Epilogue #2
Twenty-Four Months Later
My water breaks while I’m reaching for a jar of pickles.
The plan was Wilson home by six. Dinner, bad TV, and labor sometime next week when I was mentally ready and had my hospital bag actually packed instead of half stuffed with random crap.
The baby did not get the memo about the plan.
He’s in a cab on the bridge when I call him from the back of a different cab, and by the time I’m in a bed with a monitor strapped to me and a nurse telling me things are moving fast, he’s called four times. The fourth time I can hear him running.
“The cab got a flat.” He’s gasping. “I’m on foot. Six blocks. Izzy, don’t you dare…”
“I’m not doing anything on purpose.” A contraction takes the rest of the sentence. “Just get here.”
He gets here.
He comes through the door with a nurse still trying to get a blue gown onto him, the cap on crooked, his face gray, his hair sticking up in every direction.
He looks ridiculous and terrified, and he’s at my side with my hand in his before she’s even finished tying it.
“I’m here.” He presses his lips to my temple. “I’m here, I’m sorry, I’m here.”
“You’re here.” I squeeze until I can feel his bones. “She waited for you.”
“We don’t know it’s a her.” He wipes my face with his sleeve, and his mouth is already losing the fight with a grin. “I mean, I know. I’ve known since the first ultrasound. But officially.”
The next twenty minutes are a blur. Pain, and pressure, and his voice, steady the whole way through, his hands on my shoulders when the doctor says one more, Mrs. Carter, one more.
Then a cry. Thin and reedy and absolutely perfect.
“It’s a girl,” the doctor says, and Wilson makes a sound I don’t have a name for, half a laugh and half a sob, his whole body shaking against my back.
His hands are trembling so badly I’m not sure he’s going to be able to cut the cord. He does it anyway.
Then she’s on my chest, warm and wiggling and furious about all of it, and I’m crying, and he’s crying, and I’m pretty sure the doctor is too.
“She looks like you.” His chin is on my shoulder and his voice has gone to almost nothing.
“She has your nose.”
“Poor kid.”
“It’s distinguished.”
***
The room is quiet now.
It’s a private recovery room with a window that looks out over the city, and she’s asleep in one of those plastic hospital bassinets. Wilson is standing over her like he’s afraid she’ll disappear if he looks away for even a second.
“You should get some sleep.” I reach over and tug at his shirt. “You literally ran six blocks to get here.”
“I can’t stop staring at her, Izzy.” He still hasn’t blinked. “Did you know she has ten fingers? I counted them three times just to make sure.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” I laugh and it hurts my stomach but I don’t care. “I was there when she came out of me, remember?”
“She has ten toes too.” He says it like he’s reporting something miraculous, like babies don’t come with ten toes all the time.
“Wilson, I swear to God, get in this bed right now before I get up and drag you here myself.”
He finally tears himself away from the bassinet and climbs in next to me.
It’s a tight squeeze, these hospital beds aren’t built for two people, but we make it work.
His arm slides under my head and we both turn toward the bassinet so we can see her, this tiny perfect person we somehow made together.
“She’s really here.” He says it quietly, like he still can’t believe it.
“She’s really here.” I find his hand under the blanket and lace my fingers through his.
We just lie there for a while, watching her chest rise and fall, listening to the soft little sounds she makes in her sleep. My whole body aches and I’m more tired than I’ve ever been in my life, but I don’t want to close my eyes. I don’t want to miss a single second of this.
“So what are we calling her?” Wilson asks it casually, but I can tell he’s been waiting to ask since the moment she was born.
“I was thinking Isla.” I say it out loud for the first time, testing how it sounds in the quiet room. “Isla Willow Carter.”
“Isla.” He repeats it slowly, turning it over. “Like the island?”
“Like the island. Our place. The place we always come back to.” I squeeze his hand. “And Willow because it sounds like Wilson. So she always has a piece of her dad with her, wherever she goes.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long time. When I look up at him his eyes are wet again and his jaw is tight like he’s trying to hold it together.
“Izzy, that’s…” He stops and swallows hard. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.” I reach up and touch his face. “Just stay here with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” He turns his head and kisses my palm. “I’m staying right here, with you and Isla, for as long as you’ll have me.”
“Forever sounds good.” I settle back against him and close my eyes.
“Forever it is then.” He pulls me closer and presses a kiss to my hair.
Outside the window Brooklyn is still doing its thing, loud and bright and alive even at this hour.
The same city where I met him in that coffee shop when I was crying over a failed exam, where we got married on a rooftop with eleven people and cheap champagne, where everything fell apart and somehow came back together again.
But I’m not thinking about any of that right now.
Right now there’s just this room, this bed, this man with his arm around me, and our daughter sleeping three feet away making tiny snuffling sounds that might be the best thing I’ve ever heard.
That’s enough. That’s more than enough.
That’s everything.
THE END