“Can anything be salvaged?” All my childhood memories were held within the walls of Dearly & Son. My heart clenched at the idea of losing them.
“Maybe. The fire started in the kitchen according to Lilith, then, there was an explosion in the walk-in. Maybe one triggered the other, but Lilith and I speculate this was Nyx or someone acting on her behalf. Lilith went to talk to Lucifer about this situation. We need to find Nyx, Dearly. I’m tired of this waiting shit.”
A nurse rushed into the room. “Family for Lake Gryner?”
We all stepped forward expectantly. Jonas took Jamie’s hand and led her to the chairs showing her things on his phone to distract her. I hadn’t even thought about how any of this might affect Jamie. Dash and I had been very selfish.
“Lake’s having some blood pressure issues, so Doctor Lim is going to perform a cesarean to deliver the baby. Dads, You can watch, and you can hold the baby for a moment before she’s in NICU. You can’t come into the operating room because Ms. Gryner is still unconscious, but you can watch through the glass. Follow me.”
Dash and I hurried down the hallway into a scrub room. With the bandages on my left side, I couldn’t scrub in, but Dash could, and I could relish in watching him hold our daughter for the first time. It would be a new memory I could hold onto since all the others I’d had at Dearly & Son had gone up in flames.
The staff scurried around, setting up a drape between Lake’s head and her burgeoning belly. The person standing at Lake’s head nodded, and one of the nurses said, “She’s ready, Dr. Lim.”
Dash and I stood at the window and watched Dr. Lim take her place at the side of the operating table. The staff were all at the ready, and I closed my eyes. I’d seen and done a lot of invasive procedures to prepare my guests for their funerals, but seeing someone I loved being cut open wasn’t—something quickly occurred to me.
“Dash, should you be in here? Did you—” I leaned closer. “Did you drink Lilith’s blood?”
“I did, but I’ll be fine. I’m just excited.” He glanced at me with a twinkle in his eye, and I believed him down to my soul.
When the doctor made the cut, Dash growled and put his right hand over his mouth. He swallowed hard. “Our baby,” he murmured...as if reminding himself.
I took his left hand and kissed it. I knew he would make it through without issue.
We watched through the glass as the doctor unwrapped the umbilical cord from around the baby while the neonatal nurses assisted the doctor as she reached into Lake’s abdomen, gently removing our sweet, disgusting-looking daughter. She wasn’t moving, and more importantly, there wasn’t any sound coming from the baby.
I grabbed Dash’s arm. “She’s not screaming.” I couldn’t catch my breath. Had Nyx succeeded in keeping the curse intact?
“Dammit! She will.” Dash snapped his fingers and everything around us stopped. He hurried in through the door and bit into his wrist, holding it to drip over the baby’s lips. Two drops fell onto her cupid’s bow mouth.
I was frozen for a moment until that beautiful scream filled the air. Dash snapped his fingers again before rushing back to me, tears rolling down our faces. Our beautiful little girl had been born alive.
The room became active. Dr. Lim held up our daughter for us to see before she put her in the arms of a nurse who carried her over to a table to be weighed, measured, and swaddled. Our gorgeous daughter hadn’t stopped screaming, which was the best song I’d ever heard.
Dash wrapped an arm around my shoulders and slid his nose over my right cheek before he met my ear. “How beautiful is that sound, Dearly?”
“Glorious.”
The screaming that filtered from Dash’s mind to mine wasn’t that of our baby girl. It was the screaming of a demon goddess who had just lost her leverage. Her spell cast on my ancestors had just been broken with the live birth of our beautiful baby girl. The last thing left to do was send Nyx back to her specific corner of Hell.
“Lake woke up. She’s a little groggy, but Dr. Lim says she’ll be fine.”
Dash knelt beside me as I sat near the acrylic crib where our beautiful Grace lay swaddled and snoozing. We were still thinking about a middle name, but we’d been told we could takeher home on Friday the thirteenth, which was a little suspect, but I’d take what I could get.
“No lasting effects from Lake’s head injury, right?”
From what we’d pieced together, Lake had hit her head on the open utensil drawer on the right side of the stove as she slipped on amniotic fluid and went down. The doctor called her brain injury a coup, which means her brain ricocheted inside her skull.
She would be in the hospital for a few more days for observation because of the c-section and the head injury, and then she and Jamie were going to stay with her parents until she was ready to go back to Dash’s condo. I was glad she had her family to rely on, though Dash and I would have taken her home with us—if we had a home to go to.
“As far as the neuro could tell. Her brain swelling is decreasing, and Lake said her headache is diminishing. Wanna trade places? I think Lake would like to talk to you. I’ll be here with Gracie.”
Gracie!I loved the sound of it and how easily it rolled off Dash’s tongue. I could hear the sheer magnitude of love in his voice, and we’d only met her a few hours earlier. It warmed me through and through. That sweet little girl would be the saving grace for the world, I was sure. Her daddies just had to make sure there was a world left for her to grow up in.
With my wounds, I hadn’t been able to have skin-to-skin contact with Grace, but Dash could. “Shirt off, Papa.” He smirked, making me roll my eyes.
Dash slid up the back of his Henley and pulled it over his head and down his arms. He tossed it on the back of the rocking chair and finger-combed his long hair into a bun secured with an elastic band from his wrist before sitting in the rocker and opening his arms.
I picked up the baby and opened the tightly wrapped blanket before laying her against Dash’s bare chest and covering themboth with the blanket. I adjusted Grace’s little pink hat before I kissed her head and then Dash’s lips. “I’ll be back.”
