Page 89 of Omega’s Fold

Our daughter comes out into the world at eight minutes past eight on the morning of the seventeenth of March. The first sound she makes is a wet outraged shout, half-startled, full-lunged, and the second is a louder one, and Sarah lifts her up onto my chest before I have managed to take a breath.

She is warm.

That is the thing nobody told me. She is warm and heavier than I expected.

“Hello,” I say. It comes out broken.

“Hello,” Julian says, the same way, beside me. His hand is on the back of her small head, splayed wide, his palm covering most of it.

“She has hair.”

Sarah does the cord. I do not watch. Julian does. He cuts it where she tells him to cut it, then he hands the scissors back to her, and he comes back to my head and puts his forehead against my temple.

Our daughter makes a small outraged sound.

“She is doing well,” Sarah says. “Strong lungs. Good color. Apgar in a minute. You did beautifully, Dad.”

I have her on my chest. Julian has his hand on her head. Her small fingers are in a tight fist against my collarbone. She is breathing.

“Have you decided on a name?” Sarah says.

I look at Julian.

We talked about it for two months. We have a name. We have not, until now, told anyone.

“Margaret,” Julian says. “Maggie. After Wyatt’s mother.”

Sarah’s smile widens. She has heard the name before. She is from Parish Ridge after all.

“Maggie. Lovely. Welcome, Maggie.”

I cannot speak.

Julian’s hand moves to my hair. His other hand stays on Maggie’s small wet back. He has his forehead against my temple still, and his breath is coming uneven against my cheek, and he is, very quietly, saying her name into my skin.

“Maggie. Maggie. Hi, Maggie.”

She does not reply. She is busy. She has found my collarbone with her mouth and she is making a small persistent rooting sound against it that I think is the beginning of hunger.

“I am your dad,” I tell her, very quietly. “And the man who is crying on my temple is your dad too. Both of us.”

She makes the sound again.

Sarah says, “Right. Let’s get her latched. Wyatt, love, can you turn on your side a little? Julian, support his shoulder. There. Good. There she goes.”

She goes.

Maggie is good at it. They told me babies sometimes are not, but she is. She finds the place she wants and she begins feeding.

I find myself crying.

Quietly. With my face turned to Julian’s shoulder. He puts his arm around me and around her. Sarah, very quietly, leaves the room and pulls the door to behind her and gives us the privacy.

We are like that for a long time.

The sun comes properly up over the ridge. The window is full of yellow morning light and it lies across the foot of the bed in a long warm bar.

Maggie has fallen asleep on me with her mouth still on my collarbone. Her small fist is tight on the cotton of the gown. Her hair is dark and damp and there is more of it than I had let myself imagine, and her eyelashes are long and dark on her small flushed cheeks, and she is breathing through her nose with the small shallow breaths of a newborn.