The nurse at the triage desk back at St. Jude’s had a small plastic cup of ice water in her hand when she handed me the clipboard. She looked at me over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses and said four words that sounded harmless enough at the time. She told me to keep my wife hydrated. Well, I do not happen to do anything halfway. My brain does not possess a middle gear when someone gives me a clear objective during a crisis.
I figured that a simple paper cup of tap water was the kind of lazy half-measure that lands men in divorce court or couples counseling. I needed to ensure Samantha maintained the absolute peak electrolyte balance for whatever athletic marathon her body was about to run. I figured a professional athlete would get a sports drink, so why should a woman about to push a human being into the world get anything less than a customized beverage program? That was my first mistake, though I would not realize it until the glass of apple juice hit the floor.
I spent the next three hours scouring that hospital like a man possessed by a retail demon. I raided the vending machines on four different floors, shook down the gift shop for their remaining inventory of organic herbal infusions, and even bribed a kid behind the counter at the lobby cafe to make me an artisanal green smoothie that cost fourteen dollars.
By the time I shuffled back into room 214, my arms were loaded down like I was carrying firewood. I had coconut water, sparkling lemon water, Gatorade in three distinct neon flavors, apple juice, hot ginger tea in a styrofoam cup, and that ridiculous green smoothie that was already starting to separate into two different shades of green. I spent a full ten minutes arranging every single bottle and carton on the rolling over-bed table. I lined them up by height and color, just like a proper cocktail bar down on Main Street. I even wiped the condensation off a lime-flavored sparkling water with my own sleeve to make it look professional.
Samantha was lying back against the pillows with her eyes closed, breathing through a wave of pain that had her knuckles turning pure white against the bed rails. I did not care about the timing. I was too proud of my logistics operation.
I leaned in close, patted her damp forehead with a cold paper towel, and delivered the line that would live in infamy. “Babe,” I whispered, and I swear I thought I was being the most supportive husband in the history of modern medicine. “I’ve curated a hydration menu. We have options for every stage of your recovery! Would you like a refreshingly crisp electrolyte blend, or perhaps a soothing ginger infusion?” Samantha did not say a word. She opened one eye, looked at the fourteen colorful bottles standing at attention like little plastic soldiers, and then looked right at me. Her expression was not amused. It was the look of a woman calculating how many years she would get if she smothered her spouse with a hospital pillow.
With a single, incredibly swift motion of her arm, she swept the entire tray off the edge. The sound of fourteen bottles and cups crashing, splashing, and rolling across the industrial floor was deafening.
It sounded like a small warehouse collapsing inward. Glass did not break, thankfully, because everything was plastic or paper, but the liquid contents exploded everywhere. Orange sports drink hit the baseboards. Green smoothie splattered against the rolling trash can. Apple juice pooled around the wheels of the IV pole like some kind of grotesque crime scene. The door flew open immediately, and our nurse walked in holding a fresh stack of linen. She stopped dead in her tracks, looked down at the massive lake of neon-colored fluids forming under the bed, and just let out a long, slow sigh that sounded like a deflating tire. “Sir,” she said, looking right through me with the deadpan stare of someone who had seen every variety of nervous father break down in thirty years of maternity care. “I asked you to give her a sip of water, not open a juice bar.”
I spent the next two hours down on my hands and knees with a cardboard box of brown hospital paper towels, trying to mop up a sticky, rainbow-colored swamp while the nurses walked past the open door and whispered to each other. Every time I thought I had the orange Gatorade wiped up from under the foot of the bed, my knees would find a fresh puddle of apple juice. My socks were ruined. My dignity was completely gone. I could hear the nurses at the station down the hall talking about the beverage coordinator in room 214, and honestly, they were right. I had turned my wife’s medical emergency into a bizarre hospitality management project because I was terrified of standing there feeling utterly useless. The truth was that I could not do anything to stop her pain, so I tried to control the drink menu instead. It was pathetic, and I knew it. By the time I finally heaved the soaking wet paper towels into the trash can, my lower back was screaming and my hands were stained a faint, permanent shade of lime green.
Samantha was resting with her eyes closed again, her breathing steady now that the contraction had passed. I sat back down in the hard plastic chair by her bed, feeling small and stupid, with my damp socks squishing inside my sneakers every time I shifted my weight. “I’m sorry,” I muttered to the linoleum. “I know I’m an idiot.” Samantha did not open her eyes right away, but she reached out a hand and let it dangle over the side of the mattress until her fingers brushed against my shoulder. “You’re a maniac,” she whispered, her voice rough from the pain, but there was a tiny, unmistakable twitch at the corner of her mouth. “You’re a giant, over-thinking maniac, and I almost threw you out the window.” I reached up and took her hand, holding it with both of mine, realizing how cold her fingers were despite the room being stifling hot. “I just wanted to help,” I said. “Next time, just bring the tap water,” she murmured, squeezing my fingers hard enough to hurt. That was the moment the performance stopped. The frantic energy drained right out of the room, leaving just the two of us and the faint smell of spilled fruit punch.
The rest of active labor was long, grinding, and entirely devoid of beverage options. When another contraction hit, I did not try to offer her a smoothie or pitch a flavor profile. I just pressed a cool, wet washcloth against the back of her neck and counted breaths with her in the dark. The nurses stopped looking at me like I was a hazard to public safety and started treating me like part of the team again, mostly because I kept my mouth shut and my sleeves rolled up. We did not talk about the juice bar for hours. We just worked our way through the pain together, shoulder to shoulder, until the room filled with that bright, clinical morning light that always looks too harsh for something so miraculous. When the baby finally arrived, a small, screaming bundle of red skin and black hair that instantly made every foolish thing I had done that morning disappear from my mind, the room felt very quiet and very right.
Later that afternoon, after the visitors had gone and the nurses had finally finished scrubbing the last stubborn streaks of green smoothie out of the hallway linoleum, things settled down. Samantha was dozing with the baby tucked against her chest, looking exhausted and beautiful and completely victorious. I was sitting in the corner chair, wearing a pair of paper guest slippers because my real shoes were currently sitting in the bottom of a plastic biohazard bag in the hallway closet. The room smelled like bleach and newborn baby powder, that specific scent that stays in your clothes for days. I got up quietly, walked over to the little sink in the corner, and filled two plain, flimsy paper cups with cold tap water from the silver faucet. I walked back to the bed and set one cup on the rolling table, right where the fourteen-bottle disaster had taken place twelve hours earlier.
Samantha opened her eyes and looked at the single white cup sitting there all by itself. She didn’t say anything at all. She just reached out, picked up her cup, and waited for me to lift mine. We didn’t make a toast, and we didn’t mention the cafeteria ban. We just tapped the rims of those two cheap paper cups together in the dim light of the recovery room, right beside the tiny bassinet and a pair of sticky sneakers left by the door, and drank the water.
