Wonder. That's what it is. Unguarded, unfiltered, complete.
"Hi," he says. His voice is wrecked. "Hi. Okay. You're here."
I can't speak. My throat has closed. My eyes are burning and my chest is full of something so large it doesn't fit and I am standing in a hospital room with tears running down my face and I don't care.
She weighs six pounds and eleven ounces. She has dark hair, a lot of it, matted and damp against her skull. Her fingers are impossibly small. Her nails are impossibly small. Everything about her is impossibly small and she is gripping Theo's index finger with a strength that seems structurally unreasonable for someone who has been alive for four minutes.
I sit on the edge of the bed. Theo shifts to make room. The baby is between us, on Theo's chest, and I put my hand on her back. She's warm. Her ribcage rises and falls under my palm, fast, steady. The heartbeat is a flutter against my fingers.
"She's got your jaw," Theo says.
"Poor kid."
"Your hands too. Look at those fingers."
I look. She has long fingers. They're wrapped around Theo's and they're holding on with the focus of someone who has found the thing they want and has no intention of letting go.
"That she gets from both of us," I say.
Theo looks at me. His hair is damp with sweat and there are circles under his eyes and he's still in the hospital gown and he is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, after the creature on his chest.
"Marie," he says.
"What?"
"Her name. Marie, after my mother."
I look at the baby. At her dark hair and clenched fists and the furious determination with which she exists.
"Marie," I say. It sits right. It sounds like her. "Marie Novikov-Holland.”
"Marie Holland-Novikov."
"Holland-Novikov," I say against his skin.
"That was easy. You're losing your edge."
"I know exactly what I'm losing and what I'm getting. I've done the math."
The baby makes a sound. Not a cry. Something smaller. A sigh, maybe, or a yawn. She turns her head against Theo's chest and her mouth finds skin and she roots, instinctive, searching.
"She's hungry," Theo says.
His hand covers mine on the baby's back. His fingers lace through mine. The three of us sit on the hospital bed in the light from the window and outside the city is running the way it always runs, indifferent to the fact that everything inside this room has changed.
"Novikov," Theo says.
"What."
"Thank you for not passing out."
"You're welcome."
His mouth twitches. Almost a smile. The closest thing to one that Theo Holland-maybe-Novikov offers, and I have learned, over these months, that almost is enough. Almost is everything.
Marie’s grip tightens on his finger.
I put my hand over both of theirs and I hold on.
The End
