Suddenly she was furious at the world, little red fists waving. Tiny pink feet kicking.
“Does that mean she’s okay? And that she’s a she?” I asked, choking back a sob.
“She looks good to me,” Lenore said, carefully rubbing around the still attached umbilical cord. “And definitely a she.” She began to rub the top corner of the towel gently over the baby’s head, and Gallagher just watched. He seemed too stunned for words.
I knew exactly how he felt. Knowing that a baby was coming was entirely different than finally seeing the baby.
“Let me hold her. Please.”
“Just a minute.” Zyanya set a bowl on the floor, and I made a conscious decision not to look into it when I noticed that the umbilical cord trailing from my daughter ended in the bowl. “Lift.” She made a rising gesture with both hands, and I lifted my hips to oblige, trying to ignore the sharp ache down below.
While Gallagher held the baby, Zy and Lenore quickly changed the padding beneath me and helped me into some special postbirth underwear. Then Lenore pulled the sheet up over my strangely deflated stomach and helped me sit up against the pillows. Zyanya draped a clean, soft towel over the crook of my arm. Then she grinned up at Gallagher and took the screaming baby from his hands, careful to support her head.
She laid my daughter in the crook of my arm, then folded the towel snugly over her.
“Oh my God.” I stared down at her face, and she immediately began to quiet. Her little eyes were squeezed shut, her tiny red mouth pursed in a sucking motion. “Gallagher, look at her!”
“I can’t see anything else in the world right now,” he whispered.
“Have a seat, Papa.” Zyanya pushed a chair up next to the bed, and he sat, as close as he could get to both of us without climbing onto the bed.
While we stared at our child, Zyanya leaned over us with a string, which she used to tie off the umbilical cord. Then she offered Gallagher the scissors. “Lenore tells me it’s a human tradition to let the father cut the cord. To make him feel as if he’s contributed something to the effort.”
I laughed. He scowled at her, but took the scissors and played his part, noting beneath his breath that he was not, in fact, human.
Our daughter, however, looked completely human.
“Where will she get a hat?” I asked, suddenly worried when I realized I could see her pulse beating on top of her head, beneath a thin, short cap of straight, dark hair. “And how soon will she need blood?”
“We don’t know yet that she will—she’s your daughter as much as mine, so it’s possible that she didn’t inherit bloodlust. But if she did, I will make her a hat. That is our way.”
I smiled up at him. “Just as soon as you’re finished with her bone rattle?”
Gallagher looked suddenly startled. “I haven’t started it yet. I thought we’d have a couple more weeks.”
“I was kidding. And there’s plenty of time. She won’t be ready for toys for quite a while. According to the book, all she’ll be doing for the first few weeks is eating and going through all those pretty new diapers.”
“Everyone out there is dying to meet her,” Lenore said with a glance at the door. “Eventually we will be able to call her something other than ‘her,’ right?”
“Yes, I...” I glanced up at Gallagher. We hadn’t evendiscusseda name. How could we possibly be so unprepared after such a long pregnancy? “I have a couple of ideas.”
“Let’s give them a minute to talk.” Lenore tugged on Zyanya’s sleeve.
Zy nodded and handed Lenore the bowl from the foot of the bed, then she picked up the trash bag full of used bed pads. “Yes. We’ll go get you something to eat and drink. You’ll need plenty of both, in order to feed the baby.”
Panic must have been written all over my face, because she laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ll be right back to help. I nursed all of mine, until—” Until they were taken from her. We could all hear what she wasn’t saying. “I’ll be right back.”
“We have to help her get her kids back, Gallagher,” I whispered the moment the door closed behind Lenore and Zyanya. “I can’t... The thought of anyone taking her from us...” Fresh tears filled my eyes as I stared down at the baby now asleep in the cradle of my arm.
“I will never let that happen.”
“You have to stop saying things like that without thinking them through first. I can’t have one of your promises getting you killed. We’re going to need you for a long time.”
He seemed to think about that for a second. Then he nodded, still staring at that precious, sleeping face. “What do you want to call her?”
“Something that means ‘light.’” Like the light she’d brought into our lives, in the middle of so much darkness.
“Delilah, that’s perfect.” He stroked one thick finger down her cheek. “That’s exactly what she is.”
