“This isn’t the baby I wanted,” he said.
I thought I had misheard him. I honestly did. I thought the drugs were still in my system, or that I was so exhausted my brain was scrambling his words.
“Ben?”
His mother, Diane, had been standing by the window. She stepped closer now. She looked down at my daughter, at her red, wrinkled face and the damp wisps of hair on her head, and she clicked her tongue. That sharp little sound. The one she made when the waiter brought the wrong order.
“What a disappointment,” she said.
I pulled the baby tighter against me. The nurse, a young woman with purple scrubs, had frozen with a towel in her hands.
“You’re scaring me,” I said. “What’s wrong? Is something wrong with her? Ben, look at me. What’s wrong?”
He stepped back. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t look at her. He looked at the floor, at the machines, at the door. Anywhere but at us.
