“At this moment,” I repeated.
“I want to be careful with language,” she said gently. “But you have reason to be hopeful.”
Hopeful.
I had lived on that word for months.
The nurse placed Maya in my arms.
Her weight was so slight, and yet the whole world rearranged itself around her.
Ethan stood back.
I noticed.
Dr. Alvarez explained the plan: monitoring, feeding, possible light therapy if jaundice developed, more blood tests, no need to panic unless things changed.
I absorbed perhaps half of it.
The other half of me was memorizing Maya’s eyelashes.
When Dr. Alvarez left, Linda dimmed the lights and promised to return.
Then it was just the three of us.
Me.
Ethan.
Maya.
The family we almost were.
The family we had become by accident, pain, and one impossible night.
Ethan sat in the chair beside the bed but kept his hands clasped.
“You can hold her,” I said.
He looked up.
Only then did I realize how much he had been waiting.
“Are you sure?”
“No. But you’re her father.”
The word changed the air.
Father.
He stood slowly, as if afraid sudden movement might startle both of us.
I shifted Maya carefully, and he took her with a caution that made my throat ache. For a man who had delivered hundreds of babies, he looked terrified holding his own.
Maya stirred.
Ethan’s face crumpled for one brief second before he pulled himself together.
“Hi, Maya,” he whispered. “I’m…”
He stopped.
He looked at me.
I nodded once.
“I’m your dad,” he said.
The words broke something open.
He bent his head, not quite touching his forehead to her blanket.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” he whispered.
I looked out the window toward the dark outline of Hartford beyond the glass.
I did not want to cry again.
I had already cried enough for one lifetime.
But tears came anyway.
Ethan held Maya for several minutes in silence. When he finally spoke, his voice was low.
“I didn’t know you were pregnant when I filed.”
“I found out three days after.”
He looked at me sharply.
“Three days?”
I nodded.
“I had the test hidden under the sink. I don’t know why I didn’t take it sooner. Maybe I already knew.”
“Chloe…”
“I called you.”
His face went blank.
“No, you didn’t.”
