Chapter 22: Born Buckley

Imogen's POV

Labor took eleven hours, and for ten of them I told Brogan I hated him.

"That's fair," he said, every time.

He stood by the head of the bed at Mercy North with his hand in mine, and I squeezed it until his fingers went white.

Hattie had traded three shifts to be there.

She stood at the foot of the bed in borrowed scrubs, with her sleeves pushed up and a very loud opinion about everything.

"You're doing great," she said. "You look terrible, but you're doing great."

"Hattie," I said through my teeth. "I will kill you."

"Save it, I'm the one with the scissors."

The doctor laughed, and Brogan's face went white and then red.

At ten past four in the morning the doctor said, "Imogen, now, one more," and I pushed with everything I had left.

Brogan said my name.

Hattie said, "Oh, oh, there she is."

Then the room was filled with a thin, angry cry.

They laid her on my chest, wet and red, with a dark fuzz of hair on her head.

She had Brogan's frown.

I knew it at once, and I started to cry.

"Look at her," I said. "Brogan. Look."

He could not speak.

He knelt by the bed with his forehead against mine and one finger held out, and she closed her whole fist around it.

"She has your frown," I said.

"She has your chin," Brogan said, in a cracked voice.

"She has my vote," said Hattie, from the foot of the bed. She was openly weeping into a surgical mask. "She's perfect. Nobody argue with me."

Nobody did.

My phone lit up on the tray beside the bed.

It was a photograph from Lydia, taken that morning in a hospital two floors up.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Divorced, Now Watch Me Rise from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.