Vanilla

Chapter Eleven

Dedicated to xoSushixo for the lovely comment on the previous chapter.

Oh, and by the way, I do not know the first thing about childbirth. That'll probably be clear once you read this chapter, but hey. I hope it's at least slightly believable.

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              It was sometime past midnight, about fifteen minutes after I’d drifted off to sleep, when Gram’s landline trilled into life, echoing through the quiet cottage.

            I woke to the sound of an opening door from somewhere across the landing; this was shortly followed by slipper-clad footsteps padding down the stairs. Seconds later, the phone stopped.

            My room was too distant from the hallway to hear much more than Gram’s muffled speech, but the way she was struggling to limit the volume of her voice confirmed whatever news she was receiving was exciting. It continued for several minutes before I decided I’d had enough of straining to make out muted words, threw the duvet back and padded downstairs after her.

            The further I ventured downstairs, the clearer the one-sided conversation became. My feet landed on the last step just as I heard Gram say, “But how long? How long do you think it’ll be?”

            “Gram?” I whispered, tentatively stepping towards her. The phone was pressed tightly to her ear, brows furrowed in a concentrated frown as she listened intently to person on the other line. “Is everything okay?”

            She looked up at the sound of my voice, noticing only for the first time that I stood there. “Flo,” she said, louder now. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

            “What’s going on?”

            “Nora.” The mention of her name had my heart leaping. “She’s gone into labour.”

            “Wait – now?” I did the mental calculation, but it worked out. A few days early, maybe, but essentially right. I’d been in Walden over three weeks; when I’d left Nora, she’d just passed the eight month milestone. Had time really passed that quickly? She’d looked ready to pop for a while, but I figured the last few weeks of her pregnancy would drag.

            “Yeah. She’s in the hospital.”

            I froze. My head was instantly laden with snapshot-like images of Nora lying in a hospital bed, crippled by agony, screaming at the top of her lungs. Lenny would be there, of course, but aside from him and a couple of doctors, she’d be alone. How could I be here, one hundred and fifty miles away and so blissfully unaware, when somewhere in London my sister was about to go through the scariest and most painful experience of her life?

            “I’m going.” The decision was easy; there was no other answer. “I have to be with her.”

            “Flo…” Gram protested. In the dim light of the hallway, standing there in her faded dressing gown and pillow-flattened curls, she looked so startlingly different. By day, she was eccentric and unpredictable: Flo and Nora’s crazy grandmother. Now, she looked more normal than I’d ever known. Like a regular grandma, who knitted jumpers and played bingo and carried a never-ending supply of toffees in her handbag. Not the one who’d paint random murals on any free walls she could find in the house. “It’s late. You can’t go now.”

            “I have to.”

            “It’ll take you two hours to get up there, and it’s the middle of the night. It’s dangerous to be out in London at that time.”