She’s perfect in every way. Her face is still red, and she looks like she’s been screaming, but her eyes are wide open and gray, and she has little tufts of blond hair from her mom. I lean in to plant a gentle kiss on her soft baby cheek, and she feels like a complete and absolute miracle, and already I can feel—deep in my bones and my cells—that sense that she’s mine. And I don’t know where it comes from, how you can go from never having met someone to loving them in the blink of eye, but here it is. It’s happened to me.

I love her. “I love you, little girl,” I say, the first words she hears from her dad. “And your mom does, too.”

When I glance up, with a tear streaking down my cheek, the nurse is still here, a grave look etched on her sturdy features.

And I know too—in the blink of an eye—that something’s wrong with Harley.

“How is my wife?” The question tastes like stones in my mouth.

“It was a very rough delivery. Her liver nearly ruptured, and she’s lost a lot of blood, and she’ll likely need a transfusion.”

“Do you . . . do you need some?” I hold out an arm, as if she’s going to stick a needle in me and take whatever she needs for Harley.

She flashes a brief, but kind smile. “We have some.” Then she sighs. “But I want to let you know she had a seizure during the delivery.”

I stumble against the wall, clutching the baby tight as my back hits the bricks, and I sink to the floor.

“A seizure?”

The nurse bends down. “It happens with HELLP,” she says trying to reassure me, but there is nothing reassuring about a seizure. “The doctors are working on her now. They’ve dealt with this before. She’s in good hands.”

“Is she going to be okay? Is she going to live?” I choke out.

“We’re doing everything we can.”

But they don’t know if everything is enough. How can anyone know? Nobody can. One minute you are here, the next minute, gone.

One moment you are unborn; the next you are loved.

Life is strong, and life is fragile. It is beauty, and it is pain. I have both, so unbearably close to each other right now that it feels like a cruel game that some wicked master puppeteer is orchestrating.

Not once, not even in the overactive far corners of my mind, did it occur to me that I could lose Harley. I only ever believed I could lose a baby. That’s all I ever worried about. That was the fear I had to face every day, the fear I had to learn to live with every second. But never, in all those moments of staring that fear in the face, of walking past it and through it and by it and over it, did it ever dawn on me that I could have my child safely in this world, healthy and whole, and with a strong beating heart, all while Harley lies bleeding out, unconscious on a hospital table somewhere nearby, and I am helpless to do anything.

But click.

The nurse takes the baby back to the nursery for monitoring, and I pace the halls, hunting out more info. I can’t stop looking at site after site, and I don’t know why I’m doing this, sticking my finger in the fire and letting it burn. I can’t turn away, even when I start watching a video on my phone of a young father who lost his wife to HELLP. When his voice starts to break, and he lowers his head to his baby, I hit stop.

I can’t take it anymore. I can’t watch another second. I turn off my phone, and jam it into my pocket. Now my head is cluttered with facts that have done nothing to change my reality, or Harley’s. I return to the nursery to hold my child.

I cling to my daughter, clutching her in my arms so tightly. She is my anchor. She is rooting me to this earth. Without her, I’m sure I’d fall off the planet, tumble into the void of space. I reach for her hand, small and precious, and she grasps my finger instinctively, and we hold onto each other.

One half of me is singing; the other is caving in. I am empty without Harley, and I am flooded with happiness for the six pounds of joy in my arms.

Soon, Debbie and Robert find us, and sit with the baby and me. Tears flow down their cheeks too, for the new life, for their granddaughter, for everything that is lost and found at the same terrible time.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Trey

The minutes tick by, knitting themselves into an hour, and the nurse threads her way over to me in the far corner of the nursery. She tells me two things.

One, Harley’s having a blood transfusion now.

Two, she also thinks I ought to feed the baby.

Life hangs in the balance, and yet daily needs must be met.

The nurse gives me a bottle, and I feed my hungry child for the first time, and the four of us wait and wait and wait. Only the baby is immune. She sucks down the formula as if it’s all that matters in the world, her tiny lips curved around the bottle tip.

I watch her the whole time, the way she’s so focused on one thing only—eating. She’s determined to fill her belly. When she finishes, she pushes the bottle away with her lips, closing her mouth, content with the meal inside her. And still, there is no Harley. No news. No reports. Only other doctors, other nurses, other parents roaming the nursery.

Then, someone clears her throat. The doctor is in the house, but not the baby-faced guy. This doctor is older, with lines on her face, and dark blue eyes that have seen more than I want to know. I stand up, and give the baby to the nurse. My hands are shaky, and my legs are jelly. I follow the doctor into the hall, Debbie and Robert close behind.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m Doctor Strickland, the surgeon who took care of your wife.”

Took care.

That’s good, right?

I try to form words, to ask how she is, to ask if she is. But the doctor is faster than me. “She’s out of surgery, and in recovery.”

Recovery.

With that one beautiful word, relief flows fast in my veins. Doctor Strickland keeps talking, saying transfusion, and lost a lot of blood, and still not awake, but all I can think is she’s alive.

I want to grab the doctor and kiss her. I want to fall to the ground and hug her knees, and cry thank you over and over. But most of all, I want to see Harley.

“When can I see her?” I say, the words practically blasting out of my mouth.

“Not yet. She’s in the recovery room. She’s not awake. Probably not for another hour.”

The next hour is the longest of my life, and I wish I had asked for an extra dose of patience for Christmas because it would have really come in handy as I watch the minute hand move so slowly. But the nursery is a safe haven, and my daughter falls asleep on my chest, warming me with her tiny little body. Somehow, that patch of heat against my heart makes me feel as if everything is going to be okay.

Okay.

I have officially decided that’s the only word I ever want to hear anymore.

Okay.

“She’s going to be fine,” Debbie says, squeezing my shoulder. “And you two are going to get to work soon on naming this sweet little girl.”

“Yeah,” Robert says, chiming in from our little huddle in the corner. “Why don’t you have a name yet? We want to start cooing at Sally, Jane, Mandy, or something, instead of saying Hi Baby all the time.”

“Not Sally, Jane or Mandy. She’s definitely not a Sally, Jane or Mandy,” I say as I stroke her cheek softly. She releases a small, contented sigh as she sleeps so peacefully in my arms.

“Well, she needs to be something soon,” Robert says, and it feels so good to be having this conversation about names instead of about blood.

Two oxygen tubes snake out of her nostrils, coiling around the bed, and slinking up into a machine that sends breath to her nose. Her arms are covered with bandages, the crook of her elbow has been target practice for needles, and an IV drip pumps into her body. Her gown has slipped down her shoulder, her collarbone exposed, the arrow from her heart tattoo peeking out. A yellow blanket covers her, up to her chest that’s rising and falling slowly.