Page 54 of The Golden Hour

“Thank you,” she whispers.

Dr. Farah nods before stepping out of the room. Honey’s eyes track her as she goes, knowing she’s going to bring Daisy to her. Her hands fidget in her lap, and she frowns at the soreness in her lower belly from the C-section incision.

It’s difficult to move, to sit up and back down, to even breathe.

Briefly, panic wells up in her chest.

How is she going to take care of her daughter if she can barely move?

She turns to others in the room. Her father only works part-time at the garage now, her mother is self-employed, and she knows Rob and Marlene will be eager to help. She has support in her family, but Daisy is her daughter and her responsibility.

There are going to be night feedings, bending over to pick her up to change her diaper, cradling her, rocking her. It is going to be very difficult while she recovers, but she knows that her parents and her in-laws will be there every step of the way.

That offers her some comfort.

Her eyes meet her husband’s pleading ones. Mason looks turned inside out, his hair sticking up in all directions, deep lines of stress in his face, and he is practically rocking back and forth in place with the usual energy that won’t let him sit still.

Honey looks at him and feels no hope, no joy, no excitement about going home and being a family.

This day was supposed to be one of the best days of her life, and it has been nothing short of a nightmare. She had this idea in her head, and despite her mother and Marlene and Fia and every other mother she encountered warning that her birth plan should be that both she and Daisy were safe, she still hoped to follow the plan she had written down in her journal.

Water breaking, heading to the hospital, getting an epidural, and safely delivering Daisy.

Not this.

Bitterly, she had hoped that since she had such a difficult pregnancy, maybe the universe would cut her some slack and give her an easy labor and delivery.

She comforts herself with the thought that Daisy is alive, breathing on her own, and safe. That’s all that matters to her; everything else can be figured out in time.

But her daughter is alive, her parents are here, her in-laws are on their way, and that’s good enough.

“Honey—”

She jumps slightly at the voice next to her. Mason stands there, his eyes red-rimmed, and his face so hopeful it makes her chest ache briefly. She looks at him for a long minute, her husband, the father of her daughter, and it sucks how a brief flash of happiness erupts in her chest when he speaks her name.

It’s like a dog begging for scraps, and then when it finally gets tossed a bit of stale bread, it makes a meal out of it. Her threshold for her husband’s attention has shrunk so much that even him saying her name has brought her joy.

And that thought just pisses her off.

She just carried his daughter for thirty-four weeks, alone and sick and tired and dizzy and throwing up nearly constantly. To the point where he was annoyed by the noise she was making, asked her to keep it down so he could get some precious sleep before going back to work the next day, and continued to ignore her.

To not answer her texts or phone calls.

To barely acknowledge her at all except when she handed him his lunch that she cooked with her nose plugged because he needed the fuel while he was working. He would press a quick kiss to her forehead or cheek, then run out the door to the hospital. His actual home.

She realizes that she was nothing more than a maid, a cook, and an incubator. Just someone waiting for him at home when the hospital finally spit him out. She was barely more than furniture to him.

So she looks at Mason, feels that happiness for a moment, and makes a reminder out of it.

He only actually saw you when you were dying.

Then she shoves it all the way down.

Deep.

And turns away from him.

“Don’t,” Honey says sharply, and she is surprised when she doesn’t feel the usual guilt rising inside of her, the guilt she feels the rare times she becomes short and snaps. She pushes through gritted teeth, “I don’t have anything for you. I just want to meet my daughter.”