I’m not holding Christian’s hand anymore.
I open my eyes.
Tucker’s barn.
Gack, maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t succeed in bringing Christian. I whip out my phone.
Sorry, I text him. Want to try again? I can come back.
It’s okay. I’ll get home the traditional way. See you in a couple days. Say hello to Angela for me.
I look up to see Tucker staring at me from the hayloft.
I’m gone before he has time to form a greeting.
I find Angela in the recovery part of the maternity wing, dressed in a faded blue-and-white hospital gown, staring out the window. The baby’s a few feet away in a plastic bassinet on wheels, wrapped up tightly in a blanket so he looks like a little burrito, sleeping, a tiny blue cap on his head that doesn’t quite cover his thatch of thick, black hair. WEBSTER says a printed card at the end of the tub. His face is all purple and splotchy, swollen around the eyes. He kind of looks like he was just in a boxing match. And lost.
“He’s adorable,” I whisper to Angela. “Why didn’t you text me?”
“I was busy,” she says, and there’s a hollow quality to her voice that makes my heart sink, a terrible dullness in her eyes.
I sit down in a chair near the bed. “So it was pretty bad, huh?”
She shrugs, using only one shoulder like she’s too tired to use both. “It was humiliating, and terrifying, and it hurt. But I survived. They say I can go home tomorrow. We, I mean. We can go home.”
She stares out the window again. It’s a nice day, blue sky, fluffy clouds moving past the glass.
“Good,” I say, for lack of something better. “Do you need me to—”
“My mom can handle it. She’s out getting more supplies right now. She’ll help me.”
“I’ll help you too,” I say. “Seriously. I’m all done with finals. I have almost two weeks off.” I lean forward and put my hand on hers.
She’s feeling such despair that it makes my chest hurt.
“I don’t know anything about babies, but I’m here for you, okay?” I gasp against the pain.
She pulls her hand from under mine, but her eyes soften slightly. “Thanks, C.”
“I don’t think I ever told you how much I admire you for how you’re handling all this,” I say.
She scoffs. “Which part? For the way I lied to everybody about who the father is? For the way I put all my hopes in a silly vision? For how stupid I was to let it happen in the first place?”
“Um, none of the above. For going through with this, even though you’re scared.”
Her lips tighten. “I couldn’t give him away to some stranger, not ever knowing what would happen to him.”
“That’s brave, Ange.”
She shakes her head. Maybe not, she says in my head. Maybe he would have been safer away from me. With a human family. Maybe he would have been better off. Maybe I’m being selfish.
The baby starts making a grunting noise, twisting in the blanket he’s wrapped in. He opens his eyes, golden like hers, and starts to cry, a thin, reedy-sounding wail. The sound sends a prickle down my spine. I jump to my feet.
“Do you want me to hand him to you?” I ask.
She hesitates. “I’ll page the nurse.” She presses a button on the frame of her bed.
I go to the side of the bassinet and look in. He’s so tiny. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so small and new. I’ve never even held a baby before, other than Jeffrey, I guess, and I don’t remember that.
“I don’t want to break him,” I confess to Angela.
“Me either,” she says.
But we’re saved by Anna, who comes into the room a few steps ahead of the nurse. She sweeps right in and lifts the baby, cooing, holds him to her shoulder, but he doesn’t stop crying. She checks his diaper, which is apparently fine. This is clearly a relief to Angela.
“He’s hungry,” Anna reports.
Angela looks tense. “Again? He just fed like an hour ago.”
“Do you want to try to nurse him again?” the nurse asks.
“I guess.” She holds out her arms, and Anna gives her the baby; then Angela looks at me like, Sorry to be rude, but I’m about to flash my br**sts here.
“I’ll be … out,” I say, and duck into the hall. I head down to the gift shop and buy her some yellow flowers in a vase that’s in the shape of a baby boot. I’m hoping she’ll think it’s funny.
When I get back, Anna’s holding the baby again, and he’s quieted down. Angela is lying with her eyes closed, her breathing shallow. I set the flowers on the windowsill and gesture to Anna that I’m going.
She nods, but walks with me to the door.
“Do you want to hold him?” she whispers.
“No, I’m good to look and not touch. He’s beautiful, though,” I say, even though that might be a stretch.
She gazes down at him with adoration in her eyes.
“He’s a miracle,” she says. Her eyes flicker over to Angela. “She is frightened now. It was the same for me. But she’ll understand, soon enough. That he’s a gift. She’ll realize that she’s been blessed.”
The baby yawns, and she smiles, readjusts the blue cap on his head. I inch toward the door.
“Thank you for being here,” she says then. “You’re a good friend. Angela is lucky to have someone like you.”
“Tell her to call me,” I say, unnerved as usual by the steady intensity of Anna’s dark, humorless eyes on me. “I’ll be around.”
When I get in the elevator, I hold the door for a couple with a baby dressed in what looks like a pink jumpsuit with ladybugs embroidered on the feet. They’re both—the mother in a wheelchair with the baby in her arms, the father standing behind her—focused entirely on the baby, their bodies turned toward her, their eyes not leaving her tiny face.
“We’re taking her home,” the father tells me, proudly.
“Congratulations. That’s epic.”
The orderly who’s pushing the wheelchair looks at me all suspicious. The mother doesn’t even seem to hear me. The baby, for her part, thinks that the elevator is the most fascinating thing, like, ever. She decides the appropriate reaction to this wonderful magic box that takes you somewhere different from the place that you started in is a sneeze.
A sneeze.
You’d think she’d recited the alphabet, for all the excitement this action stirs up in her parents.