I Thought You Said This Would Work

by Ann Garvin

It was, if I had to put a name on it, verklempt—choked with such a chopped salad of unnamable emotions that the fiber of it all felt stuck in my throat.

But as much as I acted like a Try Hard where being a best friend was concerned, I was also a Try Hard with animals.

There was a reason women told and retold their labor-and-delivery stories. The experience was like Vegas—wholly over the top and with an entire foot over the line of decency.

Despite the medical degrees in the room, all the book learning and classes, in that instant the doctors and nurses became nothing but door holders, ticket collectors, spectators. It was as if Rosie’s body was a rock star on a stage shouting, Stand back, brainiacs—a mother is in the house!