Page 143 of What if It's Us

But there’s nothing I can do.

I’m just their helpless father.

God, I’m no better than my own father was with me.

Helpless in the face of tragedy.

The nurse is calm and patient. Much more so than I could ever be. She wraps my son like he’s a ghost, then gently, almost scientifically, does this silly trick where she tickles his bare foot along the arch, so precise it almost looks choreographed.

He doesn’t respond.

She flips him belly-down and rubs his back hard, up and down, knuckles digging into his skin. He’s still limp, blue as the color of the hockey jersey I wear almost daily. Blue as the ribbon Marlee uses when she braids her hair, blue as his mother’s sparkling eyes on any given day, blue as the goddamn sky the day I realized I loved her.

The air is sucked out of the OR.

Time grinds.

I don't even blink. My eyes start to burn and water but I won't look away. I refuse to look away. Marlee's barely breathing. Every other noise fades: no beeps, no clatter, not even the sound of my own heart. Everything is empty, waiting.

I don't know who starts crying first. Maybe it's me, maybe it's Marlee, maybe it's the surgeon, but it doesn't matter because suddenly, after endless seconds, my son hacks out a wet, angry sound like he’s pissed off at the world. He shrieks like someone’s stolen his birthright. Enough for every molecule of blood in my body to buzz with relief, so bright and searing it’s almost painful.

“There we go.” The life-saving nurse beams. “Baby C, 3:24 P.M.”

The time of his birth lands on my chest like the hand of God.

Fuck, I could hug that woman a thousand times over.

I can’t even look at Marlee at first. I can’t handle how much of my own terror and relief will be reflected in her face. But when I do, she’s half-conscious. Drained to the bottom of her physical battery, but she turns and manages to smile. It’s tiny and wiped out and also the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

I want to frame it.

I want to tattoo it inside my eyelids so I never lose the vision.

“You did it, Ledge,” she whispers. “You did it.”

I almost say, ‘No, Mar, you did it. You did all of this.’ But I can’t get the words to line up. I’m sobbing, and my face mask is soaked through, and I don’t even fucking care. I just stare at her and try to learn the moment by heart. Her luminous, battered face, her eyes, wet as mine, the slow, stunned grin that’s both apology and victory. It will be my favorite photo forever, even if it’s only ever printed in the darkroom of my memory.

I think I say, "I love you." I think I say, "Never scare me like that again." I think I say, "You're my whole life." But we're both sobbing and the machines are beep-singing like a chorus of cartoon birds. I want to tell her she’s done all the hard things and that I’ll take it from here in order to ease her burdens but all the words jam up behind my teeth. So instead, I grip her hand so damn tight, it’s a miracle her bones don’t turn to powder.

The next hour is a blur of machines and measurements: Apgar scores, oxygen lines, the pediatric team speaking to each other in a language made of numbers and abbreviations that means nothing to anyone who hasn’t lived in a hospital since their first breath. I want to hold them but am too scared to ask. I want to hold Marlee more, but I can’t. At some point the anesthesiologist wipes her brow and a nurse wheels the smallest of the three, our son, over to Marlee and me so we can see him before he’s whisked to the NICU with his siblings.

Damn, he’s so tiny.

He’s beautiful.

I want to ask if he’ll make it, some primal cavern in my chest needing the confirmation, but I don't. I keep my fears to myself because this nurse has a smile on her face and that smile tells me all the things I need to know for now. All my hope is in the way she cradled him in the crook of her elbow when she had him in her arms, and in how she keeps double-and triple-checking his stats, quiet but relentless.

His tiny eyes pop open and he looks up at me, confused, as if to say, "This is it? This is the world?" And all I can do is stare at him in absolute fucking wonder.

My son.

My hero.

My world.

His eyes fall closed under the brightness of the lights in the room, but his face is expressive, and I swear to god he raises his brow just an inch, like he’s skeptical, like he’s not sure if he trusts me yet. The weirdest pride floods my chest.

Yep.

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