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“Wow.” She smiled, but then it faded. “He shouldn’t be alone, Sig.”
“I don’t want to leave you yet.”
“Do I look like I’m going anywhere?”
I smiled, squeezing her hand. “I’ll go check on him and come right back.”
She frowned.
“What’s wrong, Abby?”
“I want to see him, too.”
“I’ll bring him straight to you, if they let me.”
“Please,” she begged. “I want to meet him.”
“Alright.” I bent to kiss her.
I stepped out and addressed one of the nurses. “Can someone direct me to the NICU? I want to check on my son.”
“Of course.” As she led the way, she said, “We’ll be moving Abby to room two-ten shortly, so she likely won’t be in recovery when you return.”
“Two-ten,” I repeated, burning that into my memory. “Okay. Thank you.”
“This is Baby Knickerbocker’s father,” she told the woman at the desk as we entered the neonatal intensive care unit.
I realized that because of the emergency, we hadn’t had a chance to explain the surrogacy. They’d assumed Abby was the baby’s mother and assigned him her last name.
“He was just moved to the newborn nursery.” The woman smiled.
“Why was he moved?” I asked.
“He graduated out of this joint. Didn’t need to be here.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Follow me,” the nurse said as we exited.
We walked down a different hallway into another room with dim lighting. A nurse tended to a baby in the corner, who I assumed was my son. We walked over, and he lay in what looked like a clear plastic bassinet on wheels.
“Baby Knickerbocker’s father is here,” the nurse again announced.
The woman who’d been taking care of him smiled. “Let me get you a bracelet, so you don’t have any trouble taking him. Hang on.” She printed a label before sticking it on a white plastic strip. She then wrapped it around my wrist. I looked down at the bracelet, which had a numeric code, his birth date, and Abby Knickerbocker written on it.
My son was swaddled in a white cotton blanket with blue and pink stripes. She carefully lifted him out of the bassinet and handed him to me. He felt warm. Though I’d held him right after he was born, this felt like the first time. I was fully present. I hadn’t been able to appreciate the magnitude of meeting him before.
“Hi,” I whispered.
He made a sound, seeming to respond to my voice. He looked at me for a brief moment before his eyes began wandering around the room.
“Look at you. You’re perfect.” I brushed my thumb along his tiny fingers, marveling at his long fingernails. “I have to apologize for a couple of reasons,” I told him. “One, becauseI’mthe dad you’re stuck with. And also because I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ll be bothering your uncle Leo and aunt Felicity a lot for help and advice. We’re going to have to figure this out together, you and me. But I promise to try my best.”
My heart filled with a kind of love I’d never experienced before. It made me feel as though every second of my life until now had been meant to get me to this moment. “I also have to apologize because your mum, Britney, isn’t here. It wasn’t my idea to bring you into this world without her. But I’m damn glad I didn’t stop you from being here. Now that you’re with us, I can’t imagine anything else. Because look at you. You were meant to be, weren’t you? They wereallright—everyone who ever told me I wouldn’t be able to let you go once I saw you. I can’t imagine handing you off to anyone, not even your grandparents.” I brought his little face to mine and kissed his tiny nose. “So…unfortunately for you, you’re stuck with me.” I smiled. “I’m Sigmund, by the way. But you can call me Dad. Or That Prick. Call me whatever you want. It won’t change the fact that I’m your father.”
He whimpered.
“There’s a beautiful woman who gave birth to you. She wants to meet you. Should we go to her? I think we should. Perhaps that’s why you’re looking around so much. You’re wondering where she is, that warm body you’ve been camped out in all this time, eh? Wait until you see her. She’s a bombshell.”
