“Better?”

“Actually, no.” Surprising—it usually worked.

“That’s bad, it’ll have to come off.” Before our eyes, my finger swelled and fattened, like a speeded-up video of bread rising. At the same time the color changed from red to gray to almost black.

“Christ,” Aidan said, “that is bad, maybe it will have to come off. Better get you to the ER.” We jumped in a taxi, my hand laid across our laps, like a sick little rabbit. At the hospital they took me off for an X-ray and I was thrilled—yes, I admit it, thrilled—when the doc clipped an X-ray to a light box and said, “Yep, there we are, hairline fracture across the second knuckle.”

Even though I didn’t get put in proper plaster, just a splinty-type thing, it felt nice not to be dismissed as a malingerer. I had “a Fracture.” Not just a bruise, not even a strain (or sprain, I’m never sure if they’re the same thing, and if they’re not, which is more impressive) but a Fracture.

In the following days, when everyone looked at my splint and asked, “What happened?” Aidan always answered on my behalf. “Downhill skiing slalom, she clipped one of the poles.” Or “Mountaineering, small rockfall, hit her hand.”

“Well,” as he said to me, “it’s got to be better than saying ‘looking for my blue shoes.’”

The hospital had given me my two X-rays to bring home, and hypochondriac that I am, I used to study them; I held them up against the light and marveled at how long and slender my fingers really were beneath all that pesky muscle and skin and stuff, while Aidan watched indulgently.

“See that tiny line on my knuckle,” I said, holding an X-ray right up close to my face. “It just looks like a hair, but it causes so much pain.”

Suddenly anxious, I said, “Don’t tell anyone I do this.”

A few days later, he was home from work before me—an unusual occurrence—and there was an air of suppressed excitement about him. “Notice anything?” he asked.

“You combed your hair?”

Then I saw it. Them. My X-rays. Hanging on the wall. In frames. Beautiful distressed-gold frames, like they were holding old masters instead of ghostly black-and-whites of my spindly fingers.

My arms wrapped themselves across my stomach and I sank onto the couch. I hadn’t even the strength to stand. It was so funny that for ages I couldn’t even laugh. Finally the noise fought its way up through my convulsed stomach and heaving chest and emerged as a ceiling-ward shriek. I looked at Aidan, who was clutching the wall; tears of laughter were leaking from the sides of his eyes.

“You mad bastard,” I finally managed.

“But there’s more,” he gasped. “Anna, Anna, there’s more. Watch; no, wait, watch.”

He doubled over again with hilarity, then straightened up, wiped his face, and said, “Look!”

He pressed a switch and suddenly my two X-rays lit up, blazing into glory, just like they were on a hospital light box.

“I got lights,” Aidan sobbed. “The guy in the frame place said I could get lights, so…so…so…I got lights.”

He turned them off, then on again. “See? Lights.”

“Stop,” I begged, wondering if it was possible to actually die from laughing. “Oh, please, stop.”

When I was able, I said, “Do the lights again.”

He flicked them on and off several times, while further waves of mirth seized me, and when we were eventually exhausted from laughing, and curled up on the couch, Aidan asked, “You like?”

“I love. It’s the best present I ever got.”

101

Jacqui? Jacqui?”

“I’m down here,” she called.

“Where?”

“In the kitchen.”

I followed her voice and found her on her hands and knees with a basin of soapy water. “What on earth…?”

“I’m scrubbing the kitchen floor.” With the bathroom cleaner, I noticed.

“But you’re forty weeks’ pregnant, you’re due to have a baby any minute. And you have a cleaning lady.”

“I just got the urge,” she said brightly.

I watched her doubtfully. They hadn’t said anything about scrubbing the kitchen floor in the Perfect Birth classes.

“Other than the fact that you seem to have lost your mind, how are you?” I asked.

“Funny you should ask, I’ve been having twinges all day.”

“Twinges?”

“Pains, I suppose you could call them,” she said, almost sheepishly. “In my back and up my jacksie.”

“Braxton Hicks,” I said firmly.

“Not Braxton Hicks,” she said. “Braxton Hicks go away when you do something physical.”

“I bet they’re Braxton Hicks,” I insisted.

“And I bet they’re not. And I’m the one who’s getting them, I’ve a better chance of knowing.”

It was her hand that I noticed first: it began to close in on itself, until it was clenched so tightly that the skin over the bones went white. Then I saw that her face was contorted and her body was arching and twisting.

In horror, I ran to her. “Twinges like that?”

“No.” She shook her head, her face bright red. “Nothing like as bad as this.”

She looked like she was dying. I was about to call 911 when the spasm started to ease.

“Oh my God,” she gasped, lying on the floor. “I think I’ve just had a contraction.”

“How do you know? Describe it.”

“It hurt!”

I grabbed one of the helpful leaflets we’d been given and read. “Did it ‘begin in the back and move forward in a wavelike motion’?”

“Yes!”

“Oh shit, that sounds like a contraction all right.” Suddenly I was terrified. “You’re going to have a baby!”

Something caught my eye: a pool of water was spreading across the clean kitchen floor. Had she knocked over the basin of soapy water?

“Anna,” Jacqui whispered. “Did my waters just break?”

I thought I was going to faint. The water was coming from under Jacqui’s skirt. In a burst of agitation, I accused, “What were you thinking of, washing that bloody floor? Now look at what’s happened.”