For ten days after her due date, the McNugget didn’t come. We had thought Melissa’s belly couldn’t get any bigger. It did. Strangers stopped her on the street.
“Damn!” they said.
The anxiety made us say terrible things to each other. Things I’m not allowed to talk about. We were all about to pop. The doctor said it wasn’t safe to wait any longer. He was right.
But Melissa called me at work the day before the McNugget was going to be forced out of her fox hole. She was having contractions. We talked about them for a while, analyzed them. We had taken a labor class. Still, we weren’t sure.
“What do you think?” Melissa asked.
“I think I should come home.”
When I got home, the apartment was clean. Melissa was bent over the dryer, wincing as she folded my underwear. She asked me to make her a bagel and had a cookie for desert. In between bites, she closed her eyes and silently digested the pain.
“Do you think the food will make me shit myself?” Melissa asked.
“I think everyone shits themselves.”
They hooked Melissa up to two monitors. One measured her contractions and one measured the McNugget’s heart rate. Melissa was five centimeters dilated. You have to be four for the hospital to keep you, ten to start pushing. We were half way there, but, really, we weren’t even close.
“Find my chapstick,” she whispered.
I rummaged through Melissa’s toiletries. Melissa started doing her breathing exercises.
“All I see in here are eye creams,” I said.
“So, how much did you weigh before you got pregnant?” Nurse Patty was the fifth person to ask.
“Ow!” Melissa yelled.
“Seriously, there are four jars of eye cream in here,” I said.
“You’re weight, dear,” Nurse Patty demanded.
“I need drugs!” Melissa screamed.
The epidural worked. Hours passed. Melissa read magazines and I fell asleep watching Sportscenter. It was like any other night. We had become boring. And we liked it. That’s how we knew it was time for a baby.
When I opened my eyes, Melissa was spread open like curtains on a sunny day, the doctor five fingers deep inside her.
“The next time you feel a contraction, push three times,” the doctor said.
The doctor and Nurse Patty abruptly left the room.
“Where are they going?” I asked.
“I still can’t feel anything,” Melissa said.
“Do you think they’re coming back?”
“Don’t tell them I can’t feel it.”
“I was going to stand behind you, but the bed is up against the wall.”
“You have to watch the monitor,” Melissa said. “You have to tell me when to push.”
Nurse Patty came back in the room.
“Where should I stand?” I asked.
“Grab a leg,” she said.
“Seriously?”
I watched the monitor as I held Melissa’s leg in the air. I had a front row seat to the vagastrophe.
“I think a contraction is starting,” I said.
“Are you ready?” Nurse Patty asked.
I wondered.
Melissa pushed for two hours. Still no pain. Still no McNugget. Just me and Nurse Patty, and the sun starting to rise. Then, Melissa shrieked. I looked, down there. The tip of the McNugget’s head inched forward and retreated with every push.
“She’s coming!” I yelled.
“I want more drugs!” Melissa yelled. “They’re not working!”
“Do you feel pressure?” Nurse Patty asked.
“Ohhh!” Melissa wailed.
“You have to push a little harder,” Nurse Patty said. “Just a little bit harder.”
“Harder, baby!” I said. “Harder!”
Melissa punched me. She shut her eyes and squeezed with every muscle in her body.
“I can’t do this!” she yelled.
That was the moment the McNugget’s head poked out and never went back. As always, her timing had been impeccable. Nurse Patty ran out of the room, again.
“Why the fuck do they keep leaving?” I asked.
“It feels like a ring of fire!” Melissa yelled.
“I always wondered what that song was about,” I joked.
“Shut up!”
Melissa was crying. The McNugget was coming. The doctor ran in. She stretched Melissa’s vagina like a vintage t-shirt around the McNugget’s head. The best ones are always a little small. The doctor asked me if I wanted to touch the McNugget’s head while it was still two thirds of the way inside my wife. Melissa squeezed my hand.
“I’m never doing this again!” she wailed.
With one more push, the McNugget’s head became the face of Juliet. She looked like she had been in a spaghetti and meatballs fight. And lost. She was perfect. The nurses scooped her up and toweled her off. The doctors collected the parade of horribles that followed Juliet out of Melissa. Melissa tried to look down.
“Don’t,” I said.
“My friend says hers is even tighter now,” Melissa said.
Nurse Patty placed Juliet on Melissa’s chest. The doctors set to sewing humpty dumpty back together again. Juliet squirmed and stretched. She found Melissa’s breast. Her body relaxed. She stared up at Melissa, her baby blue eyes opened wide.
“I guess I would do this again,” Melissa said. “One more time.”
“We never called anyone,” I said. “She has your lips.”
Juliet had arrived, and no one even knew. We were the only three people in the world. We had waited and waited. And now that Juliet had come, we realized that we had no idea what to do next.
