Nicolette
When I came to, I felt faint. The pain was back – I hurt everywhere – but the horrible pressure was gone. My stomach was swollen and painful, and I felt like I’d torn apart between my legs. But the overwhelming pressure had finally disappeared.
Dr. Collins smiled at me. “You have a very eager family waiting to see you,” he said. “Would you like to meet your daughter?”
My eyes filled with tears as Dr. Collins helped me into a wheelchair. “I’m taking you into a recovery room,” he said. “Charlie is there, along with your daughter.”
“I had a baby girl?” The tears began to spill down my cheeks and I cried openly, burying my face in my hands. “All of the ultrasounds said she would be a boy!”
Dr. Collins laughed. “They’re wrong all the time,” he said. “Trust me. You’re happy?”
I was filled with such strong emotion that I could barely nod. “I’ve never been so happy in my whole life.”
I wasn’t prepared for the sight of Charlie holding our baby as Dr. Collins wheeled me into a cheery room with windows and a white hospital bed. My tears turned into choked sobs.
“Hey, babe,” Charlie said softly. “You wanna meet our daughter?”
The first moments holding my baby were like something from a fairytale. She was small – I’d have thought she was bigger – but her light blue eyes were shaped exactly like my brown ones, and she already had a thick head of brown hair.
“Charlie is the father,” I said softly to Dr. Collins and the nurses crowded inside the small room. “He’s the only father this little girl will ever know.”
One nurse – I didn’t recognize her, but she was a pretty, pale redhead – started clapping and visibly teared up. The other nurses clapped, too, and somehow that made me start crying all the harder.
The baby looked up at me with wide, innocent eyes.
“What should we name her?” Charlie limped over to me. He was using a cane, and I could tell it hurt him to rest any weight on his leg. “Have you thought of anything?”
I swallowed. “What do you think about Isabelle?”
“Isabelle it is.”
# # #
The next couple of days were hard. The doctors weren’t letting me go immediately – I’d had a shot of Pitocin after labor, supposedly to help my uterus adapt and begin to stretch back to normal. The doctor had told me that hemorrhaging was extremely uncommon, and unlikely to happen again if I ever had any more children. He said it was probably brought on by the stress of the situation. Still, I worried I’d done something to hurt my daughter.
I hated knowing that the hours before she’d come into the world had been such traumatizing ones. I wanted to make it up to her as soon as possible.
Charlie told me all about Jack, including his real name. I hadn’t even known that – when he told me, I’d burst out laughing. Somehow, imagining my evil ex-boyfriend as ‘Johnson’ lessened the sting of his years of abuse. He was currently awaiting trial in a county jail and, because of the abuse allegations, he was being held without bail.
“The cops told me he could be locked up for ten or fifteen years,” Charlie told me one afternoon as he was visiting me. We weren’t allowed to stay in the same room – I was still in the ICU – and I looked forward to our visits almost as much as I looked forward to holding my daughter. She was still being kept under close supervision. Hospitals didn’t take premature births lightly, and while I knew I should have been grateful that Isabelle was safe, I was still annoyed I couldn’t hold her.
“You really think he’ll get convicted?” I asked softly.
Charlie snorted. “If only for breaking my leg in two places,” he said. “And they searched the car that Jack drove in from Cali. Full of drugs and guns with the serial numbers rubbed off.” He rolled his eyes. “He was practically asking for jail time with that kind of a stash.”
“Charlie, what are we going to do now?” I asked softly. “What are you going to do for work? Are we going to stay here?”
Charlie nodded. “I think that would be for the best,” he said. “Unless you’d rather move. Is there somewhere else you’d rather live?”
I licked my lips. “I don’t feel ready to go back to California, yet,” I confessed. “But I’m not sure I want Isabelle to grow up around here. I want her to have friends her age, you know? This town is so old.” I wrinkled my nose.
Charlie laughed. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “We’ll think about that later, okay?” As he leaned in and kissed me on the lips, I felt a warm surge of tingling in my nipples. Charlie’s tongue slipped between my lips and I moaned softly as he reached closer and stroked my back through my thin gown.
“I can’t wait to be with you again,” I confessed shyly as he pulled away. “I feel like we don’t get any privacy around here.”
Charlie growled. “You’re gonna be so sore,” he whispered throatily in my ear. “I’ll have to carry you around; you won’t be able to walk.”
I giggled and blushed. “That’s no way to speak to the mother of your child,” I said primly.
Charlie pulled away. “I was thinking about patching into a local club,” he said. “But if that bothers you, I won’t do it.” He held up his hands in the air and I stared at his wrist. It was still in the soft cast, but he was already looking better than he had before. “If it bothers you, just say the word.”
I bit my lip. “I’m not sure,” I said softly. “I don’t know that I’m ready for that kind of life again, Charlie. What kind of stuff would you be involved with?”
Charlie ran a hand through his close-cropped blonde hair. I watched as his arm flexed and bulged, the strong muscle showing under his wealth of tattoos. “Nothing illegal,” he said softly. “No drugs, no guns. Probably some security work, if you’re all right with that. And I’d keep doing mechanic handiwork, if I can get it. But I want more security than just odd jobs. We have Isabelle now. We gotta make sure our daughter is taken care of.”
I nodded. “I still have a couple weeks off work,” I said. “But I’ll go back to Target as soon as I can.”
Charlie pulled me into his arms and kissed the top of my head. “If I had my way, you’d never have to work again,” he said. He sighed. “We’ll get there soon, though. I promise.”
My throat swelled up with emotion and I buried my face in Charlie’s neck so he couldn’t see that I’d begun to cry. I couldn’t believe it – I felt so lucky and happy for the first time in so long.
“Did I tell you, before I had Isabelle, I had a dream about her?” I looked into Charlie’s eyes.
He reached over and wiped one of my tears away. “No, you didn’t.”
I bit my lip. “She had your eyes,” I said softly. “They were bright green.”
Charlie grinned and puffed up his chest. “Well, makes sense,” he said suavely. “After all, I am her father.”