Working (It) Out

Joy and Leonard had saved up enough money to move to a one-bedroom within the same building as their studio apartment. Two floors up and a view of the frozen rooftop garden the building next store had. It was the middle of February, and that winter had been one of the coldest since they moved to Chicago. Nothing like the snow-laden Minnesota winters that they were accustomed to. Chicago winters were snowy, icy, and freezing. Joy couldn’t wait for the springtime weather to thaw the rooftop garden so that she could enjoy its beauty. Being seven months pregnant didn’t help Joy’s confidence in walking across icy sidewalks and streets on the way to work.

Every day she would fret about having a terrible fall and going into early labor, or even worst, hurting the baby.

Every now and then, Antonio gave her a ride to work, and Irene was a big help and often borrowed Leonard’s car so that both she and Joy could run errands. For the most part, Joy took well to pregnancy and glowed with enthusiasm every time someone acknowledged her soon-to-be arrival. She had minimal discomfort, no morning sickness, and in a way, sensed that her child was doing great too. She often wondered about the sex of the child and toyed with boy and girl names that sound similar or that had similar meanings.
Gender-neutral names such as Quinn, Finn/Fynn, Dale, and the list went on.

April 1st, as Joy sat in the back of the cab, dressed soaked, she thought about how Antonio laughed over the phone as she told him that the baby was coming. She had to say to him more than twice for him to realize that it wasn’t the worst April’s Fool joke but that their child was coming weeks early. As the cab rushed through Chicago’s westside to Cook County hospital, the Irish cab driver tried to put both Joy and her colleague at ease. He began to tell them about the birth of all eight of his children. Thickly accented, they heard the story about his eldest being born on the ship while in transit to America. His twins were born eight months after, in front of the firehouse in route to the hospital, his fourth delivered at home, and the last four were born at the hospital. While he begins to recite each child’s name, Joy started to moan in agony. Her ribs began to expand with every breath, and the weight of her stomach and baby began to weigh down towards her hips, causing her extreme pain. As the pain became more frequent, surging from the nape of her neck down to her spine, she felt as if her tailbone would shatter into a million pieces. She could barely hear her coworker’s soothing voice, and the cabdrivers voice became a distant murmur. This baby was coming, and she was afraid too, that her very own child would be born in transit. “There it is!” her coworker said as they approached the hospital. Although, what may have seemed odd at the moment, Joy noticed the façade of the building, the intricate details, and brickwork. The columns that extended three stories up, the smooth lines, and the hospital’s beauty swallowed her whole, and it seemed that the baby also calmed down. Joy was in a trance, a trance broken by the big red letters that read “EMERGENCY.” Seeing this popped her right back into the pain she was feeling, and with that, Joy fainted. Gaining consciousness minutes later in the delivery ward. Beside her, she could hear the screams and moans of labor, with her own pain causing her to join in the chorus. “Push, Push, Push!” shouted the doctor, “I can see the head,” exclaimed a nurse, “you’re almost there,” whispered her coworker Betsy, as she held Joy’s hand. Mustering up all of her energy and breath, Joy gave one big push and exhaled out a perfectly beautiful little boy.