My husband emerged from the dimly lit living room, the muted sounds of a daytime television talk show trailing behind him. At thirty-eight weeks pregnant with twins, my body was a fragile, exhausted vessel, and every primal instinct I possessed was currently screaming that something was fundamentally wrong with this labor.
Travis casually grabbed his silver car keys from the brass hook by the door. For a brief, naive second, a wave of profound relief washed over me. Despite the relentless emotional neglect his family had put me through over the past nine months—the snide comments about my weight, the complaints about my exhaustion—surely he would step up now. Surely, faced with the imminent arrival of his children, the fog of his indifference would lift.
“Let’s go,” he said, reaching out to loosely grip my elbow.
We made it exactly three steps down the hardwood hallway toward the garage door before a voice sliced through the heavy air, sharp and unyielding as a butcher’s knife.
“Where exactly are you trying to go?”
My mother-in-law, Deborah, stepped squarely in front of us, effectively barricading the exit. She was dressed impeccably in a tailored cream pantsuit, smelling sharply of expensive, floral perfume. Behind her stood Travis’s younger sister, Vanessa, who was loudly chewing gum and lazily twirling her designer car keys around her index finger.
“Come and take me and your sister to the mall instead,” Deborah demanded, not looking at me, but locking eyes with her son. “The anniversary sale at Nordstrom ends today at five, and I absolutely must have that leather handbag I showed you last week. They are holding it behind the counter for me.”
I stared at her, my vision literally blurring at the edges as another massive contraction began to build in my lower spine. “Deborah, I’m in labor. The twins are coming right now.”
