Of both of them.
“Look at her,” I breathed in near-vicious awe as I placed Baby Girl on Jolene’s bare chest. “Look how well you’ve done.”
Jolene stared at her daughter with mute adoration. Then, she turned those shining eyes onto me.
“You’re smiling,” she whispered.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. I’ve never seen you smile before.”
My cheeks ached. Like I had not used those muscles in cycles.
But I could not stand about grinning like a fool. There was work yet to be done. I returned to my earlier place, working with the robot to remove the placenta, cut the umbilical cord, and then carefully, skillfully, close all the incisions.
I made sure every suture was the best suture I’d ever done.
Because my wife deserved nothing less.
26
JOLENE
Iwoke with a start, panicking, believing I’d fallen asleep with Baby Girl in the bed. I’d been breastfeeding her after Zohro closed me up – or trying to, anyway – and I’d been so tired. Zohro had dimmed the lights, and…
I couldn’t remember anything else.
I lurched in the bed, a second, smaller cot that Zohro had rolled out of storage for me after the surgery so that the other could be cleaned.
She wasn’t there.
My throat closed up with fear. I opened my mouth, tried to shout-
And then I saw her. Saw them both.
Zohro was seated on the medical table – now cleaned, no speck of the surgery left upon it. He had no sign of the surgery left on him, either, stripped of his gloves and his garb.
And in his arms, he held my baby. Against his body. Skin to skin.
He was smiling.Again. It wasn’t as big and broad as the one I’d glimpsed immediately after Baby Girl’s delivery. It was a softer version. Quieter. An expression that made no demands,but simply lingered, a wordless promise of tenderness in the dark.
He’d never looked at me that way. And I couldn’t even find it in me to be jealous. I was too damn happy that Baby Girl not only had a mother who loved her…
But might even have a father, too.
“That’s right,” Zohro murmured, his eyes never leaving her face. I realized then that Baby Girl was holding tightly onto one of Zohro’s big fingers. “That is the distal phalange. Yes! I see that you’ve already remembered that term from earlier, you clever girl. You’ll know the name of every bone in both your body and mine before you reach the age of three cycles, you mark my words.”
I’d never seen this side of Zohro. This easy, happy version. For once, there was no urgency in him. No scowl. No impatience. It was like he had nothing he’d rather be doing right now. Nowhere he’d rather be.
That was one way that Baby Girl would not be like me.
She’d never know what it was like to not have people entirely devoted to you. To put you first. Always.
“I think you might even be more intelligent than me!” Zohro was saying now, in an enthusiastic, cooing tone I’d never heard from him before. “But please, do not tell anyone. It would ruin my reputation, and I must cling to what little of that I have left.”
I snorted at that. The first Zohro joke I’d ever heard. Maybe even the first joke he’d ever told.
To a baby who couldn’t even understand the words. Who had no idea how momentous this was.
