I am lying in my emerald-green pullout bed, and it is just before dawn, the darkest hour. I lie as still as death, waiting for life to announce itself. Distant stirrings arise, unfamiliar, neither pleasant nor harsh, then settle and subside. I lie in wait, patient and wholly unprepared. The stirrings swell into tight waves, and I know that, very soon, it will be time, and still I don’t move. I watch the dawn almost hungrily as it blossoms outside my window, and I watch as my abdomen ripples and hardens, a tiny fist or maybe the ball of a foot suddenly distorting the skin with a sharp kick, a swift poke, and all the while the waves are undulating and surging, and I am playing for time, but there is none, and so I reach for the phone and dial Beth’s number. “Sorry to wake you, sweetheart, but I think you should come. They’re about ten minutes apart.” “What!” she cries, from the bowels of Lower Manhattan. “I’m on my way! Don’t move!” And so I don’t, even though now it is uncomfortable in the bed and there is much to be done.
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