The doctor passed the wand over Tiel's belly, humming and murmuring to herself as she tapped the screen, and those minutes were the new worst. Instead of trying to decipher the fuzzy beige shapes, I brought my forehead to Tiel's and brushed her hair behind her ears.
"Riley landed a new project," I whispered. "All by himself, too."
"Please don't tell me you want to kick him out again," she said. "I really,reallydo not want to hear that from you right now."
I shook my head. "He can stay," I said. "He's been better about not wandering into our room."
"But not better with keeping the snake in the cage," she murmured. "One step at a time, right?"
"This is going to sound crazy," I said, chuckling, "but maybe kilts are the way to go with him."
"Well, look at this," Doctor Opydo said. She pointed at the display, smiling. "Someone wants to say hello."
I looked up, and breath caught in my throat. "Sweetheart," I said, and Tiel slowly shifted to see our perfect little composer in profile. Legs bending and stretching, heart flickering, fist tight against his mouth, tiny nose. It was all there.
Tiel reached out, her fingertips hovering over the image that seemed too vivid to be real. "He has your ears," she murmured. "Those areyourears."
"And your fingers," I added. "Is he trying to eat his hand?"
"Yes," the doctor said. "You've got yourself a thumb-sucker."
"Those legs," Tiel said. "They're so long. He's huge. He's going to be tall, like you. Isn't he supposed to be the size of an avocado? Or is it a cantaloupe? I can never keep track of the babies-as-produce thing, and how did he get so big? We don't even know how far along we are, and I don't know which fruit my kid is, and I already sound like an awful parent."
"Take a breath. You're doing fine. Baby is healthy and measuring around sixteen weeks," the doctor said. "You're about four months, and—"
Tiel brought her hand to her mouth to stifle a sob. I brushed the tears from her cheeks. "Can you say that again?" she asked.
"You have a healthy baby," she said patiently as she patted Tiel's hand. "This little one has also been very cooperative this morning, and if you'd like to know the sex—"
"No," I said, and at the same moment, Tiel said, "Yes."
Epilogue
Sam
July
It wasrough waking up like this, with the sun another hour from rising, my brain slow and sleepy, and my wife warm beside me.
But one more minute would turn that baby babble into baby cries, and if he reached the point of red-faced wailing, all hope for a peaceful morning would be lost. He didnotlike to be kept waiting.
Perhaps he was more like me than I was ready to acknowledge.
Also, Tiel needed as much sleep as she could get. That was the plan: I covered the diapers, she handled nursing, and the latter drained far more energy. We'd never discussed the division of baby responsibilities; it was on our checklist, but this kid had other plans as far as our baby-readiness checklist was concerned.
This kidalwayshad other plans.
Her water broke four weeks early, on a swelteringly hot April day in the middle of a guest lecture she was giving at Berklee. In true Tiel fashion, she finished the lecture andthencalled me. We arrived at the hospital without the bag of supplies I'd been carefully curating, but Tiel didn't have the chance to step foot on the hospital's maternity wing before this baby made his appearance.
Dave, or David Wolfgang Walsh, named for Bowie, Grohl, and Mozart, of course, was born in the elevator. He was in a big damn hurry to meet us, and ended up swaddled in my most expensive suit coat. I still didn't understand how I managed to stay calm through those first minutes and hours. Tiel lost a lot of blood, and Dave was small and early—just like me—and fuck, my heart stopped every time they checked his blood glucose. It stuttered to a start only when the readings continued to stay normal.
But the minute that boy—all five feisty pounds of him—grabbed my finger and demanded my attention, I was lost. Somewhere in a dark closet of my mind lived the knowledge that my father was able to exchange the profound wallop of flat-out love that I knew wasn't unique to me and my son for hate, violence, and abuse. That made Angus even more of a monster, but I decided right then, with my son wrapped in a beautiful Prada summer wool and his grip tight on my finger, that Angus didn't get to hurt him, too.
The remnants of my Angus baggage dissolved that humid, overcast afternoon. In its place was this little man, whom Riley dubbed Simba not more than three hours after his arrival. This nickname came complete with Riley's theatrical rendition of "The Circle of Life" in our hospital room.
It wasn't until the next day, when Tiel and I were captivated by the sheer existence of Dave's little fingers and toes, that we finally recognized the full arc of the path we were walking together.
"All my best things come from elevator disasters," she said. "First it was you, and then this handsome young man."
