I boarded the plane having only booked the flight a few hours before. I rushed to the hospital room and, when I opened the door, many eyes stared back at me but none that were instantly familiar, none that were related to her. She was uncomfortable both physically and emotionally and I knew it and no one was prepared to leave us alone to talk it out.

Twenty minutes later the nurse asked who would be in the room for the birth. She named her husband and her sister-in-law, who is a nurse, and then hemmed and hawed about who the third person would be. Her husband’s fifteen-year-old niece had recently decided that she wanted to watch the birth. Her husband said to me that we could flip for it. I’d been her friend for longer than the girl had been alive, had put my life on hold so I could drop everything and fly to Seattle when her water broke because she’d asked me to, and I absolutely would not “flip for it” but I said nothing and waited to see what would be decided.

But a seed was planted. I was not sure that I was wanted. She definitely did want me there before labor but she might have changed her mind. Maybe labor makes you realize all of the things that you didn’t know before and maybe she now knew that she didn’t want me in the room but she was in too much discomfort to say so. I tried to ask her, in front of the many eyes, and she cried and told me to do whatever I wanted.

What I wanted was to kick all of the eyes out, scoop her up in my arms, and tell her that her mother really should have come and that I was so sorry that I agreed with her when she said it would be best for her mother not to come, that I was really wrong about that but that I would do the best I could for her. Instead, I went to a cafe by myself and cried on the phone to my own mother.

I went back and asked her husband in private if she still wanted me there, that it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if she didn’t but that I just needed to know. I began to worry that I would cry uncontrollably through the whole thing. I began to worry that I was not the right person, that she chose wrong, that I’m an idiot who has never had a child and I really don’t know what to do to make it better. He told me that he didn’t know and that that was as good as an answer as I was going to get.

Point taken. I was being selfish and self-obsessed during entirely the wrong moment. The focus was her and I was faffing on about me, me, me. But oh sweet jesus it felt like I was hurting her if I stayed and hurting her if I didn’t stay and she was crying and refusing to talk to anyone, even the nurse, and I knew what was wrong and I was the only one that knew what was wrong but I was so scared that she didn’t want me there that I forgot to do my job and my job was this. I needed to remember that I’ve known her longer than anyone, so long that she doesn’t have to tell me what she wants, I know and I just need to do it even if it looks like she doesn’t like it because when she gets stressed she will not ever tell you how she feels or what she needs and she’s gotten better about it since she’s been an adult but right at that minute she was reverting back to survival mode and she couldn’t talk and all I could do was cry but I managed to grab her hand between contractions and I held it to my heart, choked back tears, and said, “I’m so proud of you,” which seemed to make everything worse because then a contraction came on and she’s in pain and crying and I was making it worse.

Her husband cracked jokes. He’s nervous and I get it. He’s shoving a video camera in her face when she made everyone promise not to take videos. He reached out at the height of her most severe contractions and squeezed on her belly and she screamed out in the worst kind of pain I’ve ever heard and I wanted to kick him out of the room but of course I couldn’t and shouldn’t but I now understand why in the olden days they didn’t allow husbands in delivery rooms.

And the baby came fast. Much faster than anyone was expecting. Much, much faster than it even happens on TV. They lay the baby on the mother’s chest and this was a mother who had wanted a baby for as long as I can remember and I can remember way, way back and that baby curled up on his mama and she had no reaction to seeing him at all.

I looked for the dad to help but he didn’t. He sat back and twenty-minutes later the mother asked where he even was, which was right next to her but not touching them and not … present for the moment. Later I learned that the mother was losing too much blood, which no one noticed until an hour and a half later and she’s on the verge of passing out and that’s why there was no reaction to her baby. The dad was in a different kind of shock and, from what I gather in the things that people don’t tell me but do tell me, this happens a lot more often than anyone talks about.

And then they wheeled her away to the OR and she was there a couple of hours and no one would tell us what was going on. I sat with her in-laws in a waiting room and fretted over whether to tell her mother to get on a plane, a flight that she couldn’t afford and I knew for certain that if I told her to get on a plane that I would buy her that ticket and that would be 110% fine except that her mother’s pride would be forever hurt and I didn’t want to hurt anybody any more than I already had.

She was a zombie for what seemed like days. Sometimes white, sometimes yellow and never too concerned with anything, but very, very closed. And I went crazy and went on long walks where I cried to my mother over the phone because I knew I was there to help her. I knew I was there to crack the facade, let her feel what was underneath, and hug and cry it all out of her. I knew, then, that I was there to do that but there were always a thousand eyes in the room and she never lets the cracks break open in front of other people. And I know that. And I wanted to scream because I felt like she was not okay underneath and I wanted to make sure that she was okay and none of her family was around to hug, which would have done she and I both a whole heaping world of good. I love her family, and we both needed them, and every time I said that out loud she gave me a tight look that said we weren’t allowed to talk about that.

Then I bucked the trend. I stopped letting his family steer me into leaving when they left. I thought, I don’t care if she and her husband hate having me around in their private time—I needed to make sure she was okay, even if it was an unforgivably selfish thing to do. And I stayed. And I saw her. I saw her relax. I saw her soften. And she was still in her own world and things still weren’t okay but they were okay enough, and they were getting better, and I could see it, and she could sleep with me in the room and her husband asked me to stay.

She got a couple of blood transfusions and her color came back. But still there were eyes and she was not the same, herself, that she is with me. She was buttoned up and I let her be but I worried.

Then the new mom got mad that baby wouldn’t latch and got mad at in-laws trying to teach her to teach him to latch but she didn’t say a word, I could just tell by the slight way her face pulled, a way that they couldn’t see because it’s subtle but it’s there and when you’ve known her for almost twenty years you know that she’s really super pissed but still polite like her mama taught her. And I knew at that moment that everything was going to be just fine.

That’s right about the time that they all fell in love, mom and dad and baby. That was neat to watch. They all fell in love with each other, folding in on one another with each hug and feeding and nursing and burping. Their eyes got bigger when they looked at each other as if their hearts had swelled up and were beating in one another’s bodies. And I saw firsthand how new families are made.

And you know what? Secret Forty-Two, Revealed. When everything ends like that, it might as well have been a fairytale because, either way, it still ends with happily ever after.