Meredith

MEREDITH

11 YEARS BEFORE

March

The hospital parking garage is empty when I leave. It’s three-thirty in the morning. I was with my client for nearly seven hours, helping her deliver a beautiful baby boy that she and her husband named Zeppelin. It’s horrible. He’s only hours old and already I’m imagining him being made fun of at school. But no one asked for my opinion. The husband, Matt, is an amateur guitar player and a diehard fan of ’70s rock. They’d made up their minds weeks ago.

All night my phone was quiet. The only person to text was Josh, who said good-night before he went to bed and told me he loved me. He doesn’t ever ask how things are progressing or what time I’ll be home. He knows better than to ask. He knows I don’t know. Childbirth is rarely predictable.

This delivery was relatively quick, as firstborns go. My focus was on my client and her baby. It was a welcome reprieve. I didn’t have time to think about anything else, like those awful texts.

But now, as I step onto the fourth floor of the parking garage, they come rushing back to me. I spot my car on the other side of the garage. I move quickly, a speed walk, just shy of a run. There are only a handful of cars here. Visiting hours ended eons ago. The cars still here belong to patients and hospital staff. Everything about the parking garage is cliché. It’s poorly lit, dirty and claustrophobic. There’s a foul smell to it because the garage walls are solid, with little ventilation. Even without the texts, the garage sparks fear. It belongs in a movie scene. It always scares me, but tonight especially so.

I reach into my bag. I carry pepper spray with me because long ago Josh made me. He’s always hated the idea of me out on the street or in abandoned parking garages late at night. I told him he was being ridiculous. I swore nothing bad was going to happen to me. But now I’m grateful for the pepper spray. I’ve had the same canister for years. It’s probably expired, the ingredients degraded so that they wouldn’t be much help if I needed them. But the weight of it in my hand is a relief. It’s better than nothing.

I keep my head up as I walk. I stay alert, scanning the parking garage with every step. There’s no one here. The parking garage is empty. Still, there are darkened voids where I can’t see, like in the corners of the garage where the lights don’t reach. There are stairwells at each corner; the doors are open, only a blackened hollow remains. If someone was there, standing in that blackened hollow, three feet back from the open door, I wouldn’t know. I also wouldn’t know if someone was behind me. I try to listen for footsteps. But there is some sort of supply or exhaust fan whirring in the garage. It dampens all other sounds. All I can hear is that fan. Twice I glance back to see if someone’s there, and no one is. Still, it doesn’t fully suppress the fear. As soon as I turn back, the fear of being followed returns.

I dig again into my bag. I find my cell phone, grip it in my hand. I don’t want to call and wake Josh; I’d never hear the end of it. If he knew I was scared, he’d want to send a whole brigade with me to every birth I went, to make sure I was safe.

I consider a call to Kate or Cassandra or Bea. It would be a great comfort to have someone on the other end of the line, keeping me company. But it’s three-thirty in the morning. I can’t call and wake someone up.

I hasten my pace. By the time I’m halfway across the garage, I’ve broken into a run. I’m sweating, my breath coming so fast that I have trouble catching it. My pulse pounds in my ears.

I reach the car. I yank open the door and nearly dive into the driver’s seat. I slam the door closed. I tap the button and activate the locks, but that’s only a partial relief because there’s still the fear that when I look in my rearview mirror, someone will be there. My fears aren’t unfounded, because of the text messages. I hope you die. I hope you rot in hell. I have every reason to be scared, though I’ve tried my best to convince myself that the texts are only a prank, that someone with a sick sense of humor is sending them, though I don’t know anyone like that.

I thrust my keys into the ignition. I start the car. Before I can throw it into Reverse, there’s a tap on my window. I scream, seeing only blackness filling the glass. Someone is standing beside the car. I can’t make out a face. I grab for the pepper spray. The only other things I have to use are an ice scraper and my keys.

The figure squats down and there in the window is Jeanette, the midwife.

I throw my hand to my heart. “Oh God,” I say, lowering the window and forcing myself to smile, to relax, “you scared the shit out of me, Jeanette.”

I take a deep breath. Jeanette is here in the parking garage with me. No one will hurt me while Jeanette is here.

“Sorry!” she replies, still on a high from the birth. They can be vitalizing sometimes, especially the ones like this that don’t take twenty-four hours only to wind up in surgery. “I thought you saw me,” Jeanette says. “I’ve been trailing you for a while. I called out for you.”

I tell her, “I didn’t hear you or I would have stopped.”

Then she gets a mischievous grin on her face and says to me, “Zeppelin,” and we both laugh. “The kids will have a field day with that.”

“I feel sorry for the poor boy,” I say. “He’ll grow up hating his parents for it.”

“Whatever happened to Thomas and James?” Jeanette asks. Jeanette is older than me. She’s more traditional.

“Come on, Jeanette,” I say. “Don’t you know that Thomas and James have fallen out of rotation in recent years? These days it’s all Jacobs and Noahs and Masons.”

“And apparently Zeppelins.”

“It’s an atrocity,” I say. We have a good laugh.

“It’s getting late,” Jeanette says. In just a few hours, the sun will rise. “You better get home and try and sleep before your own babies are up.”

We say our goodbyes. I watch as Jeanette makes her way to her car parked farther down. Once she’s safely in, I spin out of the parking garage, going fast. The relief washes over me when my car finally reaches the street outside. On the street there are other cars, building lights, streetlights. It’s still hours away from dawn, but the moon is nearly full, giving off additional light. A twenty-four-hour McDonald’s calls for me, and though I’m usually not a fan of fast food, I consider a run through the drive-through because it’s been hours since I’ve had a thing to eat. I’m famished, craving something greasy and quick.

The relief is short-lived because soon after comes the familiar ping of my phone. A text message. It could be Josh, wanting an update. Now that Tuesday has become Wednesday, childcare arrangements may need to be made. He leaves for work early, by six o’clock. He’ll need to find something to do with the kids if I’m not home by then, though I will be; he just doesn’t know it yet. He’s being proactive.

I grab my phone from the passenger’s seat to see what he’s said.

But the text message isn’t from Josh. It comes from the same unfamiliar number as the rest.

Get home safe,it says.