Edging The Night
"Damnit!"
Chuck Martin looked up from his bacon and eggs to find his girlfriend frowning into the bottom of an empty box of cereal. "I shopped yesterday."
"It's not that." She pulled open a cupboard. "My stomach keeps getting in the way."
"I know what that's like." Chuck said agreeably. Susan allowed herself a laugh as she settled down.
"Yours is from beer. Mine's about eight pounds of bone and muscle."
"You never know. Michalobe might've put a new additive in there."
Susan lifted an amused brow, eating her cereal in complete silence. Suddenly, her features quirked, and she rested her hand upon her belly.
Chuck was instantly on his feet. "Cramp?"
"No. It's rolling."
"Rolling?"
"Feel." She pressed his hand urgently to her belly. As if encompassing a wave, one end of her belly rose, peaked, and fell, left to right.
"She's trying to get comfortable." Chuck noticed, his tone awed.
"He or she thinks my bladder's in the way." Susan winced, as she climbed to her feet. "Excuse me."
Chuck stayed on his feet for a few moments, temporarily frozen by the emotion of the moment. Then he slipped into his jacket and waited for Susan to emerge from the bathroom.
Panic flitted through him when she didn't emerge for five minutes. Then the flushing of a toilet brought him relief, and Susan carefully waddled into the living room.
"Are you sure you don't want me to stay home with you?" Chuck worried.
"No! You need to work. I'd be at County if it weren't for these damn Braxton-Hicks myself."
"What if there's a fire? You're almost immobile-" She captured his face between her palms and kissed him.
"I'm fine, Chuck. The baby's fine. My paid maternity leave, however, doesn't kick in until Monday."
"Good point." He winced. "Okay, I'll get dinner on the way home from my shift."
"I'll take care of."
"No, you won't. Try to get some sleep while I'm gone."
"Okay, fine." She hugged him goodbye, then felt the inexorable pull of her bed when he closed the door.
***
The dregs of sleep released Susan from their grip with a sudden, purifying pain at six in the evening. Her first, muddled worry was that she had overslept her alarm, and it was the middle of the night. Suddenly, another pain washed over her.
She waddled out of the bedroom toward the opening door. His surprised expression dissolved into a controlled panic; he found her suitcase, the cell phone. Through the haze of her pain, she could hear not a tremble in his voice.
He took her hand, she leaned against the counterbalance of his shoulder, and at the edge of the evening, they wordlessly made their way to County.