I squinted at the baby in question. “You mean the one who looks like he’s already planning a hostile takeover of the nursery?”
“Exactly.” She grinned, taking a triumphant sip of her coffee. “Born ruthless.”
“Fine,” I said, scanning the row. “Then that one—tiny, bald, and currently drooling on himself—will become an artist. The tortured kind. He’ll live in a loft filled with half-finished canvases and emotional support plants.”
“You’re projecting again.”
“Shut up.”
She snickered, pointing to another baby wrapped in a pink blanket. “Okay, go again.”
I tilted my head, studying her. “That one’s easy. Future prime minister. But she’ll quit politics to open a bakery because she realized the world didn’t deserve her kindness.”
Sarah made a thoughtful noise. “A feminist icon who bakes bread. I like it.”
We went on like that for a while—an engineer who’d forget their own birthday, a future Olympic swimmer who’d have a deep-seated fear of puddles, a girl destined to start a cult but only because she was really persuasive and had great hair.
Then, somewhere between the cult leader and the kid with perfect eyebrows, she said, “You know, when I was born, my mom wanted me to be a pediatrician.”
“Really?”
She nodded, smiling faintly at the memory. “Yeah. She had this whole thing planned—how I’d have my own little practice, how she’d decorate my office. She even bought me a toy stethoscope when I was five.”
“And now you’re in public health,” I said, but something in my chest tightened.
“Yup.” Sarah shrugged. “When I told her, she didn’t even blink. Just said, ‘as long as you’re happy, I’m proud.’”
Her voice was light, but the words landed like a bruise, because my mother never even wanted a daughter. And then when I came anyway, she wanted a mirror. A reflection that smiled prettily and said all the right things. The only future she ever pictured for me was the one where I got married and moved out—tidy, acceptable, easy to explain at brunch.
She didn’t care what I did, only that it looked good on paper. When I became a doctor, it wasn’t pride that softened her voice—it was disappointment. Her interest in my work existed only in the retelling, not the living of it. I could save a life, deliver a baby, hold the trembling hand of a woman on the brink of loss, and all she’d care about was how it sounded at her next dinner party.
Sarah’s mom baked her cookies; mine baked expectations I could never rise to.
I imagined her standing exactly where I stood now, thirty-two years ago, staring down at a newborn girl wrapped in hospital linen, wondering not who I’d become, but whether she could slip out of the room and come back with a baby boy instead.
I forced a smile, hoping it didn’t crack. “That’s nice.”
“What about your mom? What did she want you to be?”
I laughed—short and sharp. “Nonexistent.”
Her face fell. “Lilly...”
“It’s fine,” I said quickly, eyes darting back to the glass, to the rows of babies who still had blank slates and open futures. “She got what she wanted, in the end. I became a doctor. I’m sure she’s thrilled.”
Sarah bumped her shoulder against mine. “You’re allowed to want things for yourself, you know.”
“Yeah. I know.”
But I didn’t. Not really.
The silence that followed was thick—too heavy for a nursery full of pastel walls and fresh starts. So I cleared my throat, grasping for something brighter. “You didn’t tell me,” I said, turning to her, “how was your date?”
Her groan filled the room, loud enough to make one of the babies stir. “Disastrous. I’m talking full-scale, red-flag parade. He spent the entire dinner lecturing me about how a ‘proper wife’ should delete her social media and be home before Maghrib. Then he asked if I’d be willing to ‘start wearing darker colors’ so I wouldn’t compel other men to look at me.”
“Wow. Romantic.”
“Oh, it gets better,” she said, rolling her eyes. “He also brought hismotherto the date. She spent twenty minutes explaining why she’d make the perfect mother-in-law.”
