Finally, around 6:30, my manager asked if I wanted to skidaddle, and I quickly agreed to shorten my shift. I was walking out the gate by 7. I walked to my car, called Sabastian and made sure to find out the key information I would need to not feel like a lost idiot. What parking lot, and which entrance I should use was part of that key information, as well as where exactly the elevators were located so that I could get to the second floor.
After hanging up, I drove home, changed my clothes, brushed my hair into a ponytail, and grabbed my Nook which had a new book downloaded on it. I hoped in my car, typed in the address for the hospital, and made my way down long, winding backstreets, and across a freeway I didn't even know existed. It was almost eight thirty by the time I got there, and dark outside.
I called my cousin again to let him know I was in the hospital, and met him on the second floor elevator entrance. It was clear that this was the baby birthing floor. Grandparents and little kids milled around, waiting for new children to be born. Sabastian led us past the happily waiting folks and to Dana's room.
It was dark when I walked in. When my cousin and I had spoken on the phone earlier, I had expected Dana to be in pain, or walking around, or doing other labor-like things. Instead she was asleep.
"That's the epidural. She says she can't feel a thing now." That was a weird concept to me. Of course, having never had a child of my own, (an aspiring to not have kids until after getting my Masters, at least) I didn't know how childbirth was. But I had a feeling that since women have been giving birth for thousands of years without pain killers, I thought an epidural was sort of an easy way out of the real childbirth process. But I didn't fault her for not wanting to be in pain.
Sabastian and I sat in the quiet dark, and I used the meager lighting from a low lying lamp to read. We were the only ones there until around ten when our grandparents came. They greeted us and Dana, acting like the excited, doting grandparents they wished they were. There was the SNAFU of them not going to the baby shower a few weeks earlier because "Sabastian never visits us," but my cousin seemed to forgive them. I smiled a little, having not forgotten their snub, and continued reading my book.
I texted my mom about the growing party of people, and she told me my Aunt Tracy was also arriving soon. I hadn't seen her in a long time, mostly because I was purposely avoiding her for how she treated me at my high school graduation. Three years later, and she still made me angry. But it was supposed to be a happy time, so I made that ghost of a smile that I gave my grandparents, and read further into my book.
Finally my Uncle John and his wife Christy showed up, and with disney movies in hand. It was almost eleven, and Dana's water had already been broken, and she had been checked three or four times to gauge how many centimeters she was. When I had arrived, she was only three, but as we put in Pocahontas, she was somewhere between eight and nine centimeters.
We got all the way through the movie, and the day had just turned over into Monday, the seventeenth. Dana had Sabastian call the nurse, because she was starting to feel a lot of pressure. The nurse came and kicked everyone out but Sabastian, and we were sequestered to the waiting area. I was unperturbed about being sent away. I wanted nothing to do with babies squeezing out of small places.
Tracy made me come and sit with her and my grandparents while we waited. We chatted for a minute about my own personal plans for my school success and the fact that I didn't want children, for a long time at least, or maybe at all. Then Tracy got antsy, and had to go listen at the door for the birth, leaving me and my grandparents. I would have been fine not talking to them at all. I didn't really have much to say to these people who had tried to insert themselves into my life way later than most grandparents. They hardly new anything about me other than I had dated a black guy, and was uninterested in sports.
Grandpa asked, like usual, "So you got a boyfriend?"
And like usual, "Nope," I responded.
"Oh, well, you will. I mean you go to college. I am sure there are boys there that want to be with you."
I shrugged, "It doesn't really matter. I am too focused on school to want to pay someone any attention." I clenched my jaw a little, annoyed that he seemed to feel my worth was on weather I had a boy to "support" me.
"You shouldn't be that focused," he clicked his tongue like I was a bad dog. "A girl like you needs a boy."
I sighed. It was obvious how much he didn't know my need for independence. I didn't respond to his comment, looking at my Nook.
"Is your mother going to come up here?" She was always "my mother" not his daughter. It didn't matter that he wasn't her biological father. She called him Dad.
"No, I don't think so. She is just getting home from her Birthday Bike Ride."
"That shouldn't stop her."
I came to her defense immediately. "It's not her child having a child. It's her nephew having a child. She doesn't have to be here if she is tired and can't make it. This is a special time for Trace and John. She doesn't need to intrude. I am here because Sabastian is more like an older brother to me than my own brother. She's just rode 77 miles in three days. She will see Greyson soon, and certainly isn't required to come to the hospital at one in the morning when she has work tomorrow." I was furious that he would just make a statement that it is her responsibility to show up to the hospital on a Monday morning because my cousin was having a baby.
"She could come up."
I bristled like a dog. "There are a lot of things people could do, but didn't choose to do for many, many years. But I won't hold that against them." I shook my head. Grandpa shut up, knowing full well that I was referring to the fact that they had barely made an effort to be in my life, or my younger brother's life until we were almost fourteen and eleven, respectively.
Tracy finally came around the corner with Christy telling us that Greyson was born, and that we would be able to see him soon. We all got up and went to wait around the door to the room and heard the baby screaming his ass off. I cringed inwardly, knowing that Sabastian and Dana would be dealing with that for years.
It was nearly an hour before they let us in to see the three of them. Dana was holding Greyson and looking tired, like she always does, and Sabastian was standing next to her, looking happy. Greyson was tiny. His measured twenty-one inches long, and eight pounds, six ounces. I looked at his little red face, which was kind of puckered, but not horribly so. He had Dana's chin, and nose, and Sabastian's unsloped eyes. His face was extra round and cherubic. I checked out his little ears, and saw they had the large detached lobes that Sabastian sported. His eyebrows were light brown, as way the little bit of hair that peeked out from under his hat.
He was basically totally adorable. And his eyes flickered around the room as we all crowded around, cooing, oohing and ahhing. I stroked his little soft cheek and forehead.
"We have to Simba him," I told Dana, and she smiled. "Just a little red clay paint, some excited zebras and elephants, and we got a celebration on our hands."
Tracy, John, Christy and my grandma all cried. I didn't feel that emotional about the situation, but I was happy to seem my new baby cousin healthy, albeit a little confused.
Tracy took her time to tell Dana thank you, I supposed for carrying her grandchild. Even though she had been complaining up to that point that she so did not want to be a grandma.
We all took pictures, and finally, I was tired and hungry enough that I was ready to leave. I told my cousin congrats, whispered things like, "You are going to have the best pseudo Aunt ever," to Greyson, told the ever sleepy Dana goodbye, and made my way with my grandparents and Aunt Tracy to the elevators and my car.
I drove home, feeling tired, but glad that everything went well, and that I was able to be there for my cousin. Three days later, and I haven't heard from him, but I hope things are going well. As for me, I am at school, feeling ever so lucky to not have to be a parent on top of barely not being a teenager.
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