How it begins

The house was quiet the way houses get past ten, the day having used up whatever noise it had left. The dishwasher had long since finished its cycle, but nobody had emptied it. Two lunchboxes sat upside down on the bench, drying beside a saucepan left to soak because whatever had clung stubbornly to the bottom could wait until morning. Morning still felt like an ordinary promise.

The window unit clicked on and off in the boys' room. Outside, an Illinois spring night carried on without paying much attention to the lives inside the houses it passed. Crickets stitched the darkness together. Somewhere down the street a screen door swung on its hinge, missed the latch, and swung back again.

She had felt it twice already that evening.

The first time she kept wiping the kitchen counter, telling herself it was too soon.

The second time she folded the tea towel she was already holding, then unfolded it again because she couldn't remember whether she'd folded it properly the first time.

By the third, there was nothing left to pretend.

Her hand found the edge of the Formica before she realised she was leaning on it. She closed her eyes, breathed through the tightening, and waited for her body to release her. It always did. A few seconds later the kitchen was just a kitchen again, with lunchboxes waiting for morning, a saucepan in the sink and Father reading yesterday's newspaper at the table, as though the evening still belonged to all the small routines that had carried them through fifteen years of marriage.

She looked at him.

"I think it's time."

He folded the newspaper without finishing the page.

There were questions he might have asked in the early years of their marriage. Are you sure? How far apart are they? Should we wait a little longer?

Fifteen years had quietly retired those questions.

He crossed the kitchen, lifted the telephone from its cradle and dialled the neighbour's number from memory, the cord stretching behind him as he reached for his keys with his free hand.

Three rings.

A sleepy hello.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For waking you."

A soft laugh answered him.

"You haven't."

He was only halfway through explaining before the neighbour said he'd be there in five minutes.

By then the telephone had done what telephones always seem to do in family homes. It had woken everyone else.

The older boy appeared first, his hair flattened on one side, blinking against the kitchen light with the mild indignation of someone who had been removed from a perfectly good sleep.

"What's going on?"

"We're going to the hospital."

"Now?"

His father nodded.

The boy considered this carefully, then looked down at his feet.

"I want my blue shoes."

Mother laughed despite herself.

"You haven't even got any shoes on."

He looked down, discovered she was right, and frowned as though this was somehow the evening's greatest inconvenience.

The younger one wandered in a moment later, blanket tucked under one arm, his thumb rubbing absent-mindedly over the satin edge he'd worn smooth years ago. Unlike his brother, he asked nothing at first. He simply stood beside the doorway, watching. His eyes moved from Mother to Father, then to the telephone still hanging slightly crooked on its cord, collecting the room one detail at a time.

He looked at Mother.

"Does it hurt?"

"A little."

It did hurt, if only a little. She smiled anyway, because he was looking at her the way he always did when he couldn't decide whether he should be worried.

He walked over without another word and slipped his hand into hers.

It was such an ordinary thing for him to do that nobody commented on it.

She held it until the next contraction arrived.

The drive to the hospital took less than fifteen minutes, though neither of them would have believed it afterwards. The streets were the same ones they had driven a hundred times before, but that night they seemed to belong to someone else. The traffic lights changed when they reached them, the roads were almost empty, and the tyres hummed steadily over familiar asphalt. He drove more carefully than he ever had, slowing for railway tracks he usually crossed without thinking and easing the car through intersections as though the smallest jolt might somehow make things harder for her. More than once she almost told him it wasn't the driving she was worried about. Then another contraction arrived and the thought dissolved before she could give it words.

Neither of them spoke very much.

Every now and then he glanced across, asking the question with his eyes instead of his voice.

She answered with the smallest nod before turning back to the window, watching familiar shopfronts and quiet houses slip past in the darkness. It struck her, somewhere between one set of traffic lights and the next, that people were sleeping behind those windows, entirely unaware that her family was on its way to becoming five.

The neighbour's headlights remained a few car lengths behind them the whole way.

By the time they reached the hospital, the older boy had fallen asleep again, his cheek pressed against the cool glass of the window. The younger one was still awake, blanket gathered beneath his chin, studying the building with quiet concentration, as though trying to understand why so many lights were still on when everyone else should have been asleep.

The automatic doors opened before they reached them, releasing the familiar smell of disinfectant, floor polish and coffee that had been sitting on a hot plate for far too long. Warm air drifted out to meet the cold night, carrying with it the sounds of a place that never really stopped moving.

Inside, the hospital carried on with its own steady rhythm. Nurses crossed polished floors with the confidence of people who knew exactly where they were needed next. Telephones rang, were answered, and rang again. Somewhere further along the corridor somebody laughed, the sound travelling only a little way before another closing door folded it back into the building. Visitors spoke quietly without meaning to. Shoes whispered across polished floors. The night belonged to waiting as much as it belonged to arrivals.

Behind the reception desk, a woman looked up and smiled before asking Mother's name. Her hands never stopped moving, writing neatly across the admission form while she listened. She asked whether this was their first baby.

Mother smiled.

"No."

The receptionist looked up.

"Our third."

"Then you know the routine."

"I hope so."

The smile they shared lasted only a moment before Mother clutched her shirt and turned inward, riding out another contraction that had come without warning.

Mother sighed with relief when she saw a nurse heading toward them. The nurse introduced herself as though they had all the time in the world.

Father walked beside them until they reached the doors marked Labour and Delivery.

There the nurse stopped.

"You can come with me," she said to Mother. Then she turned to him. "We'll come and get you when we're ready."

He nodded.

There didn't seem to be anything else to do.

Only after the doors had closed behind them did he realise he was still carrying her cardigan. He looked down at it for a moment, almost expecting her to reach back for it, then folded it carefully over his arm before sitting down.

The vinyl chair sighed beneath his weight.

Across the corridor, the coffee machine hummed to itself.

People came and went often enough that, after a while, they stopped being people and became movement. White coats. Blue scrubs. The squeak of trolley wheels. Doors opening just long enough to spill another strip of light across the corridor before closing again. Every few minutes he looked up, certain this time someone was coming for him, only to watch them disappear into another room, another family, another night that had nothing to do with his.

Without noticing, he found his thumbnail working at the split in the vinyl chair. He stopped whenever footsteps approached, then began again as they faded away.

When the doors finally opened, he was already standing.

The nurse smiled before she spoke.

"Congratulations."

He was still carrying her cardigan. He laid it across the end of the bed before reaching for the water jug. He filled the paper cup and held it out to her.

She drank half of it before giving it back.

"Better?"

She nodded.

He set the cup down.

The cot stood beside the bed.

The baby was asleep, one fist tucked beneath his chin. A thin scratch curved beneath his left eye.

Father bent over him.

He touched the mark lightly.

"What's that?"

"The nurse said he did it himself. Before he was born."

"Hmm."

He slid one hand beneath the blanket and lifted him carefully. The baby's head settled into the hollow between his shoulder and chest as though it had always belonged there.

Mother watched him. It was the same way he had held the other two.

He didn't say anything for a long time. Then, not really to her, more just out loud:

"Forgot how light they are."

A knock at the door startled the baby. He stirred in Father's arms, one hand jerking free of the blanket, mouth opening like he might cry. Then he didn't. The hand settled back down. He was asleep again before the nurse had the door fully open.

The nurse smiled as she stepped inside.
"I've brought your visitors."

The older boy came in first, trying very hard to look as though hospitals were places he visited every day. His younger brother followed close behind, blanket trailing from one hand.

They stopped together just inside the room.

Neither of them looked at Mother.

Their eyes went straight to the baby.

"Is that him?" the older one asked.

Father nodded.

"It is."

The younger boy took another step.

"Can I touch him?"

"Wash your hands first," Mother said.

The nurse pointed towards the sink.

He climbed onto the stool, rolled the tap on too far and pulled his hands back when the cold water splashed over his fingers. The older boy reached past him, turned it down and handed him the towel without either of them saying anything.

When they came back, Father lowered the baby just enough for them to see.

The older boy leaned in first.

"He doesn't look like anybody."

"He looks like a baby," Father said.

The older boy considered this.

"I suppose."

The younger one stood on tiptoe beside him.

For a long time he said nothing.

Then he frowned.

"Can he see me?"

Mother shook her head.

"Not properly."

He thought about that.

Then he leaned closer.

"That's alright," he whispered.

"I can see you."

***

The Storyteller watched the two of them a moment longer, the younger one still up on his toes by the cot, the older one already drifting back toward the window.

"There he is," the Storyteller said. "The youngest becomes an older brother, just like that."

The Psychologist looked up from her notes.

"Nobody asked him if he wanted the promotion."

They both turned toward the Astrologer. She hadn't looked up from her charts once.

"I think," Time said, "we're a little early."