Surprise Delivery(58)

I try to push the thoughts out of my head for the moment. The last thing I want to do is break down and have a crying fit right now. Right now, I just want to celebrate the fact that I’m still alive – that my baby and I are both going to be okay.

“Can you take me to see her?” I ask.

Sabrina gives me a smile. “I thought you’d never ask.”

I take her hand and give it a tight squeeze. I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better person in my life than Sabrina. She’s there for me without question and without fail whenever I need her. She’s my rock and my strength, and I can’t ever truly express just how grateful I am for her.





I‘m sitting in a wheelchair in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that make up the front wall of the nursery in the neonatal ICU. I’d wanted to walk down just to stretch my legs and give my muscles some work, but Bri had insisted that it’s proper procedure for her to push me around in a chair until I’m formally discharged.

It’s embarrassing. I’m a healthy young woman. There’s no reason for me to be riding around in a wheelchair.

I scan the rows of baskets, smiling at all of the wiggling, pink newborns. They’re all utterly adorable. I never considered myself a baby person before – honestly, I really hadn’t given much thought to having children. At least, not until I’d gotten pregnant. As I look at the babies all tucked into their bassinets, I realize for the first time that yeah, I do want to be a mom.

“Which one is she?” I ask. “Which one’s my baby girl?”

Sabrina points to an incubator set off to the side and I feel my heart fall. Far from being a pink, wriggling little bundle of flesh, my baby is lying still. She looks too pale and too gaunt.

“What’s wrong with her, Bri?” I ask. “What –”

“She’s fine, hon,” she soothes me. “It’s a precaution. I promise you.”

Seeing my baby in that machine, looking so weak and frail, sends a deep, searing pain through my heart. I find myself desperate to hold her, to feel her warm, delicate body pressed to mine. I want to breathe her in, listen to her cries, and pour my love out all over her.

“Is she in pain?” I ask.

Bri shakes her head. “Not at all,” she replies. “She might be slightly underweight, but once she gets out of the incubator and starts nursing regularly, she’s going to put on the pounds quickly. I promise you that.”

That sends a calming wave of relief rushing through me. I want nothing more than for my baby girl to be healthy and live a long, normal, active life.

“Have you thought of a name yet?” Bri asks.

It’s a good question and one I’ve been kicking around for a while. I must have tried on a thousand different names but found that a lot of them just didn’t roll off my tongue all that easily. And as I sit there looking at my girl, I run through those names in my head and realize they don’t really fit her anyway. She’s not a Robin or a Rachel. She’s definitely not a Holly or a Brianna.

No, she’s unique, and she deserves to have a unique, beautiful name.

“I was thinking about calling her Aurora,” I smile.

A wide smile crosses Bri’s face. “Aurora,” she replies. “It’s beautiful. It’s perfect.”

“Just like her,” I say, my eyes riveted to my daughter.

We watch her in silence for a few moments as I continue to absorb the enormity of the fact that I have a baby. I have a daughter. It’s a thought that fills me with the brightest joy I’ve ever known. And also, if I’m being honest, the darkest, deepest fear as well. The emotions swirling around inside of me are as powerful as they are complex, and I don’t know how to go about making heads or tails of any of them right now.

Eventually, Sabrina wheels me back to my room and helps me climb back into bed. Once I’m situated, she sits down on the edge of the bed and takes my hand in hers, giving it a gentle squeeze. I look up at her and can tell by the gleam in her eye and the set of her jaw that she’s got something to say.

“Out with it,” I chide her.

“You’re going to have to tell Duncan,” she says. “He should know.”

The thought of telling him that he’s the father of my child at all fills me with a powerful sense of dread. And given how cold he was to me when he came in to check up on me, it scares me even more.

“I don’t know, Bri,” I say. “Something’s going on with him. He’s pissed at me for something.”

“What do you mean?” she asks. “I saw him and believe me when I say, he was frantic and damn near out of his mind when you were in surgery.”

“Yeah, well, something’s changed since then,” I insist. “He was in my room just before you came in and I’ve felt more warmth from a glacier.”

She looks at me, her head cocked. “Really?” she asks. “I mean, he always keeps a bit of a professional distance when he’s on the job, but I never would have called him cold or anything.”

“Trust me, I almost asked you to treat me for frostbite,” I say with a rueful laugh.

“That bad, huh?”

“You don’t even know the half of it.”

She lets out a long breath. “That still doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve to know that the baby is his.”