Breathing Between Words

Contractions.

Mei-Lin counted them like she counted syllables—obsessively, incorrectly, losing track each time her breath caught between one beat and the next. Four minutes apart. No, three and a half. The spaces between were shrinking, like margins on a page running out of room for revision.

Her phone buzzed. Kenneth again. She'd been ignoring his calls since the contractions started because explaining why she was on public transport during labor would require admitting she'd lied about the due date. Again.

The thing was, she'd known for weeks the baby was coming early. The restless nights, the weird cravings for her mother's lotus root soup, the way her body felt like it was preparing for something. But admitting that would mean admitting she'd been wrong about her carefully researched birth plan, and Mei-Lin didn't do wrong. She did thorough. She did prepared. She did not do "whoops, looks like the baby's coming on the fucking tram."

"Sai Ying Pun Station," announced the robot voice, and Mei-Lin wanted to scream that she didn't care about Sai Ying Pun, she cared about getting to Queen Mary Hospital before her daughter decided to make her debut on public transport.

An elderly woman across from her looked up from her phone—she was playing some kind of fruit-matching game with the sound turned up, because naturally—and studied Mei-Lin with the frank assessment Hong Kong grandmothers reserved for pregnant women and expensive melons.

"She's not going to make it to the hospital," the woman said in Cantonese.

"I'm fine," Mei-Lin replied in English, because switching languages was her go-to move when she wanted to avoid conversations she didn't want to have.

"I said she's not going to make it," the woman repeated in accented English, closing her game. "And I'm not talking about the hospital."

Another contraction hit, stronger this time, and Mei-Lin gripped the metal rail so hard she could feel the imprint of the screws in her palm. The woman watched this performance with the detached interest of someone observing a predictable outcome.

"My name is Mrs. Tam," the woman said. "I have delivered twelve babies. Four of my own, eight for other people. None of them in hospitals."

"That's..." Mei-Lin started, then stopped because another wave was building and she couldn't simultaneously contract and make polite conversation about unlicensed midwifery.

"That's what?" Mrs. Tam asked. "Illegal? Dangerous? Old-fashioned?" She laughed, a sound like chips of glass in a metal bowl. "You know what's dangerous? Thinking you can schedule a birth like a business meeting."

The tram lurched to a stop at Central, and half the passengers got off, including a group of drunk expat bankers who'd been loudly discussing cryptocurrency and their theories about why local women wouldn't date them. Mei-Lin had been listening to their conversation with the horrified fascination of someone watching a traffic accident, partly because it distracted from the pain and partly because one of them sounded exactly like Kenneth's colleague Simon, who always asked her at parties when she was going to "give Kenneth a son."

"You're American," Mrs. Tam observed.

"Canadian."

"Same thing. You people love your plans."

"I'm not... this isn't about plans." Mei-Lin tried to sound dignified, but dignity was hard to maintain when you were sweating through your carefully chosen hospital outfit and your body was staging a rebellion against your birth plan.

"No? Then why are you on the tram instead of in a taxi?"

Because she'd spent twenty minutes trying to book a taxi through three different apps while arguing with Kenneth on the phone about whether they needed to bring the overnight bag now or wait until her contractions were two minutes apart, as recommended by the pregnancy app she'd been obsessively tracking for nine months. Because she'd been so focused on following the proper protocol that she'd missed the signs her body had been sending for days. Because she was the kind of person who researched the optimal time to leave for the hospital but forgot to account for Hong Kong traffic during shift change.

"Taxi was taking too long," she said.

Mrs. Tam made a sound that might have been agreement or derision. "My daughter lives in Toronto. She had her first baby in a hospital room that cost more than my apartment rent. Beautiful room, very clean, very expensive. Baby came so fast they barely had time to fill out the forms. Three hours of labor, and she spent two of them arguing with the nurse about her birth plan."

"That's... nice?"

"Baby didn't care about the birth plan. Babies don't read schedules." Mrs. Tam pulled the stop cord as they approached Sheung Wan. "Come on."

"I'm going to Queen Mary."

"No, you're not. You're going to have this baby in the next hour, and Queen Mary is forty minutes away on a good day. This is not a good day."

Mei-Lin wanted to argue, but another contraction was building, and Mrs. Tam was already standing, gathering a shopping bag full of what looked like herbs and possibly live fish. The combination of smells—ginger, star anise, something vaguely oceanic—made Mei-Lin's stomach lurch.

"I don't even know you," Mei-Lin said.

"You know I've delivered twelve babies. You know I'm not trying to sell you anything. You know your contractions are now two minutes apart, and you know that robot voice is about to announce Sheung Wan Station." Mrs. Tam's smile was sharp. "What else do you need to know?"

The doors opened, and Mrs. Tam walked out without looking back. Mei-Lin sat frozen for a moment, calculating odds and risks and the increasing certainty that her body was not going to wait for optimal conditions.

She followed Mrs. Tam onto the platform.

"Smart girl," Mrs. Tam said, not sounding particularly surprised. "My friend lives nearby. She used to work at Queen Mary before they decided she was too old to catch babies."

They walked through narrow streets that smelled like steamed fish and diesel exhaust, past shops selling everything from funeral flowers to Hello Kitty phone cases. Mrs. Tam moved with the purposeful efficiency of someone who knew exactly where she was going, while Mei-Lin stumbled behind her, trying to time contractions and text David simultaneously.

"Put the phone away," Mrs. Tam said without turning around.

"I need to tell my husband—"

"Your husband is not having this baby. Your husband cannot make this baby wait for a more convenient time. Your husband," Mrs. Tam stopped walking and turned to face her, "is not here."

The words hit harder than the contractions. Kenneth wasn't here. He was in Singapore, presenting quarterly reports to clients who probably didn't give a fig about Hong Kong banking regulations, while she was following a stranger through back alleys because her carefully planned hospital birth was falling apart in real time.

"Here," Mrs. Tam said, stopping in front of a door wedged between a mahjong parlor and a shop selling traditional Chinese medicine. The door was painted red but badly, with brush strokes visible in the dim streetlight.

Mrs. Tam knocked—three short, two long—and called out something in rapid Cantonese that Mei-Lin couldn't follow. The door opened to reveal a woman about Mrs. Tam's age, wearing a Hello Kitty t-shirt under a medical coat that had seen better days.

"Wah," the woman said, looking at Mei-Lin. "Another one who didn't read the signs."

"This is Dr. Wong," Mrs. Tam said. "She delivered half the babies in Sheung Wan before the government decided her certification was too old."

"Not too old," Dr. Wong corrected. "Too honest. I kept telling patients the truth instead of following protocols." She stepped aside to let them in. "How far apart?"

"Two minutes," Mei-Lin gasped.

"Then we have time for tea."

The apartment was small and crowded, with medical equipment mixed in among family photos and what appeared to be an extensive collection of ceramic cats. Dr. Wong moved around the space with practiced efficiency, clearing magazines off an examination table that doubled as a dining table.

"I should be at the hospital," Mei-Lin said.

"Should is a dangerous word," Dr. Wong replied, washing her hands in a basin that probably wasn't originally designed for medical procedures. "Should implies you have control over the situation."

"I do have control—"

"Really? Then stop the contractions."

Mei-Lin stared at her. "I can't stop the contractions."

"Exactly. So what else can't you control?"

Another wave hit, stronger than before, and Mei-Lin found herself gripping the edge of the table. Through the pain, she could hear Mrs. Tam and Dr. Wong talking in Cantonese, their voices low and urgent.

"What are you saying?" Mei-Lin demanded.

"We're saying this baby is coming now," Dr. Wong said. "And we're saying you need to stop fighting it."

"I'm not fighting anything."

"You're fighting everything. The timing, the location, the loss of your perfect plan. You're using so much energy fighting the situation that you have none left for the actual work."

Dr. Wong's hands were gentle but firm as she helped Mei-Lin onto the table. "Tell me about the father."

"Kenneth? He's..." Mei-Lin started, then stopped. What was Kenneth, exactly? Her husband, obviously. The father of her baby. A good man who worked too much and worried about things he couldn't control, like Hong Kong's political future and whether they could afford private school and why she always seemed stressed about things that, from his perspective, had obvious solutions.

"He's in Singapore," she said finally.

"Ah. Important business?"

"Banking conference. He's giving a presentation on regulatory compliance." Even as she said it, Mei-Lin realized how ridiculous it sounded. Regulatory compliance. While she was having their baby in an unlicensed clinic above a mahjong parlor.

"My husband was also very concerned with regulations," Dr. Wong said, preparing what looked like medical equipment assembled from kitchen supplies and actual medical supplies in roughly equal proportions. "He spent thirty years following every rule, filling out every form, making sure everything was documented properly."

"That sounds responsible."

"It was. Very responsible. And when he had his heart attack, all those properly filled-out forms didn't help him at all."

Mrs. Tam snorted from her position by the window, where she was apparently keeping watch for something. "Men love their systems. Makes them feel like they understand things."

"I need to push," Mei-Lin said.

"Not yet," Dr. Wong said. "Your body is still preparing. Pushing too early creates complications."

"But the pressure—"

"Is normal. Breathe through it. Stop trying to make it happen faster."

Mei-Lin wanted to scream that she wasn't trying to make anything happen faster, that she was trying to make everything happen according to plan, that plans existed for good reasons and abandoning them led to chaos and bad outcomes and situations exactly like this one.

Instead, she found herself thinking about the novel she'd been working on for three years. Two hundred pages about a woman who plans the perfect life and watches it fall apart in small, precise increments. She'd been stuck on the ending because she couldn't figure out how to resolve the protagonist's need for control with the story's obvious message about accepting uncertainty. Every time she sat down to write, she found herself holding her breath, waiting for the perfect words that never came. The cursor blinked in the white space, marking time like a metronome for a song she'd forgotten how to play.

"I think," she said, breathing through another wave, "I might be an idiot."

"Welcome to parenthood," Mrs. Tam said.

Dr. Wong laughed, a sound like wind chimes between buildings. "The smart ones figure it out during labor. The rest of us take years."

"No, I mean... I've been trying to write this book about control and uncertainty, and I keep getting stuck because—" she had to pause, breathe, wait for the contraction to pass "—because I'm trying to control the writing process. I plan every scene, outline every chapter, research every detail, and then I sit there staring at the screen because what if it's wrong? What if it's not good enough? What if I spend all this time working on something that turns out to be..." The next wave cut off her words, but the thought completed itself in the silence that followed.

"Imperfect?" Dr. Wong suggested.

"Yes. Exactly."

"And what's wrong with imperfect?"

"Everything. I mean, nothing. I mean..." Mei-Lin tried to think clearly through the pain. "If it's imperfect, then I've wasted time. If it's imperfect, then I'm not as good as I thought I was. If it's imperfect, then..."

"Then it exists," Mrs. Tam said. "Perfect things don't exist. Perfect things live in your head where they can't disappoint anyone."

"But imperfect things can be improved," Dr. Wong added, her hands moving in rhythm with Mei-Lin's breathing. "Perfect things are finished. Dead. No room for growth."

"The spaces between the words," Mei-Lin whispered, suddenly understanding. "That's where the meaning lives."

"Now you can push," Dr. Wong said.

The next few minutes blurred together in a way that reminded Mei-Lin of the flow state she sometimes achieved while writing—not the careful, planned writing she usually did, but the rare moments when words poured out faster than thought, when the story breathed itself onto the page and she was just the vessel, riding the rhythm of something larger than herself.

Then there was crying—small, fierce, absolutely perfect and completely imperfect crying.

"A girl," Dr. Wong announced, holding up a red, wrinkled, beautiful creature who looked nothing like the ultrasound photos and everything like a person with her own agenda.

Mei-Lin reached for her daughter, but Dr. Wong's expression had shifted.

"Wait," she said. "There's another heartbeat."

The words hung in the air like a punchline to a joke Mei-Lin didn't understand. Another heartbeat. How was that possible? She'd had regular checkups, careful monitoring, detailed ultrasounds. How had everyone missed a second baby?

"Twins?" she whispered.

"Hidden twin," Dr. Wong said. "Happens more often than you'd think. One baby hides behind the other, especially if the mother is..." she paused tactfully.

"Neurotic?" Mei-Lin supplied.

"I was going to say tense. Tension can make the uterus contract in ways that obscure the second heartbeat."

The second baby came faster, as if she'd been waiting for her cue. Another girl, smaller but equally loud, equally perfect, equally illegal under Hong Kong's new population policies.

Dr. Wong wrapped both babies in towels that had clearly been repurposed from other uses, her movements efficient and practiced. "Twins born at thirty-eight weeks, slightly premature but healthy. No advance detection due to positioning and maternal stress."

"What do I tell the hospital?"

"The truth," Mrs. Tam said. "That you went into labor unexpectedly, couldn't make it to Queen Mary, and received emergency assistance from a retired physician. All of which is accurate."

"But the records—"

"What records?" Dr. Wong smiled. "I'm a retired doctor who helped a neighbor in an emergency. No registration, no official involvement, no paperwork trail."

Mei-Lin looked down at her daughters—one in each arm, both sleeping now, their faces peaceful and oblivious to the bureaucratic complications they'd just created. They were so small, so fragile, so completely themselves in a way that had nothing to do with her plans or expectations.

"My book," she said, her voice soft in the quiet space between her daughters' breathing.

"What about it?" Mrs. Tam asked.

"I know how to end it now. The protagonist doesn't learn to accept uncertainty. She learns that the uncertainty was never the problem. The problem was thinking she could write a perfect book about imperfection without allowing the book itself to breathe, to pause, to find its meaning in the spaces between what she planned to say."

Dr. Wong was cleaning up with the same methodical precision she'd used throughout the delivery. "Meta-fiction?"

"Meta-life," Mei-Lin said.

Her phone rang. Kenneth's ringtone, urgent and familiar. She answered on the second ring.

"Mei-Lin? Thank god. I've been trying to reach you for hours. Are you at the hospital? How are the contractions?"

Mei-Lin looked around the small apartment—at Dr. Wong packing away improvised medical equipment, at Mrs. Tam counting out bills to pay for a taxi, at the ceramic cats watching from their shelves with painted expressions of benign indifference.

"I'm about to head to the hospital," she said. "And David? We have daughters."

"Daughters? Plural?"

"It's complicated," Mei-Lin said, and for the first time in years, complicated felt like exactly the right word.

"But everyone's okay?"

Mei-Lin looked down at her daughters—unexpected, unplanned, perfectly imperfect additions to a life that had just become infinitely more complex and infinitely more interesting. They breathed in their own rhythm now, independent of her contractions, their small lungs finding their own pace in the world.

"Everyone's perfect," she said, then corrected herself. "Everyone's real."

And that, she realized as Mrs. Tam helped her into the taxi that would take them to Queen Mary for the official version of events, was infinitely better than perfect.

Contractions.