Mehar
Then she cried. A real cry. Thin and scratchy and not very loud, but hers. Coming from her own lungs, pushed by her own air, without a machine doing the work for her. The sound filled the NICU room and I grabbed Quest’s arm because my legs almost gave out from the relief.
“She’s breathing on her own,” the nurse said, checking the monitors. “Oxygen levels are stable. She’s doing beautifully.”
The nurse lifted her out of the incubator and placed her on my chest. Skin to skin.
Three pounds and fourteen ounces of warm, breathing, crying baby girl against my heart.
I felt her tiny body settle into mine, felt her fists curl against my collarbone, felt her crying taper off into soft whimpers as my heartbeat did what the ventilator had been doing for weeks.
She calmed down because she was on her mother and that was enough.
I cried so hard I couldn’t see. Everything I’d carried since the plane crash, since the island, since the cave, since the hurricane, since waking up to stitches and the hysterectomy, all of it poured out of me while I held my daughter for the first time without plastic between us.
She was here. She was breathing. She was mine.
“You want to hold her?” I asked Quest through tears.
He sat down next to me and I placed Aziza in his hands.
His big, scarred, island-survivor hands that had built fires, killed boars, carried me through storms. Those hands held our daughter like she was made of glass, cradling her head in one palm and her body in the other, and for a moment he just stared at her face without speaking.
A tear slid down his cheek. One. He let it fall without wiping it and I leaned over and kissed it off his jaw because that tear meant more than anything he could’ve said.
“We’re close,” he whispered, looking at her. “The war will be over soon. Then we take her home.”
The nurse offered to take pictures with Quest’s phone.
We posed if you could call it that. Me looking like a mess with hospital hair and swollen eyes.
Quest looking like a castaway who’d been living on coffee and vending machine food.
Aziza between us, eyes closed, breathing on her own, completely unbothered by the fact that both her parents looked like they’d been through a war. Because they had.
The nurse took about ten photos. In every single one, we looked exhausted and wrecked and completely in love.
· · ·
I got discharged around noon. Walking out of that hospital without my baby was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, which is saying something considering the last month of my life.
But Aziza still needed time. She was breathing on her own but she had to learn to feed consistently, gain weight, and regulate her temperature before they’d release her.
The doctors said it could be another month.
Quest had booked a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in the Inner Harbor, ten minutes from Hopkins.
When we walked in there were shopping bags on the bed.
New clothes, toiletries, skincare, everything I needed to feel human again.
He’d had someone pick out pieces in my size, comfortable but cute, the kind of soft fabrics my body needed right now while I healed.
There was even a bonnet and edge control on the bathroom counter because this man paid attention to details that most men didn’t know existed.
I showered for the first time in what felt like forever without a nurse hovering outside the door.
Washed my hair. Put on real clothes. Looked in the mirror and saw someone I almost recognized staring back at me.
But barely. My body had changed. Boobs had spread and now had stretch marks.
My belly was soft and everything was bigger.
This was the first time I’d gotten a real look at myself.
This beautiful body had carried me through so much.
I was surprised that I wasn’t disgusted by what I saw.
Instead, I felt an immense sense of gratitude.
I sat on the bed and opened the group chat. Zainab, Serenity, Justice, Prime, Bryce. I sent the photos of me and Quest and Aziza, the ones the nurse took. No caption needed.
The responses came in fast.
Zainab: SHES OFF THE VENT? OMG OMG OMG. THATS MY NIECE. LOOK AT HER BEAUTIFUL FACE. IM CRYING.
Serenity: I’m sobbing. She looks just like you Mehar. Thank God. Thank GOD. Kiss her for me.
Justice: That’s a Banks right there. Strong as hell. Proud of you both.
Prime:
Bryce: Thats my niece. She got our blood. She a fighter. Love you sis.
I smiled at my phone and let the love wash over me because I needed it.
This family had held me up through the worst stretch of my life.
From the island to the hospital to this hotel room, every single one of them had shown up in ways that I would never be able to repay.
I came from a family that broke me. I was marrying into one that rebuilt me.
Quest came out of the bathroom freshly showered. He looked like himself again. Almost. There was still something sitting behind his eyes that he hadn’t shared with me, that same closed door I’d been sensing for days. But I let it go because today was a good day and good days had been rare lately.
“I gotta handle something,” he said, checking his phone. “I’ll be back in a couple hours.”
“Handle something like business or handle something like trouble?”
He looked at me with a half smile that answered nothing. “Security is posted downstairs and outside the door. You need anything, you call me first.” He opened the nightstand drawer and set the Glock inside. “That’s there if you need it.”
“Quest.”
“I’ll be back in the morning, Peach. I promise.”
He kissed me deep enough to make me forget the question I was about to ask, then grabbed his keys and walked out. The door clicked shut behind him and I sat on the edge of the bed in a luxury hotel suite wearing new clothes.
I looked at the photos one more time. Aziza’s face. Quest’s tear. My swollen eyes and tangled hair and the biggest smile I’d worn in months.