“Okay, we got you, Momma!” he said.
Together, we maneuvered Flowers into the wheelchair and then we were zipping through the hospital doors with everything around me a blur.
I felt the clasp of her hand reaching for mine.
“You did it, E.G.” she said, panting out shallow breaths. “You got us here. I know how hard that was for you.”
“Flowers,” I growled. “Shut up and let me take care of you. Please.”
We were taken to a room. I told them who our OB/GYN was and they said they would call her, but apparently, upon an initial assessment from the ER doctor, the baby was not going to wait. Flowers had called it. This baby was coming now.
“What the hell, Flowers? This was supposed to be a long drawn-out process.”
It might have been funny. The stunned look on her face that all this was happening at breakneck speed. If it weren’t for the fact that she was in excruciating pain.
In the end, I’d barely pushed my arms into the hospital gown, when Flowers exclaimed that she needed to push.
She grabbed my hand, I was sure with the intent to break it, and three big hard pushes later, our daughter came into the world.
Hours later,we were settled into a private hospital room. Nothing but the best for my family, of course. I was holding my swaddled daughter in my arms, watching Flowers take a quick cat nap on the bed.
My parents and Rebecca were already on the way. Today was a good day.
“What are we going to name her?”
I tore my eyes away from the precious tiny face in my arms, to the precious face on the bed.
What an idiot I was. Thinking that a person’s capacity for love was limited to one, and one only. If I hadn’t come to the realization before my daughter was born, it certainly would have occurred to me now.
My cold dead heart was in fact very much alive and spewing love all over the place. I feared for the next nurse who might walk through that door, because I would love them too.
“You tell me,” I said to Flowers.
We hadn’t really talked about names because we’d decided to wait until we knew if it was a girl or a boy. We each had our list of never-names, of course. But we were pretty in sync in terms of what we liked.
“Do you want to name her Allison?”
She would do that. She would name her daughter after my late wife if she thought it would bring me some measure of comfort.
Of closure.
I loved you very much, Allison. But now it’s time to say goodbye.
“No,” I answered her. “Allison’s dead. This little girl is alive and needs a new name. What do you think of Emma?”
“Emma Allen,” Flowers said, trying it out. “I love it.”
“Emma Flowers Allen,” I insisted.
“Why would you do that to her? Someday someone is going to ask her for her middle name and she’ll have to explain why it’s Flowers.”
“I don’t care. I want her to have all the love in my heart in her name. So that it goes with her wherever she goes. I love Emma. And I love you, Flowers.”
Tears started falling out of her eyes, dripping into the pillow.
“You’re just feeling sappy right now,” she said.
My daughter stirred then, letting out a tiny cry. This would be the first time the nurse would help Flowers with breast feeding. I couldn’t wait to watch that little miracle happen, too.
