Noah did as he was told, watching me intently as if waiting for me to show some sign of distress.
“Does it hurt?” he asked quietly. “The water part, I mean.”
I shook my head. “It feels a little weird, but not—oooooh!” I gasped as I felt the gush hit my inner thighs. “Okay, then. Eyes here, Noah. Come on. We’re in this together.”
After that, it felt as though everything got a lot more serious. The contractions I’d thought were painful before my water was broken? Ha! Those had been a walk in the park. These were the real deal.
I stopped joking around with Noah between pains. It took everything I had to get through each wave, and I fell into a state of almost-sleep between them. I was vaguely aware that he was still holding my hand, telling me to breathe, and chatting with Maggie or the nurses when they came in. But everything happened as through a mist, and I was at the center of it all, alone with my one mission: to survive each contraction and get to the next one.
I heard Maggie announce that I was at ten centimeters after another painful exam. She leaned down over my face, forcing me to focus on her.
“Alison, do you feel like you want to push? Are you ready?”
I managed to nod, realizing suddenly that I’d been fighting off the need to push for a while. Now given permission, I went to it with gusto, pouring every bit of energy into bringing my baby into the world.
“She’s a great pusher!” I heard Maggie tell Noah, and I felt an odd sense of pride that I excelled at this. It felt as though I was doing exactly what my body had been created to do, working with the contractions to push out my child.
Then Maggie called out that I shouldn’t push for a moment, and I felt Noah’s face at my cheek.
“Open your eyes, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Look. You can see the baby’s head. Look at that dark hair. Just like yours.”
In the mirror, I could indeed see the hair, and on the next push, the most precious, beautiful small head appeared, followed shortly by shoulders and then—
And then all of a sudden, I was holding my baby daughter in my arms.
She was screaming, her small red face wrinkled in outrage and her fists beating ineffectually against the air. I gasped as I looked down at her, seeing drops of water on her face and realizing they were my own tears of joy, the perfect baptism for this long-awaited baby girl.
“My God, Alison.” Noah’s voice was awe-filled and reverent. “My God. We have a daughter. And she’s so beautiful. Holy f—I mean, holy cow, she’s the most perfect human being I’ve ever seen. And I’m going to protect her to my dying breath.”
I began to laugh at his words, then I turned to see his face and my laughter died. He was so serious, so completely enraptured. His face, too, was streaked with tears.
“Thank you, Alison.” He cupped my cheek and kissed my lips. “Thank you, sweetheart.”
“No, Noah,” I whispered. “Thank you.”
* * *
“I know what her name is.”
I looked up from my unending study of my daughter’s face, meeting Noah’s gaze. He was sitting in the chair next to my bed, filling out paperwork the hospital had just dropped off to be completed.
“Oh, do you?” He raised one eyebrow. We’d talked about names a few times during my pregnancy, but always in a hypothetical way. Since we didn’t want to know the baby’s gender, we’d decided to wait until we saw her to choose what her name would be.
“Yes.” I took a deep breath. “I hope you’ll approve, but seeing as I just pushed a nine-and-a-half-pound human out of my vagina and am now suckling her at my breast at great pain, I’m going to insist on getting my way here.”
One side of Noah’s mouth tipped up. “You won’t hear any dissension from me. Lay it on me, sweetheart.”
“Okay. Well, the day I went for my first visit to Maggie, after I was finished, I drove over to Anna and Jimmy’s farm to see Emma. I heard a song on the radio about a woman who was a mother. Brandi Carlile sang it. She was singing about her baby girl who had this name, and I knew at that moment, listening to the song, that I wanted our baby. I wasn’t going to give her to anyone else. I wanted her. I wanted to be her mama. And I thought if she was a girl, this is what I wanted to name her.”
“That’s a beautiful story.” Noah nodded. “But you still haven’t told me the name.”
“I know. I’m getting to it.” I paused for dramatic effect. “Evangeline.”
“Evangeline . . .” Noah tried it on for size. “It’s lovely, Alison. I like it. It fits her.”
“I thought, too . . .” I trailed off as I began to cry yet again. “It has Angela’s name in it. Sort of, anyway. And I realize I never met her, Noah, but I feel like your Angela would like this, being part of our daughter’s name. When she’s old enough, I want her to know about what a wonderful woman your wife was.”
Noah’s head was bowed, and for a panicked moment, I thought he was going to be angry with me. But when he lifted his eyes to mine, I saw the tears and the gratitude.
