The Clinic Swore the Baby Was His, So He Stayed When It Wasn't novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Bridge Is Up

She was born at ten past six on Friday morning, the thirtieth of July.

The room at St. Luke's had its window open to the hill.

I heard her before I saw her.

It was a thin furious cry, and then the midwife laid her on my chest, wet and slippery and warm.

I could not speak.

Mats was on the stool at the head of the bed, where he had been for nine hours.

He had held my hand through every one of them, and counted when I asked, and said nothing when I did not ask.

His shirt was wet with my sweat and his own tears.

"Look," I said.

She had a dark wet head of hair and a crumpled red face, and she opened her eyes.

They were dark brown, nearly black, and wide, and they went straight to the light.

I knew whose eyes they were.

They were a stranger's, a fiddle player's, a nurse's, whom I would never meet.

I had picked them out of a catalog over eleven months, and they were perfect.

She put out one hand.

It had long thin fingers, much longer than mine, and they opened and closed on the air.

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