Page 1 of Good Intentions, Vol. 2

Prologue

“It’s a boy,” the nurse yells, her smiling face turns back up to us, her eyes going from mine to Claire’s. “Congratulations, Mommy and Daddy.”

Daddy.

I look to Claire’s red, sweaty face. “I’m a daddy,” I whisper.

She doesn’t say anything just looks at me and gives me a small, tired smile.

Leaning down to her, I grip her hand harder and kiss her forehead. “Thank you, doll.” Straightening back up and cupping her face with my other, I take a second and just live in this moment with her. I have to swallow down the lump in my throat before I can finish what I need to say. “Thank you for giving me what I never dared to dream for, but what I wanted and needed to become the luckiest man on Earth.”

“Nick,” she whispers her tired eyes going soft.

“Here he is,” the cheerful voice comes from the opposite side of the bed.

I look up and am met with a tiny wail. It’s the most beautiful sound I have ever heard.

I try to peer and get a look at my son’s face but all I can see is a blue knit cap and pink forehead.

Seeing the nurse standing there, holding our son, she releases my hand and opens her arms to take him.

“Open up your nightie first, dear,” I wonder if the nurse has that smile that had not left her face even for a second since we came in, permanently attached to her face.

After Claire does as instructed, she takes a hold of our son, skin to skin, for the first time. “Hello, baby boy, hello.” She starts to coo momentarily between kissing his cheek.

She was so nervous, so scared of if she’ll be a good mother. Running around the apartment the last two months, trying to get everything prepared, checking that all the stuff on her list to do and buy were done and bought. And when I finally got her to slow down, telling her that all that worrying couldn’t be good for the baby, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “How am I going to be a mother? A good one, Nick? I’ve told you how my parents were. I only had nannies. The only time they gave me even the slightest attention was when I met some rich man.”

Just the thought of her parents made my stomach churn and the need to tear something apart rose within me. But I couldn’t demand her not to see them. And sure, they didn’t come often. Still, those rare times were too many in my opinion and only the fact that I didn’t want Claire to be left alone with them, made me stay in my seat and suffer through.

I hugged my wife, fighting my instincts to pack her up and take her somewhere where they couldn’t reach her, and whispered, “You’re going to be a great mom. Just the fact that you’re stressing and asking that question is indication enough of it.”

“Oh, you’re just perfect,” Claire’s watery voice brings me back to present. Before I get to know my son for the first time, I whisper in my beautiful wife’s ear, just like I did then, “I told you’re going to be great. Look at you, you’re doing just what he needs. You love him from the start. Everything else, doll. That’ll come naturally.”

She looks at me, her tears clinging to her lashes. I mouth, “I love you,” to her before I finally take a look.

From the moment my eyes land on that pink, slightly wrinkled, tiny face I know for a fact there’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do for him. There are no lengths I wouldn’t go for him. And there is nothing I wouldn’t endure for him.

“Ben,” his name falls from my lips like a prayer.

“Where’s my grandson?” Claire’s mom wails entering the hospital room. I’m incapable of tearing my eyes from Ben, so I only take hold of her hand, letting her know I’m here for her. That they couldn’t get to her.

“And my nephew,” her brother walks in on his mother’s heels.

Unfortunately, I still don’t look up from my boy. If I did, maybe I would see how Claire’s eyes darkened in sadness, or how she all but tried to fuse with the bed. Or how she looked up at me, seeking help, and for the first time, I failed her.