There was a sharp ‘tap tap tap’ on her window, and she drew a breath in sharply. Tilly very rarely left the house, save for her one hour a day to sit with her book while she ate her lunch in her car in the parking lot of the grocery store around the corner from her apartment. She worked for a market research firm entering survey results from home, which was perfect for her because it meant that she never had to interact with anyone at all save for the odd email exchange with her manager or a colleague. Something about the lunch hour ritual in her car, with her book, brought her tremendous peace. It was as if she were a normal, functioning member of society, taking her lunch break like everyone else. Plus, sometimes ordering a latte at the drive thru was the only time that she spoke for days on end. It was good to be sure that her voice still worked.

With a deep impending sense of dread, she turned her head ever so slightly in the direction of her driver’s side window. The most handsome man that she had ever seen in real life was standing outside of her window, visibly freezing as the Minneapolis winter wind whipped around him, holding a rather impressive bouquet of deep, crimson red roses. He had the most unbelievable piercing blue eyes.

Tilly lowered her book ever so slightly and looked at him expectantly over the top of her glasses. What could this beautiful man possibly want from her? She watched a lot of Dateline, and this guy had serial killer written all over him. Nobody with good intentions had eyes that blue. Unsure of what to say, she said nothing at all; just continued to stare blankly back at him. He was very handsome, for a serial killer.

He gestured downwards, indicating that he wanted her to roll her window down, and against her better judgement, she wordlessly lowered the window about 4 inches. Just enough to hear him, not enough for him to get his arm in the car.

“Hi,” he said awkwardly, “I… I got these for… well, I guess I just wanted you to have these,” he lifted the lavish bouquet up slightly with a sheepish shrug of his shoulders.

Tilly felt her brow furrow instinctively. What in the hell? She continued to stare at him, willing him to just walk away. To deem her “too much work” to interact with, like so many thousands of other people had before him. But he didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

“It’s uh… kinda cold out here! Do you mind unrolling your window so that I can give you these?”

She looked him up and down one more time. She thought about speaking but could sense that she had some phlegm build-up in her throat. A quick mental review of her last 48 hours told her that she had not spoken a single word since this time two days ago, when she had ordered her latte. She remained silent.

After what felt like an eternity, the man smiled, his cheeks flushed pink from the biting cold air. When he spoke, he spoke a little bit louder, as if her hearing was the problem,

“Look, I don’t want to cause any trouble. I’ve done enough of that… I just… wanted to make someone happy.” He paused, and when she didn’t move a muscle, he awkwardly stooped down and laid the flowers on the ground outside of her driver’s side door.

“I’ll go now, I’m sorry to bother you.” He started away from her car, and then turned around over his shoulder, “I hope…I hope you have a really good day.” And as quickly as he had appeared, he was gone, striding briskly around the corner of the supermarket and out of sight.

Tilly rolled her window the rest of the way up to seal out the cold, and tentatively peered over the edge of her driver’s side door. It really did appear that a crazy, albeit beautiful, man had just laid a lush bouquet of deep red roses on the icy pavement outside of her car door in the supermarket parking lot because she had refused to roll down her car window. She looked around to see if anybody else had noticed this completely bizarre interaction, but nobody paid her any mind, families bustling in and out of the supermarket with their carts loaded, children in tow. That was familiar to Tilly. Nobody ever paid her any mind.

Tilly took intense pleasure and solace in being alone, preferably with her books where she could slip into another world for a time. For over a decade, she had wanted friends more than anything in the world and she had worked hard to make that a reality for herself. She had gotten down on her knees and prayed for a social circle every night before bed. Closed her eyes and wished every time that her gaze landed on 11:11 on a clock, every time that she blew out the candles on a birthday cake. More practically, she had made the plans, sent the messages, attended the social events. She had even tried online dating for a brief and horrific moment. But it was simply not to be.

Most likely it was her fault. Everybody else seemed to have no trouble navigating the raging minefield that was friendship. And while many people had been friendly to her over the years, floating in and out of her life like snowflakes in the Minneapolis winter wind; nobody stayed. She was tolerable enough to say good morning to, perhaps a comment about the weather, but never palatable enough for anyone to really know. Never someone that another person would voluntarily choose to spend their time with.

Somewhere along the line, the sting of rejection, unrelenting self-loathing and exhaustion had become so desperately unbearable that she had given up the frantic swim upstream the raging river that was social interaction. She had slowly melted back into the social safety net of exclusively her parents’ company. And she had been so much happier that way.  

Something about spending time with her parents, as she had almost solely done for many years, had given her a cool and calm sense of ease and relief. She had never had to work for their love and acceptance, she could simply come home to rest in it. If social interaction was an agitated battle to swim against the current upstream, then time with her parents was the gentle downstream flow; effortless, beautiful, and comfortable. Try as she might, she had never been successful at replicating the sense of ease with any other human being.  It was as if the unrelenting dialogue that tormented her from the inside out, jeering every step that she took throughout her life, had been silenced. Anyone that would do her harm, be it from the inside or the outside, had been powerless before the towering, unconditional love of her parents. But then, they had died.

She had to chew an extra couple of times on her sandwich to swallow the bite around the lump in her throat, and she paused to take a drink from her water bottle.

It was shameful, wasn’t it? Downright embarrassing, really. A grown woman being so attached to her parents? She logically knew that she was supposed to grow up and get on with building her own life. It had been nearly 3 years since her parents passed away within 6 months of each other, and by all reasonable measures, she should have been progressing in her grief by now. But Tilly was frozen in exact time and space to the day that they had left. 3 years later, and she still missed them desperately; so much that it physically hurt her, as if she had gone for days without eating, and her stomach was eating away at itself, hollowing itself out all the way to her backbone. If anything, the grief intensified with every passing day.

It was the most painful dichotomy, similar, she imagined, to the impossible contract that you sign when choosing to love an animal, or watch the Titanic. Where there is great love, there too is inevitably great loss. And the ending was always the same. Barring any atrocities that upset the natural order of things, you will have to say goodbye to your beloved pet. No matter how many times you watch the damn movie, the boat will most certainly sink. And you should outlive your parents too.

She turned her head back towards her driver’s side window, her eyes blurred over with tears. Oh yea. The fucking flowers.

Originally Written Short Story, January 2023 for NYC Midnight Short Story Competition

“This is precisely why nobody in their right mind hires a Boa constrictor to perform at a five-year-olds birthday party,” his brother Marty hissed beside him.

Presently, the magnificent animal was winding its way up the absurdly muscular arm of its trainer, a very tall, burly man named Herc with a black goatee. Ben didn’t know a lot about snakes, but he had to admit that this particular one looked like a miserable son of a bitch.

            The group of kids seated on the grass under the mid-day California sun were loving the performance and thankfully seemed cheerfully oblivious to any immediate threat to life.

“You think he’s alright?” Ben murmured, surveying the scene intently.  

Herc’s default expression was fairly angry, but Ben thought that he could detect something else on his face as the snake wound its way up his arm.

“I don’t know man, I –” Marty was abruptly cut off by an answer to the question at hand.

“Get – this – thing – off – me,” Herc grunted, his eyes bulging. He lunged forward in the direction of the children and fell to his knees.

The party erupted in a sea of pandemonium, parents swiftly darting across the lawn for their children, shrieks of terror permeating the air.

Ben’s wife Leah made it to their son Oscar in the front row, and was now looking at Ben, her eyes wide with a unique combination of malice and horror.

“Come on!” Ben grabbed Marty by the arm and dragged him up to where Herc was now vigorously grasping at the snake with his free hand.

“Get – the – bottle,” he groaned, gesturing erratically towards the black duffel bag resting on the grass about ten feet away.  

Ben dove for the bag and rummaged through it frantically, emerging with a plastic spray bottle crudely labeled “RUBBING ALCOHOL”. Without much thought, he began vigorously spraying the snake in the face.

It didn’t like that. With an almighty hiss and aggressive flick of its tail, the snake unraveled itself, cascaded into the tall grass, and began to slither away from the party at impressive speed. The pandemonium escalated.

            “Grab it!” Marty bellowed at Herc, who was intently massaging his now free arm. But as quickly as the chaos had broken out, the snake was gone, disappeared into the thick shrubbery separating Ben and Leah’s house from their neighbours.

            “Okay, it’s alright! Everybody in the house now!” Ben exclaimed in his cheeriest possible voice, escorting his traumatized party guests in through their sliding back door.

           

Once the backyard had been suitably evacuated, he returned to Marty and a hysterical Herc.

“You’ve got to help me man, I have to get that snake back, or it’s my life on the line!”

Marty looked murderous.

“I’ll have your life myself, you overgrown sausage. We call the police, or animal control, or whoever the hell deals with this shit.”

“No! No police, or animal control, you can’t call anyone!”

For such a physically intimidating man, Herc looked so small and terrified that Ben exhaled deeply and vigorously rubbed his eyes.

“Listen Herc, I don’t know what’s going on here, but we have to get that snake back before it hurts someone; there are lots of kids in this neighbourhood. If we can’t call anyone, then what do you propose we do?”

Herc looked up at him with a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

“I’ve got some stuff in my car. Bait. And some tools we can use to grab it.”

            “Well, I guess that’s as good enough a place as any to start,” said Ben.

The three men made their way between the houses up towards Ben’s front yard, a steady stream of protest from Marty punctuating every step. 

“Ben, are you out of your mind? This isn’t an episode of the Crocodile Hunter, we don’t know shit about snakes, one of us is going to get killed by this thing, if we can even find it.”

As they rounded the corner, Ben paused, and Herc made an audible noise that sounded like he was being strangled. A tall, well-dressed man wearing mirrored sunglasses was leaning up against a rusty gold Honda Accord. Something about his demeanour made Ben uneasy.

“Ah, Herc. You’ve made some friends I see.”

            Ben and Marty both looked at Herc, but he stood frozen to the spot, his eyes as wide and terrified as they had been when the Boa constrictor had been squeezing the life out of his arm.

            “I’ll fix this boss. I just need some time.”  

            The man took three brisk steps across the grass so that he was within a foot of them. When he spoke this time, his voice was low and thick with venom.

            “I knew that you would screw this up. That’s why I’m here; to remind you that we’re overdue as it is. And also, to tell you this: I’m heading to the airport right now. If that snake isn’t safely on my plane when it takes off, you’ll wish that slithery fucker had killed you this afternoon. And if you had a brain in your head,” he glanced between Ben and Marty, “You’d find a way to deal with these two as well.”

“Alright dude, here’s the deal. Ben and I don’t go one step further until you explain what in Gods name is going on here,” Marty said folding his arms across his chest.

            Herc was sitting on the plush green grass despondently, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

            “It’s all a front. I work for him, for all of them. We transport drugs across the border. The birthday party gig is all just a cover, gives us somewhere to funnel the money.”

            “Hey! I paid you almost $300 for this party!” Ben exclaimed righteously.

            Marty shook his head and continued,

            “Okay… and a shipment is… overdue?”

            Herc nodded.

            “This job was going to make up for it. Security’s so tight at the airport now. A whole shipment got busted last week, thought they were gonna kill us all. We got some extra shit for them in this shipment. Really good quality. We were gonna send it to them, no charge to make up for being so late.”

            “Okay, well why can’t you still do that? The airport’s not far from here?”  

            “It got away,” he said, his voice breaking.

            “What do you mean, how did a shipment ‘get away’…?” Ben paused, his mouth dropping open in sickening realization. “You’re not serious? In the snake?”

            “In the snake,” Herc confirmed, dropping his head into his hands.

           

“Am I on a TV show right now? There’s no way this is happening.” Marty leaned up against the siding of Ben’s front porch, shaking his head in disbelief. Ben nodded, wordlessly.

            “What are we going to do, Ben? We can’t go on some crusade with a drug lord to hunt down a drug-stuffed Boa constrictor, for the love of God. We’ll end up in jail, or with our throats slit.”

            “He’s in a jam Marty. The guy’s a mess, he clearly can’t solve this on his own, and they’re going to kill him if he can’t. Not to mention, there’s a damn Boa constrictor that just escaped from my kid’s birthday party, roaming around my neighbourhood. I say we find the snake and try to save this guys life. It can’t have gone too far.”

            Marty closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

            “Where do we start?”

            “Well, I would think that all we need to do is follow the screaming.”

         

   Regardless of the rather grave circumstances, Ben had to admit that it was somewhat amusing to see his brother creeping around the shrubbery of his backyard holding onto an empty Boa constrictor cage. Somehow, Ben had drawn the short straw and had ended up with two pairs of menacing-looking tongs. His job was going to be to grab the snake and get him into Marty’s cage. Herc was in charge of the bait and had a sack of dead rats slung over his shoulder. Maybe it was him that had drawn the short straw.

            “Okay, so we know that it went under these shrubs, and our neighbours have a fence on the other side. So, it’s got to be in their yard.”

            The three men slipped through the dense shrubbery separating the two houses like they were entering hostile territory.

            “Let’s get some of those rats on the ground Herc, try to get him out in the open,” said Ben in a low tone, as if the snake would hear them.

            Herc shook the sack of rats out and four or five of them tumbled out onto the grass. Herc and Marty gingerly picked the rats up and tossed them in the direction of the shrubs on the outskirts of the yard, while Ben started pacing around the perimeter with his pincer tongs at the ready.

            “Alright, you slippery little devil, where are you?” he murmured.

            Herc and Marty had backed into the corner of the yard, giving the rats some space to draw the snake in. As Ben circled around, his gaze steadfastly trained downwards, he suddenly had the distinct feeling that he was being watched…but not from below.

He slowly, cautiously, raised his gaze and drew a breath in sharply. There, not six inches from his brother’s head, was the magnificent snake curled around the branch of the tree, perfectly camouflaged into the deep mahogany tones of the bark. A shiver of fear ran down his spine.

            “Marty, come towards me, right now,” he said, trying for all his might to keep his voice flat and emotionless.

            “Do you see it?!” Marty’s eyes widened and he immediately side stepped the wrong way, taking him closer to the tree, his eyes trained intently on the ground.

            Herc stepped towards Ben before turning around in the direction of the tree. His eyes widened.

            “Holy shit!”

            “Herc, don’t!” Ben shouted, as Herc impulsively reached for the snake with his bare hands.

            The snake reacted swiftly, baring its impressive fangs, and sinking them deep into the leathery skin of Herc’s forearm. He let out a bloodcurdling scream.

            “It got me!” he collapsed to his knees, clutching his arm desperately.

            “Ben, the snake!” bellowed Marty, as the snake began to slither up the trunk of the tree.

            Ben’s eyes darted between Herc on the ground and the snake, who was making steady progress disappearing into the foliage of the tree. Deciding that a wounded forearm would pale in comparison to what the drug lords would do to him if the snake got away, it was a fairly simple choice.

            He gingerly stepped into the garden shrubbery, clutching the pincer tongs.

            “Stay close Marty,” he said in a low tone, “Keep that cage ready.”

            The two of them inched their way closer to the tree, Herc providing a soundtrack of low moaning in the background. The snake continued its slow, methodical ascent.

            “You’ve got to get one near his head, and one near his tail, otherwise he’ll go apeshit, and you’ll lose control of him,” coached Marty, as if he had experience in this particular endeavour.

            Ben could feel a bead of sweat trickling down the back of his neck. He cautiously reached up high with the pincers in his left hand in the general direction of the snake’s head and positioned the pincers in his right hand near his tail.

            “Steady…steady…” Marty murmured.

            Ben said a silent Hail Mary and proceeded to gently close the tongs around the top and bottom of the snake.

At the precise moment that he made contact, there was the rustling of a sliding glass door, and his 80-year-old neighbours crackly voice rang out across the yard.

“Ben? What are you…my goodness! Is that a snake?!” the woman shrieked frantically.

            The noise shattered the tense silence abruptly, causing Ben to lose focus and jerk backwards; reflexively closing the pincers on the snake with full force. The snake erupted in what could only be described as utter indignation and emitted a furious screech as it launched itself off of the tree and backwards towards the three men.

            Ben stumbled backwards out of control and toppled off his feet and into the garden, while Marty dove in the opposite direction with a stream of profanities. The snake had landed wrong-side up on its back and erratically thrashed around in the shrubbery trying to right itself. By the time Ben had made it back to his feet, it had succeeded in this regard, and was now slinking across the open grass, not far from where Herc had jumped to his feet. Ben could see the wheels in his head turning.

            “No, Herc!”

            Before he could get the words out, Herc had abruptly launched his body in a full-frontal belly-flop on top of the snake in an attempt to stop it.

            “Jesus!” Marty thundered, as he landed on the belly of the snake, who once again emitted a terrible hiss of fury, before beginning to wind itself around Herc’s torso, with a particularly nasty glint in its eye.

            “Here, take this!” Ben tossed one of the pincers to Marty and the two of them raced across the yard and over to Herc, who was struggling against the snake.

            Ben made it to Herc first and reached out to take hold of the snake’s head with his pincers.

            “Get it’s tail, Marty!”

            “Shit, shit, shit,” Marty swore as he gingerly extended the pincers and took hold of the snake’s tail.

            “We’ve got it! Get the cage, Herc!”

            The furious snake thrashed viciously between the two pincers. Herc jumped to his feet and ran for the cage, opening the wire door and extending it towards them. Marty thrust the tail of the snake in and with one last ferocious hiss, Ben pushed the head in to follow. Herc closed the door, and the three men collapsed down to the ground, gasping with adrenaline.

            Ben came back to reality first, and turned back towards the house, where his elderly neighbour was still standing, her mouth ajar and eyes wide in shock.         

            “It’s all good Mrs. Federman, we’ve got this under control!”

           

“Man, do I ever owe you guys one,” Herc said, his voice thick with appreciation as they packed the cage up into the backseat of Herc’s Accord.

“So, what now?” Ben asked with a rueful smile. “I want my $300 back, you know.”

            Herc smiled ruefully and looked down at the cage.

            “I guess they’ll have to kill him to get the dope out, right?” Marty said, with an almost undetectable hint of sadness in his voice.

            “I guess that’s the plan,” said Herc. “But I was kind of thinking…maybe instead of Mexico, we’ll head for the Caribbean or somewhere else where they can’t find us.”

            “We? Us?” Ben asked, his eyebrows raised.  

            “Yea, we. Guess I’ve grown kind of fond of the slippery little bastard.”

From the moment that I found out that I was pregnant with our third baby, I’ve ridden the full roller coaster of emotions from sheer and absolute elation right down the track to pure, unadulterated terror. And I’m no thrill seeker.

Although I truly don’t have any burning desire to relive the trauma of the early months of our pregnancy, a little bit of background is important to set the scene for our eventual birth story on that steamy Thursday lunch hour in July.

It was Tuesday January 4th 2022. The second work day of a fresh, new year, the second day for most people’s new year’s resolutions, and for me, it was the day of my 8 week ultrasound to check on our sweet baby’s development in the early weeks. I had been sick (as per usual Sara Pregnancy Protocol!) during the early weeks of my pregnancy, and was very nervous about the outcome of the ultrasound, so I told myself that if all went well during the scan, that I would celebrate with an Iced Cappuccino from Tim Hortons on the way home.

I had the nicest ultrasound tech that I’ve ever had, and she showed me Kyle and his heartbeat right away. The relief I felt was so unbelievable, I was on top of the world. I said something to her like “this must be such a difficult job when you don’t have good news for the person on the table, I can’t imagine what you would say”. She agreed and said that she was always super happy to share good news with the mothers, but when there was bad news, she said that she had “a line”. She said that she always just said “I’ll let your doctor talk to you about this hun, okay?”.

After I had seen Kyle and she seemed to have completed everything that she needed to, for some reason, she kept circling around my lower belly over and over. I let her go on for a while, but as the minutes ticked by, I was getting more and more uneasy. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I said to her: “is everything alright?”. She hesitated, and then told me that I had a cyst on my ovary, but stopped abruptly after that. I asked her if it was big, or anything that I should be worried about. I kid you not, as God as my witness, that woman looked me right in the eye and said to me:

“I’ll let your doctor talk to you about this hun, okay?”

Of all the sickening dread moments that I’ve had in my life, that had to be one of the worst. It kind of felt like I was floating above my own body, dizzy, hot, completely oblivious to anything else that she said or did in that appointment. I think she might have asked if I was okay to drive myself home, and I must have convinced her that I was, because she let me go. Even though I wasn’t.

I remember so little from that day, but I do remember getting to my car and sitting there for a long time before I even started it, and thinking to myself that I didn’t know what to do about the Iced Capp. On one hand, Kyle was looking good…but on the other hand… something seemed to be wrong with me. I concluded that the appointment had not “gone well”.

But I got the Iced Cappuccino anyways.

That appointment unfortunately set in motion a tsunami of terror that lasted from January 4th right through to April 20th 2022. The “cyst” that they thought that they had found on my ovary ended up being confirmed to be a solid mass growing inside the lower part of my abdominal wall. I went through a parade of referrals, so many ultrasounds, blood tests, appointments, and the waiting. Oh the waiting. The waiting was the absolute worst. I’m a wordy person, but there are simply no words to describe the waiting. It was the worst torture I’ve been through in my life to date. I wouldn’t wish the waiting on anyone on earth.

After a referral to a leading oncologist out of Princess Margaret Hospital downtown, more ultrasounds and finally a biopsy, it was confirmed that this mass was actually something called a “Desmoid Fibromatosis” tumour. They’re super rare (only about 300 cases recorded in North America last year!) and seem to be caused by a combination of excessive estrogen, combined with prior surgical trauma. I guess I fit the bill for this because of my previous c-section, and my new pregnancy (which, of course causes a spike in estrogen).

Sigh.

In any case, the tumour sits right underneath my old c-section scar, and the oncologist told us in our last consult that the best course of action to get rid of it was to simply get to the end of our pregnancy, deliver the baby and get my hormones balanced out and back to normal to cut off the estrogen supply to the tumour. The other three options (chemotherapy, radiation or estrogen therapy) all sounded decently horrific, and so we were quite glad to go with this plan. We were referred to the Special Pregnancy Program at Mount Sinai Hospital, and met with a new team of OBs there who made a plan to do a “higher” c-section incision this time around to avoid the tumour, and my old c-section scar, altogether. Our surgery was scheduled for Thursday July 28th, at 38 weeks 3 days.

From that point on, life somewhat returned to “normal”, whatever that means. The last 10 weeks or so of our pregnancy crawled by. I was dealing with so many aches and pains by this point, and those combined with the overall mental and emotional exhaustion from everything that had gone on at the start of the pregnancy had really reached a peak and I was fairly desperate to get to the finish line and get our sweet baby out safely. Although it felt like it would never end, as time as a funny way of doing, it marched on in it’s steady, rhythmic way, and before we knew it, it was Wednesday July 27th, and we were packing up the car with our hospital bags, the boys overnight bags and all of our other baby gear to head downtown for game day.

Since our c-section was scheduled for 9:45am on Thursday July 28th, Matt and I decided to get a hotel room downtown for the night before so that we could get our heads in the game and (maybe more importantly) so that we didn’t have to get up at 5am to get downtown for 7:45am to check in! Unfortunately for us, it was the Thursday leading into the August long weekend, and it was also Carabana weekend in Toronto, so all of the big hotel chains were either fully booked, or $600 a night. I had finally found us something that looked reasonable for the deal price of $375, and thought that we should be pretty safe with what we were getting for a hotel that cost that much!

Matt and I dropped the boys off at my parents house, and we were all a little jittery because my Dad was starting to come down with a cold. My whole family (myself leading the charge) had been sick with a terrible respiratory virus that had really brought us all to our knees for over a month leading up to our birth. We were all pretty freaked out that my Dad was the latest victim, and that he might pass it along to our boys, who by some miracle had not gotten it from any of us over the past month. In any case, we really didn’t have much of a choice at this point, and so we gamely handed over our children and headed off downtown. I remember feeling such intense guilt when I left Austin to go to the hospital to have Carter, and I felt the same way this time. Like we were about to just rock these sweet little boys’ worlds, and they had no idea what was coming.

Matt and I went out for a quick dinner at Baton Rouge in the movie theatre plaza at Winston Churchill, but my stomach was a bit of a mess (nerves? anxiety? excitement? Some lovely cocktail of all three?) and I only really ended up eating about half of a club sandwich. Matt had a rack of ribs. We spent most of that meal talking about the name we had chosen for our third and final baby, and re-living some of the crazier moments of the journey that had brought us to where we were. We also chatted nervously about what our life might look like with three kids, and how in gods name we might attempt to handle what was coming for us the next day… (spoiler alert: we didn’t figure out squat ;)).

After dinner, we finished the drive downtown to our hotel. It was just off of Church Street, in a new-to-us part of town, and I drove right past it the first time and had to circle back to pull in. The hotel was a little sketchy, but decent enough. We parked underground in the tiniest, spookiest parking garage ever, and were pretty glad that we had brought my vehicle (our new Palisade!) rather than Matt’s truck, because it almost certainly wouldn’t have fit under the low ceilings.

By the time we got up to our room, it was already after 9pm and starting to get late. The rooms were setup like apartments with full kitchens and open living areas separate from the bedroom and bathroom. We got into the room and setup, and then the nerves really hit me hard. I started to get really anxious about the surgery. It’s a blessing and a curse to know what you’re in for (or so I thought lol), and I was replaying the details of Carter’s (very smooth) c-section over and over trying to remember all the details, and what everything felt like.

The mattress in the room was hard as a rock, and I hardly slept at all that night. I was so glad when my alarm went off at 6:15am. As we say in our house, it was “go time”.

I was so nervous. Thinking back to that pregnant girl pacing around, trying to get everything together, I just want to stop her, put my arms around her so tight and tell her that everything is going to be okay. I realized at some point in all of the madness that I hadn’t packed a single t-shirt or top for myself (I had left them all in the dryer at home), so I was stuck wearing my shirt from the previous day.

I wasn’t allowed to eat anything that morning, but I did have to drink two bottles of apple juice about 2 hours before the surgery, which I had brought with me. I anxiously sipped on apple juice as we started the short drive over to the hospital from the hotel. Even though it couldn’t have been more than 2km or so away, it took us quite a while to get through the busy Toronto streets at rush hour on a weekday. Once we had made the U-turn onto University, we got held up quite a bit because there was a big accident right in front of the hospital where a car had t-boned another car trying to turn across the intersection. All of the airbags had deployed, it was a mess.

At this point, we were getting pretty tight for our timing. We were supposed to be at the hospital for 7:45am, and I think by this time it was nearly 7:30, and we still needed to park and get ourselves upstairs. I started anxiously complaining to Matt about how I had no patience, and patience just wasn’t my strong suit (anyone who knows me knows this to be true lol). In any case, we finally made it to the parking garage, went back and forth over the bags and what we wanted to bring up, and finally made our way into the hospital.

We waited in a line for the elevators, which was crazy long, and nearly drove me to insanity because it was past 7:45am and I was frantic to get upstairs to the 15th floor. We finally made it upstairs, and found ourselves in another line of three couples checking into Labour and Delivery. It took forever, the first mother was in labour, but didn’t seem to be in any discomfort, and the second mother said that she hadn’t felt her baby move in a while and wanted to get checked out. When it was our turn, we stepped up to the glass window, like we were at a bank or something, and I awkwardly stumbled through something like “we’re here to have a c section”. She got us checked in (so much paperwork), and then sent us down the hall to a waiting room.

I was so nervous. With Carter’s c-section, I remember Matt and I chatting anxiously to pass the time, but I honestly was in a different head space this time, and we didn’t do a lot of talking at all. The waiting room was cheery and bright, lots of baby pictures. I was thinking to myself how much I wished that our surgery was over and that my baby was safe on the outside like those babies. Even though I hadn’t eaten anything in 12 hours or more, my stomach got really upset and I was in and out of the washroom twice. The second time I came back, Matt said, “they’re ready for us”. And we proceeded to the next step, triage!

We had a young Asian nurse, and she was really lovely. She took us through all the bureaucracy, our 8th set of COVID screening questions, got me into a hospital gown, took my vitals, all that good stuff. She paged our OB that we were here, and asked her to come by whenever she was ready to talk about the tumour and their plans for the surgery.

As we fiddled with vitals and monitors, our nurse said to me “do you mind if I guess what you do for a living? It’s a game I play with patients sometimes”. I said sure, and she said “are you a teacher?”.

I was shocked by that for a lot of reasons, primarily because I’ve applied for teachers college three times in the past 8 years, and have thought about being a teacher for a long time, but also because of my years instructing fitness classes. I told her not really, but that I did teach fitness classes. She asked what I did do, and when I told her she nodded, and then said “well, I think you’d be a good teacher. You explain things well.”

LOL

Our OB arrived shortly after that, and I was so relieved to see her. She has a really warm, motherly kind of energy to her, and I desperately needed some of that energy that morning. Although there were things going on to distract me, I had been nauseous with anxious energy the whole time.

She wheeled in a portable ultrasound machine and took a look at Kyle, and at the tumour. She started talking about where she would make her incision to avoid the tumour, and just at that moment, the anesthesiologist arrived to brief us on the anesthesia plan.

I can preface all of this by saying that anesthesia scares the living shit out of me. Like, TERRIFIES me. The thought of being slices open truly doesn’t phase me at all. But the thought of the anesthesia in my spine truly terrifies me. I’m not sure if it’s the paralyzed thing, or the thought of how dangerous this medication can be if they fuck it up, or maybe it’s a loss of control thing. But whatever the reason, the sight of the anesthesiologist made my heart rate climb so high that the nurse said to me “what’s going on, are you okay?”.

To make matters worse, the anesthesiologist was a resident doctor. I think his name was Edwin, but I could be wrong about that. He was funny, and got a small smile out of me, which was damn impressive at that point. He and our OB talked about the plan for anesthesia, and they decided that they would proceed with an epidural instead of the spinal injection that I had with Carter.

I voiced to them that I had had an epidural with Austin, and that it hadn’t worked for me. That epidural was the cause of so many problems with Austin’s labour. They reassured me that it was a completely different situation this time and that they wouldn’t begin until everything was working well. I was uneasy, but agreed.

Edwin scared the hell out of me. He had to give me the risks and complication possibilities, and by the time he was done, I was basically in tears. My OB stuck around and took my hand in hers and said “it’s going to be just fine, we do epidurals all the time, it would be nearly impossible for any of those things to happen, don’t worry”. Her skin was warm and her hand was soft and comforting. I really appreciated that gesture.

Everybody left us, including our nurse, and we waited. A couple on the other side of the curtain from us went in for their surgery and then not too long later, the most unbelievable sound, a newborn crying on the other side of the curtain from us. It was a totally surreal moment hearing that baby cry in that quiet room. It made everything suddenly so, so real, and was a reminder that in just a few minutes, we would have a BABY in our arms, in our family… it was crazy.

About an hour and a half late, they finally came to get us and said that they were ready to go. They transferred me to a traveling bed, and wheeled me down the hall with Matt in tow. I didn’t like that. I wanted to walk, but they preferred to wheel me and I wasn’t going to fight with them. We got to the doors of the operating room, and that was where Matt had to stop and wait for us. I can’t remember if we said goodbye, I just remember being terrified. So terrified.

There were a lot of people in the operating room, too many for me to remember them all. They got me sitting upon the operating table and got to work on the epidural. This was the part that I had been dreading for my entire pregnancy, and I just kept repeating to myself over and over in my head “you can do this, you can do this, you can do this”. They had me hold onto a pillow and hunch forward, and a really kind nurse held my shoulders and talked to me. I don’t remember her name, but she was very nice, had a cool and confident demeanor to her, and I trusted her right away. As they were getting ready to start the epidural, my OB asked me what music I’d like to have playing in the room, which I thought was kind of cool. I couldn’t think of any music fitting for my baby’s entrance into the world, so I said Elton John, and she put on the best of Elton John on some Bluetooth speaker right in the operating room.

Almost like that first ultrasound back on January 4th, I knew that something wasn’t quite right with the epidural because it was taking too long. I’ve had an epidural, and a spinal injection before, and both were quite quick. It felt like I had been hunched over for a long time, and I had. They wheeled over an apparatus for me to rest my feet and forehead on, and the nurse kept holding my shoulders and talking to me. They gave me a very painful shot of something to numb my back I think, and then there was all sorts of weird pressure, clicking, and sensations for several minutes. My OB came over to my head to talk with me and the nurse as well, and as we were in the middle of a tense conversation about their teenage daughters traveling on their own, I started to feel a panic attack setting in.

I suddenly got it into my head that I needed to sit up, or lie down, or stand up, but whatever happened, I couldn’t be in that hunched over position anymore. And I also knew that I absolutely, under no circumstances could move a muscle, because they were screwing around with my spinal cord. The combination of those two thoughts spiked my anxiety to a pretty unmanageable level, and I said to the nurse and my OB, “is there any way that I could lie down, do you know how much longer I have to stay like this?”.

They never did explain to me what exactly was going wrong with the epidural, but assured me that they were almost done, and got me some ice for my forehead. I fought like a warrior against that panic attack. It’s one of the most persistent ones that I’ve ever had, and I somehow managed to stay absolutely still and keep it together. Finally, after what I soon learned had been 45 minutes in that position, they said that they were ready to lay me down.

Laying down was the biggest relief ever. EVER. My lower body was tingly and numb-ish, but it was a very different sensation then what I had had with Carter’s c-section, where pretty much instantly I was paralyzed and couldn’t feel a thing. I was happy to be able to move my toes, but a little uneasy at how much I could still feel my legs and move them on command.

Matt appeared shortly after I was laying down, and I was so happy to see him. The poor guy had been waiting outside the operating room for nearly an hour. I can’t begin to imagine what he was going through out there with Kyle and I on the other side of the door.

Another dead giveaway that things were not going to plan was that at some point, Edwin the Resident transferred my care to his supervisor. The guy was a jerk, to put it kindly. He clearly thought highly of himself, and seemed to be very irritated by what was doing on with my epidural. They started testing my lower body to see if I could feel ice, pokes and prods, and a reflex test which felt like a jolt of lightning down my leg.

I failed every test.

They spent close to 30 minutes messing around with things. Another white haired anesthesiologist came onto the scene. My OB was clearly starting to get anxious and was up and down from her seat in the corner fussing with things here and there. Finally, I seemed to pass their tests, and they deemed that I was numb enough to begin the surgery.

At some point shortly after they began, I started into another fairly predictable panic attack. These always start the same for me, and begin with me feeling really hot and tight around my neck and up into my head and face. I had warned Edwin that this was likely to happen, and that it would be great to have some ice packs or bags of ice nearby for my face / neck, as that usually helps to ward them off. There was something so odd about how the surgery was unfolding. I could feel an alarming amount on the other side of the curtain. Not pain at this point, but I could clearly feel their hands and fingers moving around me, I could tell when they were using a different tool because the pressure felt different… it was completely a different experience from my last c-section where I felt nothing at all. Being able to feel things like their fingers moving around (presumably inside me…. ick…) really freaked me out and I was very, very anxious and scared. I started doing what I did during Carter’s c-section which was to count the minutes. His surgery had been so quick, that it literally was only a matter of minutes, and so I focused really hard on breathing, and trying to just get through a few more minutes. I figured that Kyle would be here very soon, and then I would have a baby on my chest to distract me from everything else going on.

Matt was very good at my head, he was basically on “ice duty”, re-positioning ice packs, holding my hand and providing totally baseless reassurance that “everything was going great” haha. I managed to get the panic attack somewhat under control, but the sensation wasn’t gone completely. I was very, very anxious to see Kyle, and saw that as the “end” of the hard part.

Unfortunately, the surgery just carried on and on. I was watching minutes tick by, fighting off waves of panic every so often, but no Kyle. My OB wasn’t saying anything to me at all, but was speaking in lower, very firm and direct tones to the people assisting with the surgery on the other side of the curtain. I don’t remember exactly what she was saying, but I do remember her repeatedly saying “clamp here please”.

I don’t know how long it had been on the table, when I suddenly realized that I was feeling a dull, aching sensation up near my right ribcage. It started off as nothing at all, just a very dull, far away ache. But as the minutes progressed, I realized that the ache was turning into more of a “hurt”. My brain started to play tricks on me immediately, because I realized that the pain actually very much resembled the pain that I had felt during Austin’s labour when my epidural had stopped working. It had started as a 2/10 ache, and then slowly, eventually escalated to no pain relief at all, and a full on 10/10.

I started to panic inside because I realized what a situation I was in, and that it wasn’t going to fly for the epidural to “wear off” in this situation. I remember saying in this small, meek little voice, “I think that I can feel some pain”. My OB stopped and looked over at me, and said “is it pain? Or is it pressure?” and I said that it was pain near my right ribcage. My OB looked at the anesthesiologists (all freakin’ three of them lol) and said VERY sharply, “can you please take care of that? NOW?”.

I had to laugh because there were literally only three men that were part of our birth from start to finish. They were all three of the anesthesiologists. And the anesthesia was a raging shit show from start to finish.

I’m just sayin’….you want something done right folks… give it to a fucking woman 😉

This was where our surgery started to go off the rails. The anesthesiologist started to push more drugs down my epidural line. Every time he did that, it felt like a rush of ice down my spine all the way down to the tips of my toes. I thought that that would be a good thing at first, but what I didn’t bargain for was the whole parade of complications that these drugs would bring.

Shortly after I got more medicine in the epidural, I started to feel absolutely HORRIBLE, extremely, extremely nauseated. I told Matt that I was going to throw up, and started to dry heave a little bit. I asked the anesthesiologist for anti-nausea medicine, because I remembered from my previous c-section that the anesthesiologist had given me an anti-nausea medicine in my IV that immediately solved all of my nausea woes, and made me feel like a million bucks. He pushed that medicine through my IV.

Shortly after THAT, I was laying on the table, and I started to drift away from my body. If you’ve seen the movie “What to Expect When You’re Expecting”, I felt a bit like Elizabeth Taylor at the end during her c-section when she passes out and is talking about the pigs wearing flippers on the surgeons surgical caps. I felt like I was floating, spaced out, I was cold sweating and my arms started to tingle. I turned to Matt and said super calmly. “Matt, I’m about to pass out”.

Poor Matt, this entire ordeal must have been so hard for him. I can’t imagine being in his position and feeling so helpless. He immediately got the attention of the anesthesiologist (who, I kid you not, had moved to the back of the room and was ON HIS PHONE while this was going on). He came over right away and announced “blood pressure’s tanking, pushing meds”. I glanced up at my blood pressure monitor, and although I can’t remember what the exact numbers were, I knew that it was shockingly low. The lowest that I’d ever seen, and I’m prone to low blood pressure.

The authoritative nurse that had been with me for the epidural came back around the corner and held firmly onto my hand while the anesthesiologist messed around with more medication in my IV. “It’s okay.” She said, “Your blood pressure is low from all of these meds, which makes you feel yucky. It’s going to be okay.”

The anti-nausea meds helped, but from there we entered a very long cycle of increasing my epidural meds to manage the persistent aching pain on the other side of the curtain, which led to my blood pressure tanking and me starting to fade out of consciousness. Matt said that it was like clockwork, he would watch my numbers start to fall off on the blood pressure monitor, and my skin would almost instantly turn a sickly grey colour, and I would get beads of cold sweat across my forehead, and he would call the anesthesiologist (who still did not deem it appropriate to just STAY BY MY HEAD lol) who would give me more anti-nausea meds.

I’m not sure how far we were into the surgery by now, but it must have been hours. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and asked my OB, “how much longer do you think it will be? Is everything going okay?”.

I knew the answer. Of course I did. I had been on the table over 2 hours at that point. Carter had been out within 13 minutes of them starting the surgery, and I was out of the OR in recovery within about 40 minutes total time start to finish. It was very obvious that things were NOT “going okay”.

My OB didn’t answer me. So I asked again, a little louder. She then looked over the curtain and said “I’m not ignoring you Sara, we’re just at a very critical stage and I really need to focus. In fact, can I get the music in the room off, and no more conversation in the room from anyone please?”.

As Matt and I have replayed this whole scenario over and over again, he says that that was the moment that he got really scared. Up until then, he figured that we were dealing with relatively simple things, but when she said that, he knew that we were playing with higher stakes. I was in a similar boat, and I remember that that was the first time that I had the horrific realization that it was not a given that my baby and I were going to make it off of that operating table alive. Horrible, horrible things started to flash through my mind. Austin and Carter’s sweet faces. My parents wringing their hands by their phones, waiting for an update. Matt walking out of the hospital and back to our big 7 seater vehicle to drive home with an empty car seat and / or an empty passenger seat.

So many of the things that I’ve achieved in life (not that there have been a lot), haven’t been anything to do with my physical or mental abilities at all. It’s been sheer, “do it or die trying” determination. And that was all that I had in that moment. I started trying (unsuccessfully for the most part) to change the narrative, and I kept repeating to myself some wisdom from my grandmother, a favourite of hers:

“This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass.”

There was literally nothing that we could do except wait, and keep fighting off the relentless waves of nausea and pain. In fact, the waves of nausea and losing consciousness might have been what saved me from myself, because as I just outlined, my head had wandered down a pretty dark path.

Around this time, my entire body started to convulse and shake violently on the table. I felt like I was freezing cold (all the ice was gone at this point), and my entire upper body was rattling and shaking on the table, completely out of my control, and my teeth were chattering so hard against each other that it hurt my jaw. I started to close my eyes for small stretches here to try and just “escape” the situation for a moment, but when I would open my eyes again, I found my field of vision cloudy and much smaller than usual. It’s clear now that my body was going into some kind of shock, and that I was fading in and out of consciousness. Matt told me that the anesthesiologist was standing by with an oxygen face mask in his hand, I guess in case I really did crash.

After what seemed like an eternity, my favourite nurse poked her head around the curtain and said to me “baby is almost here, hold on Sara!”. Not long after that, my OB said to me “you’re going to feel a lot of pressure Sara”. I was on another planet by this point. I was fighting like a dog to stay conscious on the table. I wanted more than anything I’ve ever wanted in the world to stay awake to meet our baby. There was a lot of tugging, pulling, and pressure…and then that sound. Ah that sound.

A big, loud, wet, throaty cry that echoed off the walls of the operating room.

I was really in a bad place when Kyle was officially born at 12:04pm. I remember crying hot tears that felt good against my freezing cheeks. I remember saying “my baby, my baby, my baby” over and over again. I remember sending Matt away from me over to the little incubator to get him wrapped up and check his vitals, and while Matt was gone, having another heaving wave of nausea.

The nurse and Matt brought Kyle back over to me, and started pulling back what was left of my hospital gown to put him on my chest for skin to skin. But the problem was that I was convulsing out of control. My whole body was rattling on the table, and I just couldn’t stop it. I was also extremely weak and shaky, and while I tried to hang onto him in that awkward position, Kyle was getting bumped around my chest, and I just didn’t feel safe having him there.

“Please just hold him.” I said to Matt, with tears streaming down my face. I was so sad that I couldn’t hold him myself. So, so sad. Matt did such a good job though, he kept him right by my face, as much as I could tolerate, and still managed to keep an eye on my vitals and advocate for me, while holding a newborn.

I was really hopeful that we were almost done, but it took another hour (yes, an hour lol) to deal with me after Kyle came out, and close me back up. That was so hard. My OB started to explain to me that when they had opened me up, they had uncovered a number of very thick, varicose veins in my abdomen that were essentially “feeding” the tumour a blood supply. She said that I had lost a lot of blood, and that they had “cauterized” (ick) those veins in an attempt to “starve” the tumour and cut off it’s blood supply.

It seemed like an eternity, but finally, at long last, they said that they were all done, and they transferred me to a stretcher bed. Almost immediately, I started to feel better. Something about being off of the operating table that I had been on for over 3 hours just felt like I had a tiny bit more control over the situation, and there were less drugs flowing into me now, so my blood pressure stabilized fairly quickly.

We got back to our recovery bay, and realized that our surgery had screwwwwwwwwwed up the c-section schedule for that day. There were husbands and couples everywhere complaining that they had been waiting for hours and that the poor mothers hadn’t had anything to eat all day. I felt so bad about that, I knew that it was our fault that they had been waiting.

It was unbelievable how much better I felt in the recovery room. I finally got to really look at Kyle and take him all in. He was perfect. Just perfect. I couldn’t believe that my partner throughout all of the trials and tribulations of the past year was finally here on this side. I also, almost immediately started looking back at the surgery, turned to Matt and said

“Holy shit. That was intense.”

Matt went down to Second Cup and got us four plain bagels with butter (LOL) and we both scarfed down two bagels immediately, we were absolutely starving because neither of us had eaten anything that day either. There seemed to be a bit of a delay getting our room ready up on the maternity floor, so we ended up staying in the recovery room for about 5 hours. Once we got some food into us, we felt so much better, and things just started looking up from there.

Our stay in the hospital was relatively smooth, I struggled with pretty severe pain the second night, and had to take some low dose morphine to get it under control, and Matt and I had a bit of a standoff with a nurse who thought she knew better than we did how to feed our baby (lol). We had a good laugh afterwards about how timid and scared we were the first time around, and how much more confident we are with our routine and way of doing things now. We were both super anxious to get out of the hospital and just start doing things our way.

And the rest is history! Our birth story, while definitely a bit tumultuous, is perfect to me. A perfect blend of adversity, determination, love, purpose and triumph. Kyle is a product of all of those things, and his parents fought like hell to bring him into this world.

I fought like hell to bring him into this world.

Our birth story feels like the perfect ending to a very challenging pregnancy, and we are so beyond thrilled to be onto the next chapter of our lives as a family of five!

Welcome to the jungle, Baby Kyle!

Originally Written Short Story, April 2021 for NYC Midnight Short Story Competition

Emily hiked the hem of her skirt a little higher up on her thighs in a desperate attempt to get her other leg up and over the windowsill. Christ, she felt like a whale. Whoever designed the fire escape certainly never considered the girl trying to bail out the window in a pencil skirt and four-inch heels. There was another loud bang at the door to her apartment.

“Emily? I know you’re in there!”

Shit. She was so late, and more importantly, she didn’t have the past three month’s rent for her landlord. With an almighty effort, she pushed the window screen aside and hoisted her other leg up and over the ledge. A loud ripping sound rang through the room, and she gasped. As she turned around to survey the damage to her rear end, the doorknob to her apartment started to turn.

“Emily? I’m coming in…”

“No! Don’t come in! I’m…I’m naked!” Emily shrieked frantically.

“Well can you please get…un-naked then? I need to speak with you.”

Emily sighed. She wriggled her bum backwards and heaved herself back into the apartment.

“Okay…come in.”

Her landlord opened the door cautiously and peered around the door like he was entering hostile territory.

“Hi Mr. Randolph!” Emily said brightly.

He furrowed his brow in disbelief, looking from her to the window and back again.

“Uh…hello there. Your rent is three months overdue Emily. And… wait, were you seriously just trying to get out the window?”

She shook her head emphatically.

“No, no! Just getting some fresh air.”

“Right… look, I really need your rent payments by the end of the week.”

She nodded solemnly, shimmying her skirt down from up around her thighs.

“And Emily…you’re going to have to fix that window screen.”

Son of a bitch. It hadn’t been her skirt that had ripped. It was the window screen.

Emily sat idly on the train, watching the world whizz by outside. To say that her life was in shambles didn’t quite capture it. Despite her very best efforts, she hadn’t worked full-time in nearly a year, her bachelor apartment was a dump, she had put on twenty-three pounds, and her idea of a love life was the one night stand she had had with the busboy at their local bar last weekend. Her phone trilled cheerfully.

“Hello?”

“Emily, it’s Skye. You wanna grab a drink tonight?”

“Wish I could girl, I’m on my way to dinner at my moms.”

“Garbage. You just don’t want to see your lover boy from last weekend.”

“Ugh. Do you know that the poor guy actually gave me some million-year-old book of poems from his grandmother? Like we were in the fucking Notebook or something.”

“He did not. I’m not sure if that’s the sweetest or the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Well, sweet or not, the guy had Cheeto crumbs in his bed. And he was sweaty. Really sweaty.”

“Say no more. I can live with Cheeto crumbs, but it’s a hard pass at sweaty.”

Emily laughed in spite of herself.

“Okay girl here comes my stop. You find us another bar, okay? I ain’t showing my face there ever again.”

“Emily sweetie! What’s kept you?”

She hardly recognized her mother, Margot; sharply dressed in fitted jeans, a crisp white tank top and gorgeous flowery pink kimono. For as long as she could remember, her mother had thought that any clothing that didn’t have a drawstring was high fashion. Love did weird things to people.

Margot had met her beaux John at bridge club six months ago and things had taken off quickly. Emily had to admit that he was very charming, in a Sean Connery sort of way, but it was still weird seeing her mother like this.

“Sorry Mom. Ran into a little snag on my way over.”

Margot clasped her arm tenderly as they started towards the kitchen.

“Oh, honey that’s okay; I’m just glad that you’re here. Let’s head outside, John and his son are barbecuing.”

“John’s son?”

“Yes, I mentioned that didn’t I? We thought it would be nice for you guys to meet.”

They made their way out the sliding doors and down the steps to the patio where John and a tall, thin man stood at the smoking barbecue.

“John, Dave, Emily is here!” Margot cheerfully announced.

As the two men turned to face them, Emily froze to the spot, her stomach dropping like a stone. There, standing on the back patio, holding her mother’s barbecue tongs, was the busboy from the bar.

As Dave turned to face her, his expression changed from a cheery smile to a look like Hannibal Lecter had just walked in for dinner. John jovially made his way over and gave Emily a hug.

“Emily! So glad to see you. This is my son Dave. Christ Dave, what’s wrong with you son,” John said, clapping his son roughly on the shoulder. “This is Emily, Margot’s daughter.”

Emily came to her senses first and extended her arm at ninety degrees.

“Nice to meet you Dave,” she said robotically, dully aware that her eyebrows were hovering somewhere up around her hairline.

“Uh, you too… it’s nice to meet you,” Dave said in high staccato.

The four of them stood in tense silence.

“So… shall we head inside? Steaks are done!” John said cheerily.

Emily was certain that at any moment someone was going to pop out from behind the couch with a camera and announce that they were on some reality show. Dave kept looking at her like some kind of panicked hostage trying to communicate something with his eyes, but she steadfastly avoided his gaze. Every time she caught a glimpse of him sitting at her mother’s dining room table, all she could picture was “The Night”. The dirty underwear in the corner of his bedroom, the questionable smell permeating throughout his apartment, the Cheeto crumbs. At least he seemed to be showing no obvious signs of perspiration tonight.

Part way through dinner, Dave excused himself and Emily seized the opportunity to casually follow him down the hall towards the washroom. As soon as the door opened, she placed her palm directly on his chest and pushed him back into the room, closing the door behind them. Dave yelped in surprise and looked genuinely scared.

“Okay, listen…there’s no need to say a word about what happened, alright? Let’s just forget the whole thing.”

Dave’s eyes were wide.

“Are you sure? If they’re going to be together, isn’t it bound to come out sooner or later?”

“Have you lost your mind? What would we tell them? That we got drunk off our asses and had a one-night stand? I don’t know about you, but that’s not typical dinner conversation for my mom and I, alright? We say nothing. Now let’s get back before they wonder what’s going on.”

Emily slipped out of the bathroom and closed the door behind her. As she came back into the kitchen, her mother had made her way over to stand behind John, with her arms around his

shoulders. Emily uneasily sat down, not liking the look of the scene. As Dave entered the room, still looking scared, John cleared his throat.

“So, you kids… we’re thrilled that you could both be here tonight, because Margot and I have some wonderful news to share.”

There was a pause for dramatic effect.

“We’re engaged!” Margot finally exclaimed, beaming with pride.

Dave looked from their parents to Emily with eyes the size of dinner plates.

“What?! So that makes us…”

“Shut up Dave! It doesn’t matter what that makes us…”

What was happening to her voice?

“But…but it’s wrong… isn’t that like… incest or something?”

“Why don’t I pour some more wine, anyone need a refill?” Margot asked weakly, making her way back over to the island and uncorking the nearest bottle she could lay her hands on.

“Incest? Would someone please enlighten me as to what the hell is going on here?” John asked, looking from Emily to Dave.

Dave looked like he was about to hyperventilate.

“Margot, Dad… you can’t get married. I’m sorry, but you just can’t.”

“Dave, can I please speak to you for a second…” Emily interrupted with clenched teeth, pushing her chair back roughly.

“Can’t get married?” John’s complexion was turning an interesting shade of puce. “Dave what in God’s name is wrong with you…”

But the words came spilling out of his mouth like word vomit before Emily could do anything about it.

“Emily-and-I slept-together-last-weekend.” Dave blurted out all in one breath.

Emily’s mouth gaped open like a fish as she looked at him in disbelief. John’s face had crumpled into an expression like he had just sucked a lemon.

“Son, you…you slept with your step-sister?”

Dave brought his hands to his head seemingly involuntarily.

“No! No! What’s wrong with you Dad! She’s not my, well…she wasn’t my…”

Margot’s eyes had widened to the point that her entire forehead had disappeared, and she was frozen in the “pour” position with a now empty bottle of wine in hand like she was having some sort of a stroke.

“Mom? Mom, are you okay? MOM, speak to me please, say something.”

“I think I forgot to take the cheesecake out of the freezer…” Margot said in a strangled voice.

“Wait so…do you mean to tell me, that you two are in some sort of relationship?” John stammered.

“NO,” barked Emily and Dave in panicked unison.

“Alright then,” John straightened his posture, “So, if it was just meaningless humping, then I don’t think we have a problem here.”

Emily winced; the man did not just use the word “humping”.

“If you’ll excuse me for a minute guys…I think I need some fresh air,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster, striding across the kitchen and out the front door.

The front door clicked open behind her, and she turned around to see Dave sheepishly step onto the front porch.

“I’m sorry about that…can I sit down?”

Emily sighed and loosely gestured to the step beside her.

“I’m not in love with you, you know. If that makes any of this better.” Dave said earnestly after a moment of silence. The words came as such a shock that Emily laughed out loud.

“That’s always nice to hear. Well, I’m not in love with you either. But I am sorry about all this. You’re a good guy, Dave. It’s not your fault that I’m such a disaster.”

She paused and then looked at him quizzically.

“So, if you’re not in love with me, then why on Earth did you give me some romantic old book of poems from your grandmother?”

Dave grinned.

“It’s not like it was an heirloom or something. It was just something I got stuck with in a box of trinkets that came from her house when she moved last year. What I actually wanted to give you was inside the book…did you even open it?”

Emily’s forehead creased in confusion, and she reached for her purse beside her. She hadn’t emptied her bag since last weekend, and if she remembered correctly, the book was still there. As she pulled out the worn paperback, and gently cracked it open, her mouth hung open. There sitting crisply inside the front cover, was five one-hundred-dollar bills.

“Why would you… but why?”

“I just felt bad for you, I guess. You were always talking about how you were so behind on your rent… and you always seemed to be so nice to other people. I just wanted to help you out a bit. I never actually meant for…what happened…to happen at all. And I sure as shit never thought you’d end up being my step-sister. But I’m not in love with you.” He reiterated holding up two fingers. “Scout’s honour.”

Emily shook her head with a rueful smile.

“I really can’t take this from you, you know.”

“Sure, you can. What are step-brother’s for!”

Originally Written Short Story, January 2021 for NYC Midnight Short Story Competition

It was all supposed to have been a joke. Just a stupid, harmless joke. But now Rachel Albright was dead, and there was really no doubt that she had been the one that had killed her. Ellie exhaled deeply and glanced at the oven clock which cheerfully read 9:13am in bright blue fluorescence. Was it too early to start drinking?  

She stood from the island and made her way across the kitchen. The new house was absurdly large; she had told Dave this when they had taken the tour. But her husband was especially fond of flaunting their hard-earned wealth and prominence, and here they were. At least they were in good company. Wellton, California was a community like Ellie had never seen before. Everyone had money. Everyone. Even their stop signs seemed fancy somehow, with their beveled edges and deeper, more classy shade of red.

As she reached the wide sweeping staircase, the peaceful silence in the house was shattered by the frantic ring of her cellphone. Her heart skipped a beat.

She briskly made her way back into the kitchen and turned over her phone, wincing pre-emptively before she looked at the number. Sonia. Thank God, it was just Sonia. When she brought the phone to her ear, she intended to speak, but no words came out.

“Ellie…what the hell happened?”                                                                                         

A flood of hot tears was welling in her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she whispered hoarsely. “Nothing…I didn’t do anything… well, except for, you know… but that was it, I swear.”

“So, you just… that was all you gave her? Nothing else?”

“No. Nothing.”  

“Okay, well, try not to panic. Maybe the chick had other issues that we don’t know about. It probably had nothing to do with you. Just freaky bad luck, okay?”

Ellie took a deep, shaky inhale and let it go.

“You’re right…you have to be.”

“Listen, Rachel had it coming to her anyways. That little whore was sleeping around with half the town, and everyone hated her for those condo plans. There’s more than a few people around here that wouldn’t have been sad to see her get it.”

Ellie’s stomach churned uncomfortably.

“I better go. Thanks for having my back Sonia.”  

“Later, girl.”

As the phone clicked silent, Ellie leaned her elbows down onto the cool marble of the kitchen island and rested her head in her hands.

The moms of Wellton were a kind of high elite society that she could only have dreamed becoming a part of. They were simply flawless in every way. Well groomed, well dressed and impossibly gorgeous, they moved through the town like some kind of designer-clad wolf pack, simultaneously terrorizing and charming everyone in their path. Ellie, by contrast, had always identified as being quite average in every way. So, it had been a complete shock when the pack had happened upon her two weeks ago while she was out in her front garden. She took a deep breath and recalled the day.

Ellie had looked up at the mom pack on the sidewalk, clad in multi-colour lycra. Although they were all spectacular in their own right, she had taken the woman who had spoken to be the leader. She walked and spoke with a slightly different swagger than the rest. Her sleek blonde hair was slightly glossier, her cheekbones a little bit more defined, and her crystal blue eyes could have frozen fire.  

“Hey. You’re new here, right? What’s your name?”

“Um, hi! Yes, we’re new here. My husband just transferred from La Jolla. My name’s Ellie… well, Eleanor really, but nobody calls me that, and…”

The blonde had put a hand on her narrow hip expectantly.

“Ellie. My name is Ellie.”

She had paused briefly, her eyes giving Ellie the tiniest flicker up and down. Apparently approving of what she saw, she had spoken again.

“I’m Grace. This is Laurel, Sonia, Hallie, Meg and Jilly.” The women had each given a small wave in her direction. “We walk this neighbourhood Tuesdays and Thursdays after we drop the kids at school. You wanna join us on Thursday?”

Ellie had hardly been able to stand it.

“Oh… I’d really like to! Yes please!”

She had hated herself for her desperation.

“Cool. We meet at the park just around the corner. See you there around 10?”

Ellie exhaled, coming back to the present. Part of her deeply regretted that fateful day. If she had never met the mom pack, then none of this would be happening right now. Most likely, Rachel would still be alive. But if she had never met the mom pack, then she would never have joined their ranks. And that simply wouldn’t do either.

Hellbent on avoiding the news, Ellie spent the better part of the day vigorously decluttering and scrubbing every nook and cranny of her palatial home. But she couldn’t escape her. In every corner, in every cabinet, under every bed, was Rachel. Wellton wasn’t exactly a small town, but word about Rachel had traveled fast, and there wasn’t a soul that wasn’t talking about her.

Rachel Albright had been very well known, although not overly well liked in Wellton. She had been here on an urban planning contract to advise the city council on the best strategy for erecting a series of massive high-rise condominiums down by the water. Nobody was happy about the condos, and nobody had been happy about Rachel either. She was young, and insanely gorgeous. The mom pack harboured an especially passionate hatred for her. Most likely, Ellie gathered, because if it was possible, she was even more beautiful than they were. But what did any of that matter. She was dead now.

As Ellie folded cashmere sweaters, she replayed her last interaction with Rachel over again in her head. It had all just been for fun. Just a harmless initiation task, assigned to her by the mom pack as the newest member of their group. Rachel had been scheduled to deliver a big presentation on the new condo plan at City Hall yesterday afternoon. It was to be televised and was open for Wellton residents to attend. The moms had challenged Ellie to invite Rachel over for a coffee that morning and slip enough laxative into her drink that she would either miss the presentation entirely or better yet, embarrass herself in front of everyone. And that was exactly what she had done. It had just been a laxative for crying out loud, right out of her own medicine cupboard. But once Rachel had left Ellie’s house yesterday morning, she had never shown up for the presentation, and she had been found dead in her townhouse hours later.

Ellie was abruptly jolted from her thoughts by the harsh trill of her cellphone. A now familiar pit of dread churned in her stomach. Every ring of her phone, every creek of the floorboards, every passerby outside her window seemed to carry an ominous tone, as if someone had put the pieces of the puzzle together and was coming for her. She took a deep breath and pressed the phone to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Ellie…it’s Laurel.”

She leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes with relief.

“Hi,” she said meekly.  

“Ellie…this is crazy. What are we going to do? I’m totally freaking out.”

“I know it is. Laurel…do you think…should I just phone the police?”

“Ellie,” Laurel interrupted, her voice high with confusion. “Have you been living under a rock? Have you seen the news?”

“No. I’ve been avoiding it.”

“They’ve just taken Grace’s husband Hank in for questioning. They found him with some poison called thallium at his work. The same poison that they found in Rachel’s medical exam.”

Grace’s husband Hank was a man befitting of the alpha mom. He was a highly sought-after plastic surgeon and owned a successful practice in Wellton. Just like his wife, he was drop dead gorgeous, one of the most beautiful men that Ellie had ever seen. As she watched and re-watched the media coverage of him being led from his practice with his hands cuffed behind his back that afternoon, she couldn’t help but think to herself that the man even looked good in handcuffs.

The only one who had been able to get a hold of Grace was Jilly, and apparently, she was a wreck. She had sent their two little girls off to their grandparents’ house in Sacramento to get away from the craziness in Wellton and was now desperate to get out of the house herself.

“She just needs to be out, you know?” Jilly had said earnestly. “She was hoping we could do your place tonight Ellie. It’s the furthest from downtown, and she thinks that people won’t know to look for her at your place with all those crazy cameras.”

Ellie had agreed to have the pack over that evening, against her better judgment. It seemed a bit odd to be socializing during a murder investigation, but what the hell. She paced around her house all evening wrought with nervous energy, snapping needlessly at her boys and obsessively checking the news for updates on Hank.

The initial findings from Rachel’s medical exam indicated thallium poisoning as the suspected cause of death. A tasteless, colourless, odourless poison, it was being rather graphically referred to on television as “the poisoners poison”; and Hank had been found with a ton of it.

Perhaps even more shocking than the thallium, was the latest report that there seemed to be some sort of illegitimate relationship between Rachel and Hank. An anonymous tip had come in that the two had been seen together a number of times late at night at both her townhouse and Hank’s practice, and while nothing had been confirmed yet, eager news outlets were already reporting that Hank had murdered Rachel to ensure that his indiscretions remained private.

Feeling sick to her stomach for Grace, and mortally ashamed of herself for her own relief, the only constructive thing that Ellie could think to do while she waited was to put two more bottles in the wine fridge. She wasn’t sure how much wine it would take to numb the pain of your husband poisoning the woman that he was cheating on you with, but she was certain that it was more than a glass or two.

Ellie had put her boys to bed early, and unceremoniously ushered Dave out the door to go watch the basketball game at his friend’s place. She waited with nervous anticipation for the pack to arrive and was hugely relieved when the doorbell finally rang.

For someone who’s personal life was crumbling, Grace still showed up dressed to kill in a knee length, black lace turtleneck dress and dramatic knee-high Chanel boots. Ellie was equal parts intimidated and infatuated with her.

As the pack assembled in Ellie’s living room, Grace made it clear that she was not interested in talking about Hank, nor Rachel.

“I’ll go back to my train wreck of a life tomorrow,” she said with a measured smile. “Tonight, I’d love to just relax for a bit.”

With the help of some alcohol, the mom pack settled into comfortable, light-hearted conversation. They had been at it for nearly an hour when Grace stood up wordlessly and made her way around the corner into Ellie’s kitchen.

The conversation turned to whether or not Laurel should consider lip implants, and as the moms debated the topic, Ellie absently traced the rim of her empty glass, thinking about Grace. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something off about her tonight. Something about the coldness in her eyes. She seemed detached from the scene somehow, as though she were here in body, but absent in mind.  

The minutes ticked by and Ellie glanced towards the kitchen, then back to the girls, who had moved on to discussing the hot new gym teacher at the elementary school. She set her glass down, and stood, making her way in the direction that Grace had.

She came around the pantry wall into her kitchen and inhaled sharply. Grace was standing on the other side of the island staring directly at her with steely eyes. Sitting atop the counter, two inches from her right hand, was a bottle of Ex-Lax. Ellie looked from the bottle, back up to meet Grace’s piercing gaze.

            “You should throw this out Ellie. It’s past its expiration date. You wouldn’t want anyone to get sick.” Grace’s voice was smooth and emotionless, and Ellie felt the blood drain from her face.

A sickening realization washed over her as she recalled Grace asking for an Advil the last time that she had been in her kitchen. How she had carefully observed where Ellie had retrieved the pills; how she had been left alone when she had requested a specific vintage wine from Ellie’s cellar.

She could hear the banter from the living room and took a step backwards. Grace picked up two glasses of red wine sitting on the island and made her way across the kitchen towards her. Her steps were smooth and weightless, almost like she was floating.

            “Here,” she said, extending one of the glasses to Ellie.

Ellie looked from the glass to Grace, to the Ex-Lax, and remained motionless.

            “It’s rude not to take a drink when someone offers it to you.” Grace said coolly.

With shaking hands, Ellie reached out to take the glass.

            “But Hank…”

            “Hank is a cheating son of a bitch. You don’t have to worry about him. None of us do anymore.”

The two women said nothing for several moments; the silence sitting heavily between them. Grace took another step towards her.

            “Ellie, have you ever heard the expression…”

She leaned into her so close that Ellie caught the scent of vanilla in her lip gloss as her lips brushed her ear.

            “The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives,” she murmured in a sultry tone.

Grace paused a moment, and then reached down, took the wine glass from Ellie’s hand, and took a long, deep drink. An enchanting smile danced on her lips, but her eyes remained ice cold.

            “It’s a good thing that you’re part of the pack, right?” she whispered, pressing the glass back into Ellie’s hand.

As Ellie stood face to face with her, eyes locked on her leader, the natural order of things seemed to have been restored. Grace was their alpha, and both Hank and Rachel had gotten in between her and what she wanted. And Grace was a woman who always got what she wanted.

Dully aware that she was holding her breath, Ellie gave a tiny nod of her head. Grace leaned in and pressed her lips against her cheek with a rush of citrus perfume. She floated past Ellie, winking at her over her shoulder before disappearing around the corner. She may as well have been howling at the moon.