to a miracle. Something stirred within him as he watched the nurse lift the infant from the bassinet and hand her over to Joanna.
He was in the way, he thought. “Well, I’d better be going.” He began to edge his way out.
Suddenly, she didn’t want him to leave. Not yet. “Would you like to hold her?” Joanna asked.
Somehow, the baby looked far more fragile now than she had last night. And his hands were large and clumsy. “I already did.”
“I mean now that she’s not messy.” Joanna read his expression correctly. “She won’t break, you know. Not if you’re gentle.”
“I won’t slam dunk her,” he promised. The quip was meant to hide what was really going on inside him. There were emotions there that he wasn’t sure he understood or knew what to do with. Certainly none that he could label properly.
Very carefully, he slipped his hands under the baby’s back and neck, making the transfer. He unintentionally brushed his fingers against Joanna’s breasts. Their eyes met and held for a moment before he backed away from her, holding the infant to him.
The nurse looked on and nodded with approval. “You’re a natural.”
“He should be,” Joanna told her. “He’s the one who held her first.”
The woman’s smile brightened. “Oh, are you her father?”
“No.” The nurse’s innocent question dragged him away from the formless region he’d momentarily found himself inhabiting and back to the real world. He wasn’t the little girl’s father and that was the whole point. “I’m not.” He handed the infant back to Joanna. “I’ll be back before you’re discharged.”
There was a formal note in his voice that she didn’t understand or like. The temporary bridge between their two worlds was gone and they were back to being wounded strangers again.
“We’ll see,” she called after him. She had the satisfaction of seeing him momentarily halt before continuing out the door.
Like a commando unit making a beachhead, the three other women who comprised the Mom Squad descended upon Joanna as one later that afternoon, brightening her spirit as well as her room.
They came bearing gifts, and, more importantly, they came bearing good will and cheer. Something she was finding temporarily in short supply.
The baby was awake and alert and seemed very willing to be passed from one woman to the other like a precious doll.
Sherry Campbell, newly returned to the working world as a reporter for the Bedford World News and a brand-new mother in her own right, was the first to hold her. The baby was almost as big as Sherry’s own three-month-old son. But then, Johnny had been a preemie.
“She’s beautiful.” She beamed at Joanna. “Of course, that’s not a surprise. Look at her mother.”
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