“She’s okay?”
He takes a second before answering, and in that second I know he’s choosing honesty over comfort. “She was taken to the NICU. Since she came early, and they want to keep a close eye on her.”
“She?” I ask.
His expression softens. “Yes. It’s a girl.”
A girl.
I stare at him, then at the ceiling, and then the tears start before I can stop them. I don’t even try. They slip into my hair and down the sides of my face while I lie there feeling wrecked and emptied out and somehow fuller at the same time.
A girl.
Viktor stays where he is. He doesn’t rush to fill the silence or tell me not to cry. He lets me take it in.
After a moment I manage, “Did you see her?”
“Yes.”
I wait.
He understands and goes on. “She cried as soon as she was out. Small voice, but loud enough to make her opinion known.”
A laugh catches in my throat and comes out broken. “That sounds like my child.”
His mouth shifts. “I thought so too.”
I look at him more closely then. The tiredness in his face. The strain he isn’t hiding. The fact that he’s still here.
“Did you hold her?”
This time he pauses for a different reason.
Then he says, quietly, “Yes.”
For some reason that gets me worse than anything else.
I picture it too easily. Him with this tiny new life in his hands, trying to be careful with something so small. The thought presses right against my heart.
“What was she like?”
He leans back a little, looking at me as if he’s trying to find the best words and doesn’t quite trust any of them. “Tiny,” he says. “Furious. Very much alive.”
I smile through the tears.
My hand drifts to my stomach under the blanket. The emptiness there feels strange. Wrong, almost. I didn’t expect that part, how quickly I would miss the weight of her inside me even while being grateful she’s out.
Viktor notices.
“She’s still yours,” he says.
I look back at him.
It’s such a simple thing, but it steadies me more than it should.
“I want to see her.”
“I know.”
