“Legally,” she said carefully, “the situation is complicated. Renata carried and delivered this child. She has no genetic connection to her. Neither do Paige and Desmond. The only genetic parents are Bridget and Theo Kavanagh, who don’t yet know any of this.”
“Someone needs to tell them,” I said.
“The clinic will handle notification,” Dr. Osei said. “Today, if possible.”
I sat with the weight of that sentence for a moment, imagining a phone ringing somewhere across town, a couple’s whole world about to tilt sideways the exact same way mine just had.
“What about me?” I asked. “What am I supposed to do right now? Just hand her over the second they walk through that door?”
Dr. Osei’s expression softened slightly.
“No one is asking you to do anything right this second,” she said. “Take whatever time feels right. This is uncharted territory for everyone, including us.”
Paige stood up, unsteady, Desmond’s hand finding her elbow to keep her upright.
“I can’t be in this room right now,” Paige said. “I’m sorry, Renata. I need air.”
She left without looking at the baby again. Desmond followed a moment later, pausing at the door.
“I’m sorry,” he said, not quite meeting my eyes, his voice barely above a whisper. “This isn’t how any of this was supposed to go.”
Then it was just me, a nurse quietly checking monitors, and the baby, asleep now, entirely unaware that the room around her had just fractured into pieces nobody knew how to reassemble.
I sat there for a long time, just looking at her.
Priti came back once more before her shift ended, adjusting my IV line, glancing at the empty doorway where Paige and Desmond had disappeared.
“You holding up okay?” she asked quietly.
“Not really,” I admitted. “But I don’t think falling apart helps her right now.”
“You’d be surprised how many people in your position fall apart anyway,” Priti said. “The fact that you haven’t says something.”
“Whoever you actually belong to,” I whispered, “I’ve got you right now. That’s not nothing.”
The four hours that followed felt endless, marked only by the baby’s small sounds and the occasional check-in from hospital staff, everyone tiptoeing around a situation nobody had a protocol for.
The Kavanaghs arrived at the hospital four hours later.
Bridget Kavanagh walked in first, a tall woman with the exact same dark curling hair as the baby in my arms, her husband Theo a step behind her, both of them moving like people walking into a dream they weren’t sure was real yet.
Bridget stopped just inside the doorway, one hand pressed flat against the frame like she needed something solid to hold onto.
“Is it true?” Bridget asked, stopping a few feet from the bassinet. “Is she really—”
“The clinic confirmed it this morning,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know any of this until a few hours ago either.”
Bridget’s hand went to her mouth. Theo stood frozen in the doorway, staring at the baby like he was afraid moving closer might make the whole situation less real, or somehow more real, he didn’t seem to know which he was more afraid of.
Neither of them moved for a long moment, the whole room suspended somewhere between disbelief and something that hadn’t yet found its shape.
“Can I hold her?” Bridget asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Of course,” I said. “She’s yours. Genetically, at least.”
I helped settle the baby into Bridget’s arms, watching a stranger’s face do exactly what I’d expected Paige’s face to do hours earlier, dissolve into something unguarded and enormous.
