Labor started six hours ahead of schedule. I woke up at 11 PM on a Sunday night with my water already broken and a pain in my lower back that made me understand, in a way I had not understood before, why women scream. Mason drove me to the hospital. He was calm. Good in a crisis, the way he'd always been good in a crisis. The nurse gave me a room. The epidural was late. For ninety minutes I contracted without drugs, gripping the bedrail so hard my fingernails left marks in the plastic, and Mason sat in the chair by the window scrolling his phone and occasionally saying "you're doing great, babe." I did not think about it then. I was in too much pain. But I thought about it later. I thought about how the scrolling didn't stop. I thought about the quiet irritation in his voice when I asked him for ice chips. And then at 3 AM the baby started coming. And what Mason said to me, thirty seconds after our daughter's head crowned, is the sentence I have carried in my pocket like a sharp stone for six years.