birth daydream: radio silence edition

Ryan decided not to return to his job next year. He's in academia right now, and it's just not his kettle of fish, so to speak. So he's been interviewing and has a number of promising prospects.

Here's the thing.

This great company? 

They want to interview him.

In New Jersey.

On June 13.

6 days after my due date. 

Now I've been told that the second baby pops out early more often than not, but I'm due on Saturday (that's tomorrow.) and this little boy seems to be snuggled up awful tight in there.

I've also been told that you can't "jinx it" or "tempt fate," but I'm not gonna lie, putting Ryan an a 4-to-5-hour flight across the country less than a week after I'm due sure feels a lot like tempting something that pretty closely resembles fate. 

Here's what I KNOW IS going to happen.

Ryan will get settled on the plane. He'll text me:

All good?

I'll respond:

Locked and loaded, no action here. Chicken and I are watching Nemo. Safe flight. Love you.

He'll smile, text:

Catch you on the flip side. 

He'll breathe a sigh of relief, and turn off his phone. For 5 hours.

And then.

My water will break in a torrential flood, and agonizing contractions will rip through my body, 10-plus intensity, two minutes long, starting every four and a half seconds, rendering me helpless as I sink to the floor in a puddle of baby juice, moaning Ryan's name.

Chicken will continue to watch Nemo, slack-jawed and glassy-eyed. Because nothing on this Earth can pull him away from Nemo.

On the plane, Ryan will open his book and ask for a ginger ale. He'll get annoyed when the person next to him hogs the armrest.

I'll crawl to my phone between contractions and try to call someone for help.

NO ONE WILL BE HOME.

Chicken will ask me for a snack.

Somehow I'll get in touch with someone who can take me to the hospital, and who can care for Chicken while I'm there. The next 4 hours will be a blacked-out nightmarescape of panic, beeping machines... and someone screaming... (at some point I'll realize... the voice... is coming from me...) 

I'll wake up in a hospital room in the thin blue light of dawn. My beautiful new son will be sleeping peacefully in the bassinet by my bed. But as I lean over to touch him, I will catch a glimpse of his name tag. 

I will have named him Blaze Thorpefurter. Because nobody was there to say "honey, that's a lifetime of regret right there. Veto." 

Also, they will have mistakenly removed my left elbow in surgery. And nobody will have taken any pictures of the birth, and all of the doctors will be wearing masks, and none of the nurses will know who I am so they'll call me Patient Zero, and it will pretty much like the beginning of a Bourne movie/One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

And then my phone will buzz.

On the ground in New Jersey! That was the longest 5 hours of my life. What's going on with you?