ATOP Chapter Seventy-Two

 Josh sighed again... dramatically... and squirmed in his chair. Did these things always take this long? For the thousandth time he glanced at his watch. Drat the thing, it must be broken. No way could five hours have passed already. 

"Mr. Leonard?" 

All the men in the waiting room glanced up at the nurse's voice. And the one who must obviously be Mr. Leonard jumped to his feet eagerly. 

"How's my Jenny?"

"Mother and baby are just fine," the nurse smiled. "Congratulations, Mr. Leonard, you're the father of a seven pound baby boy."

"Hey..." Josh mumbled as the nurse escorted the new father from the room. "I was here first."

"Don't work that way, bud," a middle-aged man seated across the room laughed from behind a newspaper. "And I oughta know. I'm on my seventh."

Another sigh... even more dramatic... and Josh glared at the clock ticking steadily away on the wall. The clock was no further ahead than his watch.

Another hour passed... and then another. Josh was starting to get worried. He all but collapsed in relief when Rob and Myra joined him in the waiting room. By then... it had been nine hours. And every hour, on the dot, he had gone to the nurse's station around the corner, begging for news. They always said the same thing... just told him to be patient. "These things take time," they told him.

But... this much time?

Nine hours... Myra assured him that was alright. But then passed ten hours, and then eleven. By twelve hours, Josh had taken to pacing and was doing a rather effective job of wearing a path across the carpet. By thirteen hours, he had switched from pacing in a straight line to going around in circles. The nurses were starting to look annoyed at his constant questions. Now when they saw him coming, they exchanged nervous glances and said even less than before.

The day dragged on slowly. Supper came and went, with as much notice from Josh as lunch had gotten. Rob and Myra went home to do the chores... with the promise to stay in constant prayer. It had been twenty hours by then. And the clock went on ticking...

It was now the middle of the night. By twenty-two hours, a doctor chanced to pass the waiting room and was instantly pounced upon by the nervous wreck that had once been Josh. 

"Emma... how's my Emma?" he cried, seizing the doctor's arm feverishly. "The baby... has the baby come yet?"

"What's your name?" the doctor seemed unruffled, calmly pulling his arm from Josh's grip. "Ah... Mr. Campbell-Hayes... let me see..." he pulled a pair of spectacles from his coat pocket, perched them on the tip of his nose and scanned his clipboard. "Your wife is still in the delivery room. We'll let you know as soon as there is any news."

"But it's been twenty-two hours!" Josh cried at the doctor's retreating back. With an agonized groan, he slumped into a chair. He scowled at his watch, suddenly pulling it from  his wrist and flinging it across the room. Twenty-two hours were swiftly passing into twenty-three.

The waiting room was dimly lit and mostly silent. Twenty-four, twenty-five... twenty-six hours. There were fingernail marks in the arms on Josh's chair. Fathers came and fathers went... and still Josh stayed.

Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine... thirty.

"Mr. Campbell-Hayes?"

Josh jumped from his chair as if struck by lightning. He had been waiting to hear that for what seemed now like a lifetime of agony. It had been over thirty-five hours now.

"What is happening?!" Maybe he didn't mean to shout, but, well... his voice came out much louder than it was supposed to.

"The... the doctor wants to speak with you," the nurse faltered, stepping back a bit. "Come with me, please."

It was not what he had expected to hear. Something like "Congratulations, mother and baby are doing fine." This... this he didn't know what to make of and so he tried not to think to hard, to give into the unspoken fears crowding his mind.

"Is my Emma alright? And the baby? Has the baby come yet? Is it a boy or a girl?"

The nurse didn't seem to hear his eager questions. She simply turned a few corners and pointed toward an office doorway. The doctor rose to greet him, his eyes weary.

"Mr. Campbell-Hayes..." the tone was not one of congratulations. "This is... never something that is easy for me to say..."

"Emma?" Josh's voice shook. "My... my baby? Tell me they're alright, please!"

"I wish I could..." the doctor shook his head. "The baby... it's a little girl. Four pounds, five ounces. She... we are doing all we can, please understand, but she... we're afraid she won't make it."

Josh sank against the wall, groped for a chair. Finding none, he went all the way down, sitting on the floor. He felt the doctor helping him up, as if in a dream, guiding him to a chair. The rest of the words seemed more like echoes, ringing through his subconscious.

"It was a hard labor... one of the hardest I've seen. Mrs. Campbell-Hayes... she... she's not doing well. I assure you that we're doing all we can for her as well. But there is only so much that we can do."

"Can I... see her..." Josh's voice was husky, his eyes suddenly filling with tears that he did not want to cry. He blinked them back fiercely.

"Not just yet. I'm sorry... she's exhausted. In a few hours you can see her. But the baby... she wanted you to hold the baby before..." his voice trailed off. "Please, if you follow me..."

Josh followed. Somehow he managed to put one foot in front of the other. But he scarcely realized what he was doing. People were speaking to him, and the words weren't registering. And then a tiny pink bundle was placed in his arms and suddenly no one existed in all the world but him and his baby.

She was so tiny... so much tinier than he had thought a baby could be. So tiny, so precious, so perfect. But she lay there so still, tiny eyelids shut over tiny eyes, tiny hands curled into tiny fists... 

"Hello, baby," he whispered, bending his head low over her. He felt suddenly more fiercely protective than ever before in his life. If anyone touched his baby... heaven help him, he'd pound them into the dust. But she... she was slipping away... and there was nothing, nothing he could do!

"God help me," he whispered and pressed a gentle kiss on the tiny button nose. The baby whimpered weakly, snuggling her tiny head against him.

Again, someone was guiding him to a chair. He had wavered on his feet. They were asking if he was alright, asking if he needed them to take the baby... he only shook his head and clutched the baby closer. He reached up, touching her tiny hand... and she curled her fingers around his.

"God help me," he whispered again, feeling his heart break in two. "I can't do this."

"Mr. Campbell-Hayes," a nurse approached him almost timidly. "The mother is... asking for her."

"One more moment," Josh whispered, bending even lower until his forehead rested against the baby's cheek. "I love you, baby, I love you, my daughter, more than you'll ever know."

The baby sighed... the tiniest, softest sigh he had ever heard in all his life... and then the tiny fingers uncurled. Josh felt his heart stop cold. He knew it stopped... for at least a moment... stopped beating at the same moment that his baby's stopped. He looked up at the nurse, his eyes wild, pleading for help... surely, surely someone could do something, anything!

The nurse's eyes were filled with tears and she reached out to take the baby.

"I'm sorry..." she murmured. "I... the mother..."

"Yes..." Josh whispered back. "Take her to Emma."

But he held the tiny body for a moment longer, rocking her, loving her. And with one last kiss on that tiny cheek... he let her go.

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