For a long moment, I just stared at her, afraid that if I blinked, she might disappear back into the dream I’d been having.
Four years of pregnancy tests and negative results, of doctor’s appointments and quiet tears in the bathroom while Ethan pretended not to hear.
« You and our little girl are my whole world, » he had whispered the night we finally saw two pink lines. He had said it a hundred times since.
When I found out I was finally pregnant, I cried tears of joy!
The pregnancy itself had been the happiest stretch of my life. But the delivery had not.
Twenty-one hours of labor, monitors sounding, a nurse pulling Ethan back by the shoulders while doctors wheeled me down a hallway that felt a mile long.
« Please save them! » I heard him shout as the doors closed between us.
I remembered nothing after that. Just fragments of yesterday. A bright light. Someone saying, « 3:17 p.m. » Then a cry so loud and furious that it made me laugh through the anesthesia. Our daughter was born screaming — strong, healthy, perfect.
