25. Willow
— ? —
Willow
I wake to the sound of beeping machines and the smell of hospital antiseptic.
At first, I don’t remember where I am or why.
There’s pain, a deep, throbbing ache low in my belly, and exhaustion like I’ve never felt before, absolute.
My mouth is dry. My limbs feel like they’re made of lead.
Everything is fuzzy around the edges, soft-focus, like I’m looking at the world through gauze.
Then I remember.
The blood. The ambulance. Corey’s face as they wheeled me away.
Our daughter.
I try to sit up and gasp at the pain that shoots through my abdomen. A hand appears on my shoulder, gentle but firm, pressing me back down.
“Easy, dear. You’ve been through quite an ordeal. Don’t try to move too quickly.”
Mrs. Potts. Her face swims into focus above me, lined with worry but smiling.
“The baby…”
“Is perfect. Five pounds, three ounces, all ten fingers, all ten toes, a set of lungs that could wake the dead.” Her smile widens. “She came early and small, and the delivery nearly took you both. But she held on. She fought. Just like her mother.”
“Four days,” Mrs. Potts continues. “You’ve been unconscious for four days.
They had to take you back into surgery twice, there was some bleeding that wouldn’t stop.
For a while there, we weren’t sure…” She stops, composes herself.
“But you’re here now. You’re awake. And your husband hasn’t left your side for more than five minutes since they brought you out of recovery. ”
Four days. I’ve been unconscious for four days.
I turn my head and find him.
Corey is slumped in the chair beside my bed, unshaven and exhausted, dark circles carved deep under his eyes.
His clothes are wrinkled like he’s been sleeping in them, which he probably has, and there’s a stain on his shirt that might be coffee or might be baby formula.
And cradled in his arms, wrapped in a pink hospital blanket, is the smallest human being I’ve ever seen.
Our daughter.
She has his dark hair, a surprising amount of it, a wild tuft sticking up from her tiny head. Her eyes are closed, but when I look closer, I can see the shape of my nose, my mouth, my chin in miniature.
“She’s beautiful,” I whisper.
Corey’s head snaps up. When he sees me awake, his face crumbles.
“Willow.” He’s crying, openly, unashamedly, tears streaming down his stubbled cheeks. “Oh God, Willow. You’re awake. You’re okay. I thought, when they took you back into surgery the second time, I thought…”
“I’m okay.” My voice is hoarse, barely working, but I force the words out. “I’m here. I’m okay.”
He’s at my bedside in an instant, our daughter still cradled carefully in one arm, his other hand finding mine and gripping it like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he lets go.
“They asked me to choose,” he says, the words tumbling out.
“If it came down to it, who to save. And I chose you. I chose you without hesitating, without thinking, because I couldn’t, I can’t, imagine a world without you in it.
And then they almost lost you anyway, twice, and I had to sit in that waiting room not knowing if I’d made the right call or if I’d just condemned our daughter to grow up without a mother… ”
“Hey.” I squeeze his hand as hard as my weak grip allows. “Look at me. I’m here. We’re both here. You made the right call.”
“I know.” He lifts my hand to his lips, kisses my knuckles.
“Mrs. Potts told me, when I was sitting there waiting, she said John always told her that if you love someone, you fight for them. You don’t give up.
You don’t let go. And I thought, that’s what I’m doing.
Fighting for you. Refusing to give up. Even when the doctors looked at me like they were preparing to deliver bad news. ”
“Mrs. Potts knew John?”
“No, Glenn’s John. Glenn told her the story once, when he was visiting you.” He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re awake and you’re okay and we have a daughter and I get to spend the rest of my life making this up to you.”
“There’s nothing to make up.” I reach out with my free hand, touch his face, feel the scratch of stubble against my palm.
“You chose me. When it mattered most, when everything was on the line, you chose me. That’s not something you need to apologize for.
That’s something I’ll be grateful for every day for the rest of my life. ”
“But the baby…”
“Is here. Healthy. Perfect, according to Mrs. Potts.” I smile, even though it makes my dry lips crack. “You didn’t sacrifice her. You trusted that the doctors could save us both, and they did. That’s not a failure. That’s faith.”
He doesn’t say anything. He just sits there, tears still streaming down his face, looking at me like I’m the most precious thing he’s ever seen.
“Can I hold her?” I ask.
He helps me shift into a sitting position, arranges pillows behind my back, then places our daughter in my arms with the careful reverence of a man handling something infinitely precious.
She weighs almost nothing. She’s so small, so fragile, so completely dependent on us for everything. And she’s ours.
“Hi, baby,” I whisper. “I’m your mom. I’m sorry I missed the first few days. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
She stirs in my arms, her tiny face scrunching up, and then her eyes open.
They’re green. Corey’s green, bright and clear and already seeming to focus on my face with an intensity that takes my breath away.
“She has your eyes,” I say.
“She has your stubbornness.” Corey is smiling through his tears.
I look up at him, this man I’ve loved for twelve years, this man who broke my heart and spent six months painstakingly putting it back together.
“You told them to save me,” I say. “Over her.”
He nods, his face grave. “I did.”
“That must have been an impossible decision.”
“It was.” His voice comes out rough, and he looks down at our daughter before he answers the rest. “I knew what you’d have chosen.
You’d have chosen her without blinking, because that’s who you are, and you were lying there waiting to say it and letting me decide instead.
So I decided, and then I spent four days terrified I’d chosen wrong.
Terrified you’d wake up and look at me and never forgive me for it.
That I’d saved you and lost you anyway, and lost her, and lost everything, because everything I have in this world was behind those doors and I’d just been asked to cut it in half.
” He swallows hard. “I prayed the whole time that saving you meant saving her too. I couldn’t lose you, Willow.
I wasn’t strong enough to lose you. That’s the truth of it. ”
“I love you.” The words come out fierce, certain.
“I love you, Corey. Not because you chose me. Not because you’ve changed.
I love you because you’re you, the boy who made me laugh when I was sixteen, the man who built an empire and tore it down because I needed him home, the father who’s going to raise this little girl with me. ”
“I love you too.” He leans down, presses his forehead to mine. “I’ve loved you since before I knew what love was. And I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure you never doubt it.”
We stay like that, our daughter cradled between us.
Then I remember something.
“The paternity test,” I say. “I ordered one. Before everything happened. The results should be…”
“In that envelope.” Corey nods toward the nightstand, where a sealed white envelope sits waiting. “They brought it while you were unconscious. I haven’t opened it.”
I look at the envelope, then back at him. “Open it.”
He picks it up, holds it in his hands. I watch his face, looking for hesitation, for doubt, for any trace of the man who once stood in our kitchen and asked if our baby was Glenn’s.
I don’t find it.
Slowly, deliberately, he tears the envelope in half. Then in half again, and again, until the envelope and its contents are nothing but confetti.
“I don’t need it,” he says. “I never needed it. I knew she was mine from the moment you told me you were pregnant. I knew it in my gut, in my heart, in every part of me that matters. And if I’d trusted that knowing instead of letting my fear take over…
” He shakes his head. “I’m done doubting you, Willow.
I’m done doubting us. Whatever that test said, it doesn’t matter.
She’s mine because you’re mine. That’s the only proof I need. ”
The tears are streaming again, but for the first time in months, they’re not tears of sadness or anger or grief.
They’re tears of joy. Of relief. Of hope.
“The ring,” I say suddenly. “My ring. I had it on a chain…”
Corey reaches into his pocket and pulls out the delicate gold chain, my grandmother’s chain, with the thin gold band still threaded through it.
“Glenn told me,” he says softly. “Months ago. That you were still wearing it. Under your clothes. Against your heart. Even when you were furious with me. Even when you told me the divorce was still happening. You never took it off.”
“I couldn’t.” My voice breaks. “Even when I hated you, I couldn’t take it off.
This ring, this stupid thin little band you bought when we had nothing, it was the promise.
It was proof that you chose me before the money, before the success, before any of it.
And I couldn’t let go of that. Even when everything else was broken, I couldn’t let go of the proof that once, a long time ago, we loved each other for real. ”
He unhooks the chain, slides the ring free, and holds it up between us. The same ring he gave me when we had nothing. The ring I refused to let him upgrade because this ring was the promise.
“May I?” he asks.
I hold out my hand.
He slides the ring onto my finger, back where it belongs, and something in my chest finally, finally settles.
“Welcome back, Mrs. Knightley,” he murmurs.