Part 2
“I want you to talk to me before you decide what I can handle,” Erin said. She pulled the letter back between us. “How long would you actually be gone?”
“Three weeks on some routes. Sometimes four.”
She looked down at the paper. For a moment she was quiet, and I was relieved she hadn’t brushed the number aside.
“That would be hard,” she said. “So we talk to Paul. We talk to my parents. We work out the hard part.”
“You shouldn’t have to raise a baby by yourself.”
“Then don’t leave me to make every decision by myself. Start with this one.” She touched the offer letter. “You want the job. It pays better than deliveries. Those things still count.”
I called Ray and Beth with her sitting beside me. Beth cried when we told her about the baby; Ray asked when we were bringing Erin over so they could feed her something besides pizza. Only after that did we discuss the work.
They offered help without pretending they could do everything. Beth still worked mornings, and Ray had a shoulder that bothered him if he carried too much. Erin wrote their schedules beside mine on the back of an envelope, leaving space for the weeks we didn’t yet know how to manage.
Paul turned out to be easier to talk to than I’d expected. He couldn’t promise that a truck would never break down far from home, but he arranged shorter regional runs as the due date approached. I learned the route to Missoula so well that certain bends brought the same thoughts: a crib payment, a doctor’s appointment, the list of names stuck to our refrigerator.
At home, Erin and I painted the little bedroom blue. She sat on the floor cutting strips of tape while I tried to keep paint off the baseboard. We got the crib together on a Saturday, then took half of it apart because I had installed one rail backward.
“Professional driver,” she said, reading the instructions upside down over my shoulder.
“They didn’t ask me to build the truck.”
She laughed until she had to lean against the wall. I remember that better than the color we finally chose, although for years I would think I remembered every inch of the room.
We argued pleasantly about names. Erin liked Noah; I kept suggesting names that reminded her of men who fixed furnaces. We had decided to wait to learn whether we were having a boy or a girl, and our lists grew into something that barely fit beneath the refrigerator magnet.
On my evenings home, we walked slowly along the river. If her back hurt, we sat and watched people hurry past us with dogs and bicycles. She would move my hand to wherever the baby had started kicking, then wait until I felt it too.
Once I asked whether she was frightened. She kept my hand against her stomach and said she was, a little.
“Me too,” I said.
She nodded. We sat there without trying to fix that for each other.
A few weeks before her due date, Erin went in for a checkup and was kept at the hospital for observation. I had just returned from a run, and she told me to sleep before coming over. We spoke after supper; she complained about the television remote and said Beth had brought her slippers.
I put my phone beside the bed with the sound turned up. When it rang again, it was a little after two in the morning.
“Daniel?” Her voice was small in a way I hadn’t heard before. “They’re saying it’s labor. Can you come now?”
I was sitting up before she finished. One boot had fallen beneath the bed, and I couldn’t get my hand far enough under to reach it.
“I’m coming. Is someone with you?”
“The nurse is here.” There was a sound away from the phone, and Erin answered somebody. “I have to go.”
I drove with the route to the hospital fixed in my head. At a red light, I realized I hadn’t asked whether she was in pain. I tried calling back, but the phone rang until the light changed.
At the maternity desk, I gave her name twice. A nurse came out, checked that I was her husband, and took me to a waiting area away from the elevators.
“Her team is with her,” she said. “Things are moving quickly. I’ll get you an update.”
“Can I see her?”
“Not right now.” She stayed long enough to make sure I understood where to wait, then went back through the doors.
The nurse returned once to say the doctors were dealing with a complication. I asked what kind, and she told me there was bleeding. She didn’t say that everything would be fine.
I kept watching the doors after she left. Somewhere nearby a machine dispensed ice into a plastic cup, and I found myself angry at the ordinary sound of it. People were still getting thirsty. The elevators kept opening.
I texted Erin that I was there. The message remained unanswered, so I sent another telling her exactly where I was sitting, as if she might need directions to find me afterward.
Near dawn, a doctor asked me to come into a small room. A chair had been pulled away from a desk, and he waited until I sat. Through the open door, a nurse was bringing a wrapped baby toward us.
“You have a daughter,” he said.
I looked at the bundle instead of him. The nurse stood close while he settled her into my arms, one hand supporting the back of her head until I found the right position.
“She’s early,” he continued. “She’s stable, but we’ll be keeping her in neonatal care to watch her breathing and feeding. This can only be a short visit.”
Her face was red and creased, one cheek flattened against the blanket. She opened her mouth without making much noise. I lowered my chin toward her and felt her breath against my skin.
I had imagined a baby as something I would have to learn later, after the room was finished and the bag was packed. Here she was, with her fingers catching on the seam of my work shirt.
“Hey,” I whispered. “I’m your dad.”
The doctor sat down instead of going back out. His hands were empty now, and he rested them on his knees.
I looked from him to the nurse, then toward the doorway behind them. “Where’s Erin?”
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