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She was gray in color.
Fucking gray.
All completely normal, I was continuously reassured of by the nurses and doctors still gathered around her, monitoring her vitals, as I remained by her side. My attention flicked between the girl asleep on the bed and the baby that had been returned to me with his mother.
Baby boy Molloy, date of birth: 30/08/05, time of birth: 02:22 was scribbled on his little wrist and ankle name tags, but I didn’t think he needed any of that to be recognized.
He was every inch his mother’s son with clumps of bloodied blond curls matted to his little head and a pair of lungs he’d clearly inherited from his mother’s side.
Even though Molloy lost a lot of blood after delivery, the team had managed to stop the postpartum hemorrhaging without having to operate, but the thought of how they managed to do that sent a shiver down my spine. I was grateful that they knocked her out, because nobody deserved to be put through that kind of physical manhandling.
Torture.
That was the only word for it. For what I’d witnessed them do to save her and the baby’s lives.
“You’re amazing,” I whispered, leaning over the bed as I pressed a kiss to her clammy forehead. “You’re a soldier, baby.”
Repressing the urge to pull her sleeping frame into my arms and cling to her, I continued to hover anxiously. With our son in my arms, I needed her to wake up and stay asleep all in one breath.
“I’m so proud of you,” I whispered, using one hand to adjust the blanket draped over her limp body. “You’re a queen.”
“We’ll be moving her back up to the labor ward soon,” one of the nurses told me as he adjusted the flow of whatever the hell they had dripping from a bag into the IV line in her arm. “She’s going to be in and out of it for a few more hours,” he added. “All normal, so nothing to worry about. Her body has been through it, and she needs time to rest and recover. She has a catheter in, so no need to wake her, Dad.”
“She’ll be okay, though, won’t she?”
“Absolutely,” he reassured me, smiling down at the baby in my arms. “This little guy has one heck of a fighter for a mammy.”
______________________
Back on the ward early Tuesday morning, with Molloy sleeping off the drugs they gave her, I sat at her bedside, cradling the tiny bundle in my arms.
For the second time in my life, I was a father.
For the first time in my life, I had a child of my own.
It felt different now than it had with Ollie, Sean, and Tadhg.
It felt deeper.
There was something inside of me, an invisible cord of sorts, that went from my chest into his. I felt it every time I laid eyes on him.
Feeling his tiny body pressed to my chest when I fed him was the reality check I needed. I was responsible for this tiny person and his sleeping mother.
Anxiety thrummed through my body as my attention flicked between my son and his mother.
The two people that created me had destroyed each other.
My father killed my mother.
He tried to take the whole fucking lot of us out with him.
And now we were here.
Me and Aoife and this tiny little baby.
He was depending on me just the same as I had depended on my old man.
I just kept staring at our son, wondering how he could do it to us, when every instinct inside of me was demanding I protect the infant in my arms and the girl who bore him.
