“Push.”
Oh God, if she had to push one more time. In fact, if she even had to hear the word ever again in her life, Claire would have to scream.
“Aarrggh.”
She settled for a terrible-sounding groan of pain instead. After twelve hours of labor, she made up her mind that this would be the final push if it was the last thing she did. She hadn’t had a wink of sleep all night and all she wanted to do was meet her baby and then roll over and go to sleep. Although, given the way she was currently feeling, she wouldn’t even be moving any time soon, let alone rolling. Yes, this would have to be the last push.
Logan leaned down, brushing away a hank of hair that had been plastered to her forehead by sweat. “Just a little bit more, sweetheart.”
He looked like hell warmed over, she thought as she prepared to push one final time. Of course, she was certain that as bad as he looked, she must look at least a billion times worse. Giving birth, she had discovered, was not an attractive process. She was sweating like a pig, her eyes were probably bloodshot and her legs were like the Christmas goose.
“Now,” ordered her doctor.
Putting every ounce of energy she had remaining into it, Claire pushed. And suddenly, just like that, as though she hadn’t been struggling in vain for twelve hours, her baby arrived into the world.
“Congratulations,” the doctor called. “It’s a girl.”
“It’s a girl.” Logan beamed with fatherly pride, squeezing her hand so hard she winced. In fairness though, she’d been doing her fair share of that for the past twelve hours and he would probably have the bruises to show for it later on. “We have a daughter.”
As if to second that pronouncement, their daughter offered a hearty cry.
“Oh.” It was all Claire could manage to say. She hadn’t had much use for words in the past few hours. Her throat constricted, clogged by emotions so incredible, so powerful. Tears swam in her eyes, running down her cheeks.
Logan kissed her, a quick, hard meeting of mouths. “I’m going to see her now, sweetheart.”
“Okay,” she managed.
He disappeared from her range of vision for a few moments.
“Ten fingers,” he called from somewhere. “And ten toes. She’s beautiful. She has a head full of downy blonde hair.”
Then she heard a faint “oh no” issued from the same direction, followed by a loud thump. She struggled to sit up. “What’s the matter?” she asked, her heart lodging somewhere in the vicinity of her tonsils. “Is the baby all right?”
“She’s fine,” her doctor assured her, the crinkling of her eyes above the green surgical mask signaling that she was smiling. “But I’m afraid that Daddy has passed out.”
Claire was dimly aware of a low rumbling somewhere around the periphery of her subconscious. It sounded familiar, comforting somehow, even though she couldn’t quite discern what it was. She was so tired, bone-tired. She’d never been more tired in her life, in fact. Her eyelids felt as if they had been glued shut with Krazy Glue. As she became more aware of her surroundings, her memory reasserted itself.
Ah yes, the reason for her utter exhaustion.
She remembered endless hours of labor, excruciatingly painful before the epidural, not quite as bad afterward but still heinous. She remembered the first cry of her baby as she came into the world, the doctor’s pronouncement that she had a daughter, Logan counting fingers and toes, then passing out.
Wait a second. Passing out?
She peeled her eyes open, searching the room, relieved to find Logan seated in a chair at her bedside, holding a bundle wrapped in a pink and blue blanket in his arms. He didn’t realize she was awake, so she took the liberty of watching him with their daughter for a few moments. He was making silly little noises at the baby that she found hard to believe were actually coming from his lips, touching the oh-so-tiny hand that had risen from the blanket. She’d never seen his face so filled with naked love and wonder before. He looked, in short, like a man who had fallen completely and hopelessly in love.
He also looked as though he had recovered quite nicely from his earlier scrape, thank God.
“How’s she doing?” Claire asked, her voice coming out scratchy and hoarse.
Logan started, his gaze flying to her. “She’s wonderful. Perfect. A little angel. How are you, sweetheart?”
“I’m sore.” She shifted uncomfortably. “And tired. But other than that, I’m happy. Relieved that it’s finally over and she’s here with us.” She paused. “How are you feeling? The last I heard before I fell asleep was that they were afraid you had a concussion.”
The look he gave her was embarrassed. “No concussion, just a goose egg and bruised pride. I don’t know what came over me. I think it was that I hadn’t had anything to eat and I hadn’t slept. All I know is that one minute I was looking down at our daughter about to cut her cord and the next there was a nurse hovering over me holding up three fingers, demanding to know how many I saw.”
She laughed, then pressed a hand to her suddenly deflated abdomen. “That hurts.”
“Well,” Logan said expectantly, “do you want to hold our daughter?”
