“Marcus.

There’s another one coming.”

He did not freeze, and he did not panic, and he did not waste a single second on the shock of any of it.

He stripped off his heavy flannel jacket and wrapped my firstborn in it, and he called emergency services and put the phone on the floor on speaker, and then he knelt down beside me on that freezing concrete and helped me bring my second child into the world, talking to me the entire time in a low steady voice, telling me to keep my eyes open, keep breathing, stay with him, stay with your babies.

And I did.