before looking at Joanna’s rounded belly. “All right, Joanna, we have you here and it looks like your doctor called ahead.”
The nurse smiled and adjusted her glasses. “Is your partner on the way to meet you?”
The question slid into the space between them with the smooth familiarity of a habit. Joanna had been asked some version of it eleven times in the last nine months.
She had heard it from the receptionist at the clinic and the ultrasound technician with the silver cross necklace. She had even heard it from the woman at the birthing class who handed her an extra packet for her husband.
Strangers at the grocery store and acquaintances at the pharmacy often asked when the father would be arriving. She had developed a response that was smooth and automatic and cost her almost nothing to deliver.
“He is coming,” she said while smiling back at the nurse. “He just got held up with some things.”
It was a lie so practiced it no longer felt like one in a dramatic sense. It had become a social tool that she placed between herself and the curiosity of other people.
The truth required too much explanation for a fluorescent Tuesday morning. The truth dragged a whole collapsed future behind it that she was not ready to discuss.
The nurse nodded with satisfaction and handed her a clipboard for the final signatures. Joanna signed where she needed to sign and breathed through a tightening sensation low in her abdomen.
She pressed the pen down harder than necessary on the final line because her need for control had to go somewhere. Her contractions had started before dawn, but she had waited until seven-thirty to call the hospital.
Waiting had become one of the skills pregnancy taught her against her will. She had learned to wait for the pain to be regular and for the swelling to become too much.
She had waited for the phone calls and the test results and the rent checks to clear. She had even waited to see if he would come back or if crying would finally stop being useful.
By now, her ability to wait had developed thick calluses. A contraction gripped her again and she closed her eyes for a second while bracing one hand on the edge of the counter.
She was not panicked but was simply moving inward to find her strength. There was nothing to negotiate with here because pain was not interested in a debate.
It moved through her body with complete confidence in its own authority. Her only option was to breathe and let it pass before preparing for the next wave.
“Are you all right?” the nurse asked gently while reaching out toward her.
Joanna opened her eyes and nodded slowly. “Yes, I am fine.”
