Chapter 5 - WHY ALISTAIR DIDN’T COME TO THE DELIVERYWe had broken up seven weeks before Kirk’s birth.
Not explosively.
Worse.
Quietly.
Alistair wanted a co-parenting agreement completed before delivery.
I heard control.
He heard preparation.
He had already retained counsel.
Drafted schedules.
Suggested security protocols.
Offered to buy a house near mine so Kirk would never travel far between parents.
He called it solving logistics.
I called it building a system around a child who had not been born.
“You solve everything with infrastructure,” I told him.
“That’s literally my business.”
“I’m not a project.”
“I know.”
“Then stop treating me like one.”
He went silent.
Then said:
“What do you want from me?”
I should have answered.
Instead:
“Space.”
He gave it.
Too well.
For seven weeks we communicated through short texts about prenatal appointments.
He attended two.
Missed one because I told him not to come.
Then I went into labor three weeks early.
I texted:
Hospital. Labor. I’m okay.
He replied in thirteen seconds:
Do you want me there?
I stared at the question.
Contractions.
My mother beside me.
My father arguing with admissions about a private room.
I typed:
I don’t know.
Alistair wrote:
I’ll wait until you do.
I never answered.
Then emergency surgery.
May you like
By the time I woke, I assumed he had stayed away because I had not invited him.
I did not know he was downstairs.
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