She’s three months old and somehow still feels like a miracle I’m afraid to touch too hard. She’s all soft cheeks and downy hair; her little face scrunched in righteous outrage. She has Julian’s eyes, steel-gray when she’s calm, and a darkening storm when she’s upset.
Julian murmurs something to her that I can’t make out. It isn’t a command. It isn’t a shush.
It’s a conversation.
Like he’s been talking to her since day one in a language only they understand.
When I come back out, I lean against the doorframe for a moment, watching him.
And the thing is, this shouldn’t still surprise me.
He was good during the pregnancy. He was there. He learned everything: which crackers helped my nausea, what time of day my back pain was worst. He downloaded apps I pretended to hate and then referenced them like he’d authored them. He attended appointments and asked questions like he was building a case for her health and my safety.
But labour…
Labour stripped me down to the oldest parts of myself, the parts that don’t trust happiness, the parts that believe love is something that can vanish the moment you relax your grip on it.
And even then...
Even when I was shaking and sweating and trying to breathe through pain that felt like my body was splitting open, even when fear kept crawling up my throat...
Julian didn’t disappear.
He didn’t freeze.
He didn’t retreat into control.
He became something else entirely.
I remember the hospital room in flashes: bright lights and muted voices, monitors beeping, a nurse’s calm hands, Emily arriving in scrubs like a guardian angel with a sharp tongue.
I remember Julian’s hand locked around mine, his thumb rubbing slow circles into my skin like he could anchor me to the earth through touch alone. I remember him leaning close when a contraction hit and my vision blurred, his mouth at my ear, voice low enough that it felt like it was just for me.
“Look at me,” he said.
And I did, because my body couldn’t do anything else.
“I’m right here,” he told me, eyes fierce, unblinking. “You don’t have to be brave alone.”
I wanted to laugh at him for saying alone, because hadn’t I been alone for years? Hadn’t I learned how to carry everything without letting it show?
But then another wave hit, pain curling through me like a storm, and the fear surfaced... sharp and ugly.
What if something goes wrong?
What if I lose her?
What if I lose my mom before she meets her?
What if...
And I remember the exact moment the old wound cracked open.
It wasn’t the pain. It wasn’t even the blood.
It was the way the doctor said something too quickly, the way two nurses moved at once, the way my body recognized urgency and interpreted it as catastrophe.
My lungs seized.
