The green light of the heart monitor cast a dull shadow across Aaron’s face every four seconds, but he was not looking at the screen. He was looking at his watch again.
“The foreman says the concrete pour at the county road site is delayed,” he said, his voice coming in rapid, clipped sentences. “They need my signature on the change order by noon.”
I breathed out slowly, focusing on the dark square of the window where the Oakhaven streets were still black and empty. A contraction pulled at my lower back, tight and heavy, before letting go.
“They can wait,” I said.
He did not sit down. He continued to pace the narrow strip of linoleum between my bed and the small vinyl armchair, his thumb constantly rotating his gold wedding ring around his finger.
“My father never missed a morning on a job site, even when my brother was born,” he said.
“You do not have a brother, Aaron,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper as he stopped pacing, his shoulders tightening under his gray flannel shirt.
“I meant his own brothers,” Aaron said quickly. “He was always there. He said a man who isn’t on site when the foundation is poured is just letting other people build his life for him.”
He stopped by the window, his phone buzzing twice against his palm. He slid it into his pocket without reading the screen, though his fingers stayed clamped around the plastic case.
“Your father spent forty years in Oakhaven building houses that are still standing,” I said. “He would understand you being here.”
“He wouldn’t,” Aaron said. “He expected things to be done a certain way. No excuses.”
A sharp contraction rose, stronger than the last one, making me grip the cold metal rail of the hospital bed. I closed my eyes and counted to ten, waiting for the peak to pass. My physical exhaustion was a heavy weight, the labor starting yesterday afternoon and dragging through the night until my body felt bruised and hollow.
“Are you holding your breath?” Aaron asked, stepping closer but not touching my hand.
“I am breathing,” I said, my voice low.
He looked at his watch once more, then went back to the window, his fingers tapping against his pocket.
“The wind is picking up,” he said. “It will make the concrete dry too fast if they don’t cover it.”
“The crew knows what to do,” I said.
He did not answer, his gaze fixed on the darkness outside.
By six o’clock, the sky through the glass had turned the color of wet slate, the first light of dawn showing the gray outlines of the maples in the hospital courtyard. Nurse Rachel came in carrying a fresh bag of fluids, her silver pen clicking against her metal clipboard as she checked the digital monitor beside my head.
“Contractions are six minutes apart, Elena,” Rachel said, using her formal medical terminology. “We are making steady progress here, but your blood pressure is slightly elevated from yesterday.”
“I am fine,” I said. “Just tired.”
“We will monitor the fetal heart rate closely,” Rachel said, writing a note on her board. “Your husband should try to get some coffee from the lounge.”
The door swung open, and Aaron walked back in from the hallway before Rachel could finish her sentence. He was carrying a small, unpainted wooden toy train, its wheels squeaking slightly as he turned it over in his hands.
“I found this in the glove box,” he said, setting it on the bedside table beside my plastic water pitcher. “My father carved it for me when I was six. I want it in the room.”
“It is covered in dust, Aaron,” I said, brushing a stray lock of hair behind my right ear as he stood looking at the simple wooden toy.
“It is sturdy,” Aaron said. “He used ash wood. It doesn’t split when you drop it.”
Nurse Rachel adjusted the blue plastic tubing on my arm, her face neutral as she worked.
“We need to keep the bedside table clear for medical supplies,” she said.
“It can stay in the corner,” Aaron said, his voice tightening. “It doesn’t take up much room.”
Rachel looked at me, then back at Aaron, before stepping away from the bed with her clipboard.
“I will be back in thirty minutes to check your dilation,” she said.
When the door clicked shut, the silence returned, heavier than before.
“You should not have brought that in here,” I said.
“It belongs to him,” Aaron said, his hand resting on the wooden train.
“The baby isn’t even here yet,” I said.
“He will be,” Aaron said. “And he should have things that last.”
By eight o’clock, the morning sun was yellow and bright against the white plaster wall. Aaron sat in the vinyl chair, holding a small pink slip of paper that he had taken from his breast pocket.
“The paint was forty-four dollars a gallon,” he said, looking at the receipt from the hardware store. “I bought three cans of the blue. The hard part was getting the primer to stick over the old lavender walls in the girls’ room.”
“We still have four daughters, Aaron,” I said, resting my hand on my stomach. “They might want to keep their rooms the way they are.”
“They will share the big room upstairs,” he said. “This is different. My father always said a house needs a clean line of succession.”
He folded the receipt into a tiny square, then smoothed it out on his knee.
“He taught me how to measure a frame so it never sags,” Aaron said. “A man passes down what he knows. If he doesn’t have anyone to take it, the work just disappears into the ground.”
I looked at the unpainted wooden train on the bedside table, its rough wheels catching the morning light. “You never told me you felt this way when the girls were born,” I said.
“I was glad they were healthy,” he said. “But my father was still alive then. He was still watching.”
He stood up, walking over to the window to look down at the gravel parking lot.
“Now he isn’t,” Aaron said.
“He was proud of you, Aaron,” I said.
“He was proud of the work,” Aaron said. “He wanted to see it continue. He told me that the winter before he died.”
“We have a family,” I said. “That is what continues.”
He did not turn around to look at me, his fingers pressed against the glass of the windowpane.
At ten o’clock, his phone buzzed again with a text message from my sister Diana. He looked at the screen, a brief laugh escaping his throat before he cleared it.
“Diana says Ava drew a picture on the paper banner they are making at the house,” he said. “She used three different markers.”
“She was very excited about the welcome home party,” I said.
He stood up and walked to the edge of the bed, reaching out to touch the blue knit baby blanket that lay folded on the rolling cart. It was a simple twelve dollar blanket we had bought at the pharmacy down the road.
“Can you believe it, Elena, after all these years, we finally have a boy,” he whispered.
The word sounded heavy in the quiet room, carrying a weight that seemed to press down on the mattress between us.
I looked at him, my hand rising to my ear to tuck the hair back again.
“We do not know that yet, Aaron,” I said.
He did not answer, his eyes fixed on the empty blue blanket.
“The doctor said the ultrasound was clear,” Aaron said, his voice dropping.
“Ultrasound is never guaranteed,” I said. “You know that.”
“I bought the paint,” he said. “I prepared the room. It has to be.”
I looked at his face, seeing the deep shadow under his eyes and the tight line of his jaw. The excitement I had seen in him for weeks did not look like joy anymore. It looked like a debt he was trying to pay.
“What happens if it is another girl, Aaron?” I asked.
He did not look at me. He kept his eyes on the blue blanket, his thumb spinning the gold ring on his finger again and again.
“It won’t be,” he said.
“But if it is,” I said.
He pulled his hand back from the blanket and let it fall to his side.
“I don’t want to think about that,” he said.
He turned from the gray light of the window, his fingers dragging across his watch face. The small click of his gold wedding ring against the metal strap sounded sharp in the small room.
“It is nearly eleven,” he said.
I shifted on the thin hospital mattress, trying to find a position that did not pull at my lower back. The contractions had slowed for the morning, leaving a dull, heavy ache that felt like iron in my hips.
“The girls will be out of school in an hour,” I said.
“Michael is already there,” Aaron said. His voice dropped into that clipped, rapid rhythm he used when his mind was racing ahead of him. “He said he would park by the bike racks so they would see his truck right away.”
“That was kind of him,” I said. I brushed a stray lock of hair behind my right ear, my fingers feeling cold against my skin. “With his shift at the plant starting at four, he had to scramble to make the time.”
Aaron did not answer. He walked to the edge of my bed and looked down at my chart, though he could not read the nurse’s shorthand.
“He has been doing a lot of scrambling lately,” Aaron said.
His thumb spun the gold band around his finger, twice, before he let his hand drop to his side. He looked back toward the window, where the low clouds of late September clung to the glass.
“He wanted to make sure they had their sweaters,” I said, closing my eyes for a moment. “The mornings have been cold.”
“He knew about the sweaters because he was at our house on Tuesday,” Aaron said.
“He was dropping off the lawnmower part,” I said.
“He was there for forty minutes, Elena,” Aaron said.
“I was folding laundry,” I said. “He sat on the porch and drank a glass of water. That was all.”
Aaron checked his watch again, the metal ticking invisible but present in the silence.
“I will go down to the cafeteria,” he said. “The doctor said they would check you again at noon.”
He left the door open an inch, and the low murmur of the hallway drifted in, carrying the smell of boiled cabbage and floor wax.
The room remained quiet for the next hour, save for the hum of the heating vent in the corner. I watched the light shift on the ceiling, the pale squares of sun moving slowly toward the closet door.
My sister Diana came in twenty minutes after the noon whistle blew at the lumber yard down the road. She was forty-one, with her dark hair pulled back into a tight clip that made her eyes look wider than they were. She carried a brown paper bag that smelled of toasted rye bread and mustard.
She crossed her arms tightly over her chest as she stood near the foot of my bed, her eyes scanning the IV pole and the plastic water pitcher.
“You look gray, Elena,” she said, her voice carrying its usual sharp, declarative edge. “Have you eaten anything today?”
“Aaron went to get coffee,” I said.
Diana set the bag on my bedside table and pulled out a turkey sandwich wrapped in wax paper.
“He has been gone over an hour,” she said. “I saw him near the elevators, staring at the floor indicator.”
“He is just anxious,” I said. “He wants this to go well. He wants a son, Diana.”
“He has four daughters who are waiting for him to call them,” Diana said. “And instead he is pacing the hallways like a man who lost his wallet.”
She sat in the vinyl chair by the wall, her arms still crossed tightly over her chest.
“Michael stopped by the house this morning before he went to the school,” she said. “He left three bags of groceries on the kitchen counter.”
“I did not ask him to do that,” I said.
“He spent thirty dollars of his own money,” Diana said. “He told me he wanted to make sure you had a full pantry when you brought the baby home. He even bought that expensive milk Ava likes.”
“He has always been quiet about his help,” I said.
“He is too quiet,” Diana said. “He looks like he has not slept in a week. He was asking me if Aaron seemed different lately.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
