“My mother was a midwife,” Peter says in that same calm tone.
“What?” I’m thrown by the comment.
“I’ve attended many births.”
He’s so calm it’s freaking me out. Behind him black smoke and flames rise out of the jungle. The smoke pours into the sky, blotting out the blue and drifting over the green foliage. It turns gray and sickly as it reaches the ocean—then thins into a haze and is whisked out to sea.
“I worked with my mom all through college, and also I was an EMT,” he says. “This isn’t my first delivery.” He is standing right across from me, my hand still on his shoulder. I pull my gaze from the swelling flames and meet his eyes. “We can do this, I promise.” He nods at me, slowly and calmly. “If you let go of my shoulder, I can gather some supplies.”
My gaze tracks to my hand, still gripping him. I remove it carefully, nervous about steadying myself. Blue taps my elbow with his nose and I reach out, resting some of my weight on his shoulders. I reach behind me, finding the palm tree again. Resting my spine against it, I lean my head back, and close my eyes.
Taking in slow deep breaths, Blue by my side, I settle a little. The panic from moments ago still hovers at the edge of my consciousness, but I’ve been through tough times before. Never when I had to give birth on an island, attended by an airline security cop! No, I reassure myself. That’s true. But I’ve got Blue, Peter says he knows what he’s doing. I’m strong. I can do this…
Another contraction looms, the nausea of it coming before the rippled tightening. I lean forward, my hands coming to my knees as I press into the palm tree. The contraction spreads, shocking the breath out of me, wrapping my world in rending pain and total madness.
I’ve never felt pain like this before—it’s not the sharp slice of a blade, or the instant heat of a bullet. It doesn’t feel wrong. The pain of violence couples with a sense of wrongness, the instinct to flee from it. The instinct here is to sink into this pain. Because on the other side is something much larger than me. The pain fades slowly, the tightness releasing as a wave recedes into the ocean. A part of me tumbles with it—as the sand is sucked out to sea.
Peter returns with the black pack on his back.
“They are happening so often. The baby must be coming soon,” I say.
“Okay.”
Another contraction begins. I hang my head, my hands gripping my knees, the tree at my back. A low moan vibrates through my body. “Fuck,” I mutter, raising my head.
Peter has moved about ten feet away, further into the trees, in a grassy area. He’s got one of the parachutes pinned down with rocks. On it is an open first aid kit and a couple of good-sized towels.
“Okay,” Peter says. “I think you should take off your pants.”
“Take off my pants?” I repeat back to him as if the words don’t make sense when quite obviously they do. It is much harder to deliver a baby with your pants on.
“Yes,” he says evenly. “If you’re worried about modesty…”
I bark a laugh. “Modesty. No. I’m not worried about modesty. I’m worried about giving birth to a baby.”
Peter’s eyes grab mine again, the same way they did when we were surrounded by smoke and fire inside a crashing fucking plane. “You can do this.” He says it like he knows it. Like somehow he knows me.
Another contraction takes my breath before I can respond. A deep groan pours out of me as I sway. Peter is suddenly next to me. I grab his forearm, steadying myself. “You can do this,” he says again, his voice that same calm, even tone. “Breathe with the pain, let the baby move through your body. Do not try to fight it. Don’t tense up.”
“How the fuck do I not tense up?” I ask through gritted teeth as the pain starts to recede.
“This isn’t normal pain,” Peter says.
“No,” I agree, shaking my head. A strand of hair falls over my face and sways with my movements.
“You’ve experienced a lot of pain, you know this is different. You also are a martial artist, so you know how to calm your mind.”
“When I’m in a fight.”
“This is a partnership,” Peter says. “You and your child are working together to bring him into the world.” My son moves then, his foot pushing against my ribs. “He’s working to get out. The looser you can be for him, the better.”
I start to sway again as I feel another contraction coming on. “That’s good,” Peter says. “Let your body move the way it wants to.”
Blue’s nose swipes my hip and I glance down at him. He’s looking at me with that same confidence: that I can do this.
“Okay,” I say, nodding. “Okay.” Stop fighting that this is happening. Yes, you just escaped a volcano-and-tsunami-ravaged island, jumped out of a crashing plane, and are now giving birth on what appears to be an uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific. But you are Sydney Motherfucking Rye. You can do this. Trust yourself. Trust your body.
Peter helps me untie my shoes and I take off my pants. The key fob Dan gave me falls out onto the sand. I pick it up. “This,” I say to Peter, “needs to stay somewhere safe.”
Peter takes it and pushes it into a small pocket on his magic pack. The guy is basically Mary Poppins if she was the air marshal son of a midwife. Blue sits next to the pack, as if guarding the supplies.
Another contraction comes as I step, pantless, onto the parachute. I still have Mulberry’s shirt on and it reaches to my thighs. “Here,” Peter says, “hold my forearms.” I do as he says, ready to follow all of Petey Poppins’s orders. “Squat. I’ll hold you.”
Bending my knees, I squat back; the pain shifts and so does the baby. Peter holds me, so that I can lean all my weight down. “Good,” he tells me. “That’s perfect. You’re doing amazing.”
When the contraction passes, he helps me stand again. Then he hands me a bottle of water. I drink deeply. Another contraction comes as I hand it back to him. He caps it quickly and offers me his arms. I squat again; the sensation shifts. “I want to push,” I say.
“That’s fine,” Peter says. “You do whatever your body wants. I trust it and so should you.”
My jaw tightens and I’m pushing, the pain shifting to purpose. When the contraction passes, I’m breathing heavily. “Want to go on your hands and knees?” Peter asks.
“Yes, that sounds good.”
He lets go of my hands and I drop them to the parachute. Peter moves away and I hear a click and whoosh. The guy has a camp stove going with a pot on top. He drops some instruments into the boiling water.
“When the baby comes,” he says, using that even tone that settles me, lending me confidence, “I’ll bring him up to your chest. He will want to latch pretty fast. So you might want to take off your shirt. I like to wait about a half hour to cut the cord, let all the blood move through.” He glances over at me, his brown eyes confident—like he does this all the damn time. “You may deliver the placenta during that time.”
I nod, nothing to say to any of that.
