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“As soon as we finish assessing him.”

I started crying harder.

“I just want to see my baby.”

Malik brought my hand against his mouth.

“I know,” he said as he stared me in the eyes.

“Why isn’t he crying?”

He didn’t answer because he didn’t know. That was the part that scared me the most. Malik always had an answer. Even when it was something I didn’t want to hear, he had one. Now he was sitting beside me, gripping my hand so tightly that his fingers were trembling, and neither one of us could do anything except wait. Then I heard it. At first, it was small enough that I almost thought I imagined it. A short, raspy cry came from somewhere beyond the curtain, and I stopped breathing immediately.

Another cry followed it, stronger than the first.

“Oh my God.”

My whole body went weak.

“That’s him,” Malik said.

Our son cried again, louder this time, and whatever Malik had been holding inside of him broke right along with me.

“That’s my baby,” I cried.

Malik lowered his head against my hand.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “That’s our boy.”

I had seen my husband hurt. I had seen him angry, afraid, stubborn, and in more pain than any person should have to endure. I had watched him fight his way through a recovery that changed almost every part of our lives. But I had never seen Malik the way he was crying right now.

He tried to wipe his face quickly, like there wasn’t an entire room of people who could see him, but more tears came. I squeezed his hand.

“You crying?” I asked with a playful smirk.

He laughed through it.

“Hell yeah, I’m crying.”

That made me laugh and cry at the same time. Our baby kept crying in the background, and I had never heard anything so beautiful in my life.

“Can I see him now?” I asked.

I was so eager to see what the new little boss of the house looked like.

“They’re still checking him,” someone told me. “He’s doing much better.”

“What happened to him?” Malik asked.

The doctor came closer to my side of the curtain.

“When we delivered him, we found that the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. That can sometimes contribute to the kinds of heart rate changes we were seeing during labor. The important thing is that we recognized that he wasn’t tolerating labor well and delivered him quickly.”

My eyes filled all over again.

“The cord was around his neck?” I asked.

“Yes,” the doctor confirmed.