Wulf
The recovery room smelled like sharp antiseptic and blood.
Wulf swallowed hard, trying to distance himself from the memories that the coppery, salty scent provoked.
The nurse laid the tiny, swaddled bundle in Wulf’s hands. The pink and blue blanket was wound tightly around the baby, and only the baby’s tiny, wrinkled face peered above the cotton.
She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.
The muscles in Wulf’s arms seemed too hard around the infant, like he might hurt her just by holding her. The child’s smushed face moved, like she was trying to express something, or just realizing that she had a face. Her head was smaller than Wulf’s fist.
His hands around her felt enormous.
Something felt lodged in Wulf’s chest, and his lungs ached.
Wulf wrapped his arms around the baby, shielding her from the whole world, and walked back to Rae, limp in the recovery bed. Sweat darkened her auburn hair and shone on her face. Her ragged breathing felt like his heartbeat.
“They have brought her back,” he told Rae. The hospital staff had whisked the baby away after the emergency Cesarean section, reassuring him that they were just checking her vitals and giving her the vitamin K shot.
Rae nodded, a wan smile on her face, and held out her arms for their baby.
Wulf swiveled his hands under that minuscule bit of humanity and laid her in Rae’s arms. Rae’s exhausted smile lit her face.
“Can you move your legs yet?” he asked, trailing his fingers down the utilitarian woven blanket over her.
“Not yet. They kind of tingle. When they gave me the spinal, they said that it would be a while.”
They had ushered Wulf out of the operating room while the anesthesiologist had administered the spinal injection, and Wulf had almost pulled rank and privilege, if such tactics would have worked in an American hospital. He suspected not.
Rae smiled down at their child in her arms, her auburn hair clinging to her cheek and neck. He moved her hair aside, peeling it off her sticky skin. She had been farther into labor than she had let on when the LifeFlight helicopter had arrived at the hospital. When the obstetrician had examined her, the woman’s face had jerked into a rictus of shock that Rae had progressed so far.
Rae had bled early in the pregnancy. It was determined that the baby’s placenta had implanted near her cervix, a condition called placenta previa, and a traditional labor and delivery might have killed her. She had been scheduled for a Cesarean delivery the next day.
When Wulf had seen the panic on the doctor’s face, his heart had seized, and he had frozen all over.
His wife. His daughter. His family.
His whole life.
He bent and kissed the top of Rae’s head and laid his cheek on her damp scalp to watch their daughter. The baby’s gray-blue eyes moved, maybe tracking the light.
He said, “She might have my eyes.”
“I hate to break it to you.” Rae’s exhausted voice cut straight to Wulf’s heart. “A lot of white babies have blue eyes. They might change color later.”
Wulf smiled. His contrary little Rae was still as feisty as ever. He hoped the baby’s eyes would change to warm brown, like Rae’s. The fuzz on her head seemed a little darker than the platinum blond that his younger sister Flicka had been born with. He had met Flicka when she was three months old because he had been away at boarding school, and then he had raised Flicka from the time that she had been five and he was fifteen, alone. He still counted some of those memories, playing with her, as some of the most joyful in his life.
He couldn’t think about his sister just then. Flicka had been missing for four months.
The baby’s petal-pink lips pursed, and she glanced at the lights and blinked.
Wulf watched the child, reveling in her every twitch, with his hand on Rae’s shoulder.
The doctors and nurses assured themselves that the monitors were all showing correct numbers and left the room. Earlier, they had said something to him, and he had made the civilized replies and had shaken their hands. Some part of his mind would inform him later what he had said, but just then his soul was full of Rae and their baby girl.
Victoria Augusta, Prinzessin von Hannover, for now. She would receive the rest of her names from her godmothers when she was baptized.
He hoped that one of her names would be Friederike, if Flicka were found safe in time.
That scenario was becoming more unlikely with each passing day, and Wulf tightened his arms around his wife and child.
Victoria’s fascinating little lips curved and smacked open.
Wulf glanced around the room, ensuring that they were alone. He kissed the top of Rae’s head again. “I love you, so much.”
Rae took one arm off the baby and touched his hand. “I love you, too.” She glanced up at him. The lively intelligence was sharpening in her eyes as the drugs receded.
He said, “I can’t stop looking at her.”
Wulf shifted and lay down beside Rae in the narrow bed. For two such strapping specimens such as themselves, they had to squeeze a bit. He wrapped his arms around both his girls, one arm across Rae’s chest and around the child, and one arm up and around Rae. Her head rested on his shoulder.
Rae’s mouth curved up in a smile. “You’re shielding me again.”
“Yes. I am.”
Rae rolled her head back in his arms. “What’s going on, in there?” She glanced at his forehead.
Anything she decided that she should know, she would eventually pry out of him. Early capitulation was his best option, no matter how excruciating.
He let himself smile on one side of his mouth, trying to downplay the rather German fatalism. “I didn’t think that I would live long enough to see a child of my own.”
“Oh, Wulf.” Rae glanced down at the baby, but Victoria had closed her eyes. Rae slid the infant into the crevice between their bodies.
“It occurred to me that the universe gave me Flicka to raise because it would be my only chance to be a father.” He leaned forward, resting his head against Rae’s, like he always did when emotions roiled within him, nearly to breaking him down.
She pressed her hand against his chest where his heart pulsed. “You say the most heart-breaking things I’ve ever heard.”
He cradled both of them. “I will never let anything happen to you.”
Rae said, “I know.”
Every moment of life was precious and must be seized and treasured. No matter how much more or how little time he had, Wulf lived this moment, and every one after.