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Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable ~ Sydney Smith
Jim had been in Australia for almost three months and everything was going according to his plan. He had kept himself busy with school and a part time job at a local newspaper. It didn’t leave him time to think about…anything. However, today was different. Something was off and he didn’t know why. Throughout the day he felt out of place for the first time since he arrived. Something wasn’t right.
But he shook the feeling off and went on with his day.
***
The pain was coming now every now and again. It had started as small cramps, but during the last few hours the discomfort had grown steadily worse as the contractions grew closer and closer together. Pam was breathing slowly and evenly, trying to remain calm. But the tense, tense muscles in her back only grew tighter. Part of her couldn’t wait to meet her baby, to see its little, round face and count its tiny fingers and toes. But the other part of her was terrified.
She’d felt competent to be a mother, but now that the moment was upon her, the idea of caring for another human being frightened her. She didn’t feel at all ready and just wanted to keep the baby inside her a little bit longer. She knew she could count on the Anderson’s for help, but she slowly began realizing that the curtains could close on this make-believe life at anytime.
She needed to have a “plan B” in case this didn’t pan-out. But what? What would someone like herself do with a newborn? She had no home of her own, no job, no one to help. Maybe this baby would have been better off with Jim’s parents. They could give everything it needed and more. She felt selfish for running away. She wasn’t thinking about the baby, as she previously believed. Pam was thinking about herself.
Another strong contraction hit her causing her to double over in pain. She stood up with great difficulty and waddled out of the room. Walking had helped in the past to ease the back ache. Even if walking didn’t help, she couldn’t lay down anymore. She walked the short distance between her bedroom and Adele’s and knocked on the door. But no one responded. So, she pushed the door open and found it emptied.
She began making her way back to her room when another sharp pain shot right through her, tightening all her muscles. She stopped and held her burgeoning belly, feeling all her internal strings being pulled together. Just before the agony took control, she heard a voice, “Pam,” calling faintly in the distance, her name sounding strange, even meaningless to her ears. “Pam?” She heard again, the name expanding like a sponge, gaining weight, becoming more solid, if not more familiar. Someone was suddenly besides her touching her arm, “Pam, are you alright?”
Roy’s face snapped into focus.
“Ahhh,” Pam groaned.
“Is it the b-baby?” Roy asked, coming around to support her.
Pam managed to nod, “I think so.”
“Are you having contractions?” Roy asked. His voice sounded different. His tone was huskier, even a little strained.
She had to be in labor. Either that or her body was rupturing from the inside out. “I don’t know. Maybe?” Pam said breathless.
Roy could hear all the effort it was taking for her to talk. “Okay, I think we need to get you to the hospital.”
“N-No!” Pam exclaimed. “I-I’m fine. We’ve got time.”
“Pam, I might not know anything about this, but I think the baby is coming.” Pam looked up at Roy and he saw how scared she was. “You know this is going to be okay, right?”
Pam nodded nervously.
“How about we go to the hospital, huh?”
“Okay,” Pam said. “M-My bag is in my bedroom.”
“Okay, Okay…How about I go get it and you can stay… here,” Roy said leading her to a nearby chair. “And I’ll be right back.”
Pam nodded. This was really happening. The baby was coming whether she was ready or not.
The pressure mounted again, little by little, a warning that another punch was on the way. Dread tensed her shoulders. Jim should be here. He should see his baby being born. This is a once in a life time experience and she could never give that back to him. Another sharp pain travelled through her, this time it wasn’t a contraction, it was guilt. Pam shouldn’t have kept this baby from him. He was her dad. He should see his little girl.
“Okay,” Roy returned with her duffle bag. “I have the bag and I called my mom and she will meet us at the hospital, okay?
“Okay,” Pam said.
“Hey,” Roy said helping her down the stairs. “Everything will be okay.”
The whole drive to the hospital, Pam was thinking about Jim. He didn’t deserve to miss the birth of his baby. What he did to her didn’t justify what she was about to do to him.
“I need to call someone,” Pam said, trying to sound unwary, but failing miserably.
“Who?” Roy asked not averting his eyes from the road. “I called my mom already and I’m sure mom called dad too,” he added hastily.
“It’s um… It’s someone else. I-I I wanna call…my mom.”
“Oh sure,” Roy said, fished his cell phone out of his pocket, and handed it to her.
Pam couldn’t believe she was actually going to call him. Only one thing could have compelled her to do so – the tiny person who, at that very moment, was causing her a great deal of discomfort. She took the phone from Roy and dialed the number she still knew by heart. She put the phone to her ear, not actually thinking about what she was going to say. She thought about asking him to come to the hospital, that’s all. She wasn’t going to tell him anything else.
The phone rang once before she heard three escalating dial tones.
The number you’ve dialed is not in service.
She waited a few more seconds and the message repeated.
The number you’ve dialed is not in service.
She shut the phone.
“S-she didn’t pick up,” she explained, keeping the disappointment off her voice.
“Okay,” Roy said. “You can keep trying.”
“Yeah…Maybe,” Pam said, but handed the phone back to Roy.
Once they were at the hospital Roy ran ahead with the paperwork while Adele walked her slowly through the ER and down long corridors to the OB wing.
***
Pam was lying in a strange place and somewhere in the foreign place that is her uterus her small baby was crawling towards home, or away from home. When the pain left, she knew that it hadn’t gone far, that it was sulking somewhere in the corner under the bed and it would jump out when she least expected.
Adele stayed with her. Roy and Joe came and went. Whenever Roy was in the room he shifted awkwardly while seated in the uncomfortable hospital chair. His leg seemed to have picked up vibrations in the floor as they bounced up and down furiously. From time to time he would also get up and pace around the room, looking at the tubes and the red blinking lights. Pam thought of Jim. He should the one pacing nervously, feeding her ice `chips and holding her hand.
She took a long breath.
Adele looked at her and said, “Everything will be okay.”
Pam nodded, her eyes locked with Adele’s, clinging to her words, trusting her. Her hands seized her belly, moaning as another contraction swept her body.
Time trickled by and Pam started to panic. The nurses checked her and then the doctor checked her as well. Another contraction ripped through her back and she yelped in pain. The sound was so foreign, so different from her normal modulated tone. The baby, as if noticing her discomfort, bundled even lower on her belly. “It’s okay,” she said holding her distended stomach. “You’re doing fine. You’re not hurting me.”
It wasn’t long before she found herself on the homestretch. A new and more insistent discomfort had moved around front to a spot low in her belly. Very Low. She gasped and shifted sideways onto her hip. The pressure mounted, deeper, harder, and stronger. Pam felt as if her organs were all becoming creatures, each with its own agenda, its own train to catch. She felt her baby tunneling headfirst into her, a bone and flesh excavator of her flesh and bone. Pam was exhausted. She gasped, moaned, groaned in agony.
Nearly nineteen hours after she’d arrived, the doctor came in said it was time, time to deliver that little bundle who was already crawling its way out. As the nurses began to prep her, Pam pressed her lips together tightly as her eyes drifted upward to tiled ceilings. She blinked, painting, fighting the pressure. Sweat stung her eyes. She could think of nothing but the battle raging in her body.
Adele stood next to her and she felt the baby surging, rushing and without thinking she began pushing and she did it again and again like a drill. She felt the baby coming again and the doctor said, “Ah, I see her head. Easy now. Easy.” The contraction subsided and Pam dropped her head back.
“You’re doing great. Long deep breaths,” Adele said, wiping her brow.
Pam shifted slightly, emitting a murmur of dread. Another contraction was on its way. As her shoulders rolled forward, straining, she whispered, “Don’t let anything happen to my baby.”
“You’re in good hands, dear,” Adele assured her.
Pam didn’t know how long she’d been pushing. Couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes, though it felt like a lifetime when she suddenly gave one last heaving groan and it was over. She fell against the pillows, feeling empty and released. There was about a half second delay before she heard a sound like an old vinyl record when you put the needle in the wrong groove. The sweetest sound she’d ever heard.
“Here she is!” The doctor exclaimed.
“S-She’s here,” Pam said reaching to touch the delicate, slippery wet, velvet head. Her face was so pink and creased and her eyes blindly searched and her little hands reached out. The doctor placed the small bundle over Pam’s chest and the little girl paused, exhausted by the effort, by the sheer fact of everything.
“Jim needs to see her,” Pam mumbled. The little baby stretched, her tiny face screwing up in an adorable expression. Pam’s whole body seized up with an overwhelming love, a love so powerful tears filled her eyes. “H-he needs to b-be here.”
“Who, dear?” Adele asked.
***
Jim woke up in cold sweat for the third time that night. He looked around disoriented, hovering in the place between sleep and awake. He rubbed his eyes open and looked at his alarm clock. The red numbers flashed back at him, 4:21 am. He contemplated taking something that would knock him out, but instead he decided drag himself to the 24 hour dinner across the street.
He sat in the booth and watched as rain drops began splattering against the window in the dark. Closing his eyes, he thought of Pam. He wondered what would happen if he tracked her down and called her, what it would be like to just talk to her like nothing had happened. Like the past eight months were nothing more than a dream. A terrible, terrible nightmare.
Knowing what he knows now, he would give anything to go back to the day he last spoke to her on the stairwell or back to the previous night when she told him she was pregnant. She looked so terrified and vulnerable. Jim opened his eyes, trying not to imagine the scene in his head. He failed. What would have happened if he had listened to her? What would have happened if he hadn’t accused her of playing him? Maybe she still would be with him. Maybe they would be planning their wedding, their lives together…
Why did things have to turn out this way?
A warm flush flashed throughout his body all of a sudden. He sipped his coffee, but a terrible pain rose in his throat. The feeling that something wasn't right grew distinctly stronger. He immediately wished that he hadn’t gotten out of bed at all.
***
It was the evening of little Cecelia’s first day on earth. Pam was lying on the bed in the hospital room surrounded by balloons and teddy bears and flowers while Baby Cece slumbered in her arms. Roy was sideways on the foot of the bed while Adele stood next to Pam taking pictures.
Pam was mesmerized with Cece. She ran her finger over her rosy cheeks and watched as she quietly slept. Just looking at her baby brought so much peace to her. But the way she slumbered in her arms reminded her of how… No, she wasn’t going to go there.
There was a quite knock on the door, Adele said, “Come in!” and Gerry and Betsy Halpert stepped into the room. Betsy continued walking towards Adele, giving her a hug, while Gerry stopped, hesitant. Betsy carried flowers and a small teddy bear, which Adele took and added to the pile on the windowsill.
“Pam,” Betsy said. “Congratulations.”
Gerry found a chair in the corner of the room and sank slowly into it.
“She’s just precious,” Betsy said, admiring the small, pink bundle nestled in Pam’s arms. “You have to forgive me, but I’m itching to hold her. May I?” She asked softly.
Pam nodded.
She handed Cece over to Betsy and Betsy was speechless – completely taken by the little girl. This baby evoked something in her that she couldn’t put her finger on. Her little mouth and her ears… she looked… No, she’s going crazy to think that - or…. No. Not possible.
“Have you decided on a name?”
“Yes, I’m naming her Cecelia Marie. Cecelia after my grandmother and Marie because I um….I like it.”
“Who’s that?” Jim asked pointing at a picture frame on Pam’s coffee table.
“That’s my grandma, Cecelia. She basically raised me and my sister.”
“Oh, my grandmother pretty much raised me and my siblings too,” Jim said.
“After your parents died?”
“Yeah, yeah… after my parents died. Yeah... she was the best. She passed away a few months before I moved here. She was the coolest. She loved people and she loved a full and crazy house. Nothing ever rattled her.”
“What was her name?”
“Oh Um… Marie.”
“Marie? That’s my mother’s name,” Betsy said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, she passed away last year.” Betsy wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “My kids were very close with her, especially my youngest boy.” She smiled at Pam. “Cecelia Marie Anderson, welcome to the world.”
Gerry, who had been sitting the whole time, stood up, visibly disconcerted. “I think we need to go Betsy. I have a meeting tomorrow morning and I’m sure Pam needs her rest.”
“I wasn’t going to stay long,” Betsy said and carefully eased Cece back in Pam’s arms. “She’s beautiful.”
“Thank you,” Pam said.
“Congratulations, Adele and Joe,” Betsy said. “Your granddaughter is perfect.”
“Thanks, Betsy,” Adele said.
“Oh! Before I go, can I take a picture for the company newsletter?” Betsy asked, pulling a camera from her purse.
“Betsy, Pam is tired and she—” Gerry said, already halfway out of the room.
“I look awful,” Pam said, combing her fingers through her hair.
“Flash is not good for a baby,” Gerry added.
“Nonsense, Pam. You’re glowing. And I’ll turn the flash off,” Betsy said, countering with Gerry.
Adele crowded around Pam and the baby, smiling for the camera.
“Everyone says cheese,” Betsy said and clicked the shutter. "We’ll visit again when you are home.”
“That will be great,” Adele said.
After Betsy and Gerry left, Adele, Joe, and Roy shortly followed, leaving just Pam and Cece alone for the first time. Pam was tired and wanted to go to sleep and yet, she just cradled the small baby, sealing Cece in her warmth. She was so perfect. Looking at her little round face reminded her of Jim. She was half his. He should be able to hold her, put her to sleep, watch her grow…
No one else would love Cece like Jim would. No one will ever say "I love you" to her as sincerely and no one would ever, ever be able to keep her safe and secure from all the bad things in this world. Not like Jim would. He would be the best dad…if only she had given him the chance.
Chapter End Notes:
I know you guys wanted Jim to be there for the birth. I know! But... there's some very interesting things coming up. Please let me know what you think!
