I lift the ax’s handle to get some leverage before pushing hard to one side. The doors open just enough for me to get my hand inside, and I juggle the transition from the ax to my hands as carefully as possible. I’m not looking to lose any fucking fingers today.
Finally getting my footing, I push the doors with a strong heave, straightening my arms out until the doors have completely opened to the sides. Unfortunately, the only thing I can see is the top of the elevator cart below me. This one, it seems, didn’t stop in as good of a position as mine did.
Thankfully, it’s only a couple of feet down, and I can easily pull her out through the top emergency hatch if I need to.
“Can you hear me down there?” I ask toward the top of the elevator. “Are you doing okay?”
“Um…” She pauses, her voice sounding out of breath. “No. Not really.” There’s a small, almost indistinct whimper and then words that seemed dragged from somewhere pained inside her. “I don’t think I’m okay.”
My eyebrows draw together, and before taking even a moment to think, I’m on top of the cart, looking for the release to open the emergency hatch.
“Hang on,” I tell the woman inside. “I’m coming to get you, okay?”
I find the latch and release it, opening the hatch and peering down below into the soft light of the car. The woman, it turns out, is a woman I know.
And from the looks of her strained position on the floor, she’s in full-blown labor.
Fuck!
Maria
Everything inside me burns, and my heart is in my throat.
I grit my teeth as another contraction takes hold and sends any ounce of comfort I had left to the moon. It takes everything inside me not to cuss up a storm so violent it would put a hole through the bottom of this stupid elevator.
Oh, hellllllllll!
The pain is so intense, I have to squat and brace myself on the walls of the elevator. And when that’s not enough, I find that my body is running on pure instinct and sets up shop on the damn floor.
Sweat pours off way more than just my brow, and my cream silk blouse’s stainless past is history. I’m a walking swamp rat, except, of course, for the fact that I can no longer walk.
It’s safe to say you’ve been having real contractions all day.
I thought first-time pregnancies were supposed to take a while. Like hours. Sometimes days. But why does it feel like this baby is trying to shoot out of my body like he or she has a six thirty dinner with the president?
Another contraction begins to grip my body, and anyone with a brain would recognize this is not good.
As the specific someone with both a brain and the uterus that’s currently nuking itself to oblivion, I understand this isn’t just not good; it’s bad.
This is really fucking bad.
“Oh my Gawwwd!” I yell, just as the hatch above me pops open, and it startles me so badly, I feel like my bones jump through my muscles. The top of the metal structure creaks above me frighteningly, and all I can do is crane my neck to look up as I continue to puff tight breaths through tense lips.
I close my eyes briefly, wondering if I’ve somehow teleported to the beginning of a Superhero meets Villain movie, but when I open them again, I’m blessed with the stark and undeniable feeling of relief. The hatch is fully open now and the creaking has stopped, and one of the most beautiful faces I’ve ever laid eyes on is looking down at me.
He forms words quicker than I do, but seeing as I’m a little busy feeling like my body is trying to turn itself inside out, I give myself a pass.
“Maria?” he questions, the concern immediately evident in his rich voice.
“Remy? Oh God, oh God.”
With quick movements, he shifts to put his feet in through the hole of the opened hatch and climbs down. He’s shirtless and beautiful, and for the love of everything holy, I wish I could concentrate enough on anything other than the contractions that keep gripping my body like a vise to appreciate it.
He settles onto the floor and immediately kneels beside me. I wish I could say I was presenting myself as something other than a wadded-up ball of desperation, but I’m afraid not.
His smile is gentle and tender and makes me want to cry a thousand tears as he reaches up and wipes some of the sweat-slicked hair away from my face and whispers, “Honestly, Maria, getting stuck inside my building’s elevator is a really strange way to see me again. You could’ve just called.”
This is his building. Go figure.
“Very funny,” I answer through a hard jaw as another contraction rolls through my body like a freight train.