DOUBLE KNOT Read Free Page A

passed between our
     home and the one above us. Where Richard and Bianca Sanders lived.
    I pushed the up button. This would get me out of changing clothes. Except it didn’t.
    “David, you look like a pregnant twelve-year-old.”
    “How are you today, Bianca?” I lowered myself into a gray slipper chair at her bedside,
     my sundress blooming around the babies. The chair had no arms, so it would be up to
     me to hoist myself out of it when the time came.
    “I’m miserable, David. Perfectly and completely miserable. You realize my very life
     and that of Ondine’s is gravely jeopardized. How dare you ask how I am. How would
     you be, David, if you didn’t know if you’d live to see tomorrow?”
    Tomorrow, Bianca, I’d be in the middle of the Caribbean Sea.
    Last week, she finally got her wish and was diagnosed with an actual complication
     of pregnancy, this one not imagined and no laughing matter—gestational diabetes. Who
     knew pizza had so much sugar? She was on the lowest of the low end of the diabetes
     scale, and her team of doctors said she could enjoy safe blood glucose levels immediately,
     within the hour, if she’d just get out of the bed and stop with the Papa John’s.
    Thus the misery.
    “I need to sit up, David.”
    It was like two sumo wrestlers trying to help each other off the floor. I got behind
     her, then counted down. “Three, two—”
    Mission accomplished, and we were both out of breath.
    Bianca fanned her puffy face with both hands. “What time do you sail, David?”
    (It’s Davis.) “At seven.”
    “Good. You have plenty of time to change clothes.”
    “The Vera Wang jumpsuit.”
    “Exactly.” Now she was fanning herself with the top half of the bed sheet. Her breasts
     were enormous. And by enormous, I mean freakishly large. “Wear it to the party. Make
     a very good impression for me. I mean it, David.”
    I sneaked a peek at my watch. If I didn’t get on the ship soon, I wouldn’t make an
     impression at all. I waited. And waited. I didn’t want to sit down again for fear
     of having to get up again. “Did you need me, Bianca?”
    She let the sheet go and it floated around Ondine. “It’s my birth plan, David. I need
     to go over it with you again.”
    We’d been over her birth plan exactly one million times. A suite of labor, delivery,
     and if needed, surgical rooms had been constructed and completed to her birth team’s
     specifications at Biloxi Regional Medical Center on Renyoir Street. Every possible
     scenario for getting Bianca to the hospital, three-tenths of a mile from the Bellissimo
     (honestly, she could waddle there if she had to), had been accounted for, and Bianca’s
     transfer team had been at the ready for weeks. If she told me she felt a twinge in
     her pinkie finger this very second, I could push one button on my phone and have her
     at the hospital in five minutes, four of those hauling her out of the bed.
    “Everything’s ready, Bianca. Your transport team is on standby, they’re doing two
     drills a day, and I promise you, everyone’s ready.”
    “It’s not that.” She smoothed the sheet. “It’s the people. I’ve decided there are
     too many people attending Ondie’s birth.”
    I could have told her that. I did tell her that. Months ago. When she added the nannies
     (nursery, lactation, day, night, and an on-call—one baby, five nannies) to the roster
     so they could bond with Ondine at birth, I gently suggested it was too many people
     for such a deeply personal event. She told me I could scurry off alone and have my
     babies behind a bush like a woodland creature, but don’t tell her a videographer and
     someone on hand to touch up her hair and lip gloss were too much. In addition to the
     videographer, the lip gloss lady, the nannies, the doctors, the nurses, her labor
     coach, her husband, and her teenage son (ewwww), Bianca wanted her dogs in the labor and delivery suite. Gianna and Ghita, her Yorkshire terriers, who were