AOIFE
“WHERE’S DAD? Has he come back yet?”
“No, I presume he’s still at the garage, love. I haven’t seen him since we got home from town. How are you feeling, Aoife love?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Mam,” I called out from our bathroom later that night, as I stood under the steady spray of water pouring down on me. “Like I want to throttle Dad for getting rid of the bath.”
“How are the pains?” Mam asked from the bathroom doorway. “Are they coming regular yet?”
“No, they’re not coming regular,” I snapped, having had quite enough of this whole damn ordeal. “Nothing about my life is regular, so why would my contractions be any different.”
“Well, you heard what the midwife said on the phone,” she parroted. “As soon as they start coming every five minutes, and last for a full minute consistently for over an hour, then we need to head to the hospital.”
“Maths is not my strong point, Mam,” I snapped, scrubbing myself down with a loofah, while I mentally warned my little intruder to stay the hell put for another night. “You do realize you’re talking to the girl who failed leaving cert maths, don’t ya?”
“Oh, Aoife,” she laughed. “Only you could make a joke during a time like this.”
“Who’s joking?”
“Have you packed your bag for the hospital?”
“Yeah, it’s in the back of my car,” I called back. “That’s why I was asking where Dad was. He took my car, remember?”
“Oh Jesus.” I could hear the panic in her voice. “Let me go and phone him up. Tell him to get back with it.”
“No need,” I grunted, breathing through a particularly crippling tightening, as my belly turned to rock from the pressure. “I’m not having the baby tonight.”
I waited until my mother had closed the bathroom door before releasing what I could describe as a low keening noise from my throat.
The pressure building up in my body was beyond intense.
Electrifying and assaulting my core.
“Jesus, I’m going to die,” I wailed, biting down on my lip, as I tried to breathe through the pain. “This is going to take me out.”
Wanting to stay under the steady spray of hot water, but needing to move more, I climbed out of the shower and hastily wrapped a towel around myself, squatting and lunging awkwardly, as I tried to ease the pressure in my pelvis.
“Don’t kill me, kid,” I begged, clutching the rim of the sink when another wave of heated pressure began to build. “Be gentle on Mammy.”
This was it.
Dammit, it was happening.
I could feel it in my bones.
I could hear it in the feral noise my mouth continued to make.
“You’ve got this,” I told the girl staring back at me in the bathroom mirror. “You’ve absolutely got this.”
Riding out another contraction, while mentally wondering how the hell I was going to manage to dress myself in order to actually go to the hospital, I half-walked, half-waddled into my bedroom in search of something to throw on, puffing and panting like an injured animal.
When the words, “Nice legs,” filled my ears, I froze in my bedroom doorway.
Froze and peed myself.
My breath hitched in my throat when I saw him.
There he was.
Covered in scars and drowning in secrets.
The self-inflicted ones, the bruising on his veins, the indents on his flesh from where he’d shot up, were harder to stomach than the ones he’d endured at the hands of his father.
But he was here.
He was back.
He was home.
He was clean.
Broken, bruised, and a little bent out of shape, Joey Lynch sat at the foot of my bed, with the sleeves of his hoodie rolled up to his elbows, and a wild-eyed expression etched on his face.
“Holy shit.” Springing into action, Joey jerked to his feet. “Did you just…”
“Just wet myself?” I strangled out, chest heaving, as my emotions threatened to consume me. “Yeah, Joe, I think I did.”
“I think that was your waters going, Molloy,” he told me, closing the space between us. “Are you in labor?”
“Depends,” I cried, throwing my arms around him when he reached me. “Are you really here?”
“I’m here, queen.” His arms came around my body, and I felt myself grow limp against him, as my ability to be strong suddenly abandoned me.
Months.
I had kept up the act for months.
Holding on, keeping my head up, praying, hoping, willing, and manifesting this moment into existence.
And now it was happening.
He had come back for me.
“Then yeah, Joe,” I sobbed, clutching onto him as another contraction started to build up inside of me. “I’m definitely in labor.”
“Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the donkey,” Mam screeched when she returned to room and found my long-lost love standing there. “Where in the name of Jesus did you come from?”
“The window,” Joey told my mother, as he knelt in front of me and pulled the biggest granny knickers I owned up my thighs.
Oh, the indignity.
“When did you get back, Joey love?”
“Today. Came straight here, but Tony told me to go fuck myself.”
“Explains the window entrance.”
“Do you have a bag, Molloy?” he asked, reaching for a pair of fluffy socks and slipping them on my feet. “If the contractions are coming that close together, then we need to get a shove on.”
“Tony has her car. The bag is in the boot,” Mam answered for me. “He’s on a roadside call out – said he’d be another hour at the least before he gets back into town. And ah, well, I don’t want to worry anyone, but I’ve just been out to the van and we’ve a flat tire.”
“Is there a spare in the back?” I heard him ask. “I’ll run down and change it.”
“No.”
“What the fuck, Trish!”
“I know, love! I know!”
“Aw crap,” I groaned, leaning heavily against Joey as another contraction ricocheted through my body. “It feels like I’m splitting down the middle.”
“You’re grand,” he was quick to soothe, reaching around to rub my back when a pained cry escaped me. “Just keep breathing. Nice and steady.”
“Joe,” I groaned, digging my chin into the crook of his neck when the pain threatened to rip me open. “I’m dying here.”
“Keep breathing,” he instructed, slipping a hand into his jeans pocket and withdrawing a mobile phone. “I can get us a spin to the hospital.”
“Yeah, I’m going to need you to let me out of this car,’ Gibsie announced, dry heaving from the front seat, as he drove like a maniac towards the city. ‘Like right fucking now!’
‘You’re driving the bleeding car, ya bollox,’ Johnny barked, looking equally as distressed in the passenger seat. Putting his head in his hands, he rocked his oversized body back and forth. ‘It’s grand, Gibs. It’s perfectly normal. We can get through this together.’
“All I wanted was a burger.”
“I know, Gibs.”
“Any maybe a curry chips. Is that too much to ask for? And now, after what we’ve just witnessed, I’ll never eat again, Johnny.”
‘Would you two shut the fuck up,’ Joey snapped, flustered. ‘You’re scaring her.’
‘She’s scaring me!’ Gibsie accused, reaching across the console to grab Johnny’s hand.
‘I know, lad,’ Johnny choked out, clutching his hand. ‘Me, too.’
‘Stop panicking!’ I screamed, lunging between the seats to clatter the pair of them. ‘You’re making it worse.’
‘Calm down, boys,’ my mother commanded from the other side of me. ‘This is all very natural.”
“There’s nothing natural about the noises coming out of your daughter,” Gibsie wailed, dodging a fist to the back of the head from Joey. “I want my mam.”
“When you approach the roundabout, take the third exit,” the Sat Nav in his car instructed in that mechanical robot voice. “And continue southbound.”
“Southbound? Where the hell is southbound?”
“Straight ahead, Gibs.”
‘Oh Jesus, Cap,” Gibsie practically wept. “Not the roundabouts.”
“You’ve got this, Gibs.”
“You know I’m not good with roundabouts.’
“Veer left. Redirecting route,” the Sat Nav said when he took the wrong turn off. “Redirecting route northbound.”
“Would you listen to her?” Gibsie demanded, waving a hand around animatedly. “Talking down to me like she knows everything.” Glaring at the Sat Nav attached to the dashboard of his car, he shouted, “What the fuck do you know about it? Huh? You’re not even from Ireland!”
“It’s a bot, Gibs, not an actual person,” Johnny tried to explain. “Don’t take it personal.”
“Oh, don’t let her fool you, Cap, she knows what she’s doing,” Gibsie argued. “Judging me from her little screen.”
‘I can’t,’ I cried out, unable to hold it together a second longer, as the pressure in my pelvis became too much. ‘Fuck. I need to open my legs and I don’t have enough room.’
‘Molloy, look at me.”
‘No, Joe, No. I don’t want to do this! Please god… I’ve had enough —”
‘Aoife, open your eyes!’
Panic stricken, and for what had to be the first time in my life, I did as I was told.
‘I’m here.’ Joey’s voice was full of confidence. ‘Right here with ya.’ His eyes shone with clearness – with sobriety. ‘I’m going nowhere, okay? Never again. I won’t leave your side.’ And then his steady hands were on my cheeks, forcing me to focus on his crystal-clear green eyes. ‘And I won’t let anything bad happen to you.’
