“What? What’s happening?”
“Your wife has lost a lot of blood. She is under duress, Mr. Scott. I need you out,now.”
“Darcy?”
His voice is only fear now. I can’t open my eyes anymore. I’m tired.
I can’t hear the baby anymore. My baby.
“Darcy!”
***
A steady sound of a pulse echoes through my ears.
Coming to my senses, I attempt to wiggle my fingers, flicker my eyelashes, and am rewarded with a hint of light. Almost instantly hands are caressing my face, soft and gentle.
“Baby…”
I part my eyelids reluctantly, facing the blinding white light.
I need to see him.
Benjamin eyes are piercing green, red-rimmed and glossy by his emotions. I blink at him slowly, sucking in short breaths. The monitor begins to beep faster as I remember what took me under.
“Ben…”
I’m not sure whether it’s the race he made to get to me in time, the stress of the delivery, or the fear he endured when I began hemorrhaging, but something overcomes him. He drops his head onto my chest and loses himself altogether. Not gentle hiccups. No. He’s sobbing enough to shake me.
I lift my hands groggily and glide them into his hair, holding him to me.
“It’s okay,” I croak, my throat parched. “I’m okay.”
“Oh god, Darcy,” he groans, pulling himself up ungracefully. He’s still in the same teal scrubs as before. He wipes his tears and bites down on his lip to gather himself. “I…fuck, I thought—”
“I’m okay.”
He clasps my face, kissing me hard enough and brief enough that I can’t react.
“I love you. I could say it a million times right now.” He smiles with relief, his eyes shining. “He’s so perfect. I told them you were waking. They’re bringing him over now.”
My chest pounds at his words. “Is he okay? Is everything…?”
Benjamin’s smile is blinding. “He’s perfect, I told you. Ten toes, ten fingers.”
“Knock knock.”
We look to the door, where a nurse is carrying in a small bundle wrapped in a white blanket with blue stripes.
It feels like the moment of truth, the moments that hang just before she sets him in my arms. There are so many questions that momentarily stun me.
Will he look like me? Or like Benjamin?
What will his eyes look like? His nose? His mouth?
Does he have hair?
They all dissipate as soon as his weight settles onto my weak forearms.