He said: get dressed and come to St. Joseph’s.
His voice was different.
Not urgent in the emergency sense.
Something else.
Something I could not immediately name.
I said: what happened? Is someone hurt?
He said: no.
He said: just please come.
I got dressed.
I drove to the hospital.
Michael was waiting near the maternity ward.
He was holding something.
A bundle.
Small.
Wrapped.
I stopped walking.
I stood in the corridor of the maternity ward at two-thirty in the morning and I looked at my husband holding a newborn.
I walked to him.
I said: Michael. Whose baby is that?
He swallowed.
He walked to me.
He placed the baby in my arms.
He said: she’s ours.
I looked at the baby.
She was very small.
Dark hair, the specific dark hair of newborns that sometimes changes and sometimes stays.
Her fingers were the specific perfection of newborn fingers, the size of them, the detail.
She was sleeping.
She breathed in the particular way of very new babies, the rhythmic small breath of someone who has just arrived at the world.
Michael told me the hospital had called him because a placement was needed immediately.
