“Sabine,” he said, barely above a whisper.
She didn’t turn.
Didn’t move.
Just kept staring out the window, like there was something out there she could cling to. Something to help her stay alive.
Adair came closer, each step heavier than the last. There was a small bundle in a bassinet near her bed—wrapped in pink with a little bow. The air shifted around it, still and sacred. His knees buckled before he could help it. He dropped beside the bed, chest folding into itself, head bowed as he crumbled emotionally. He could see her little blue lips.
“I’m so sorry,” he choked out. “Bine…please. I’m?—”
Her voice was hoarse. “Don’t.”
Adair looked up. Her face was stone, except for her eyes. Her eyes were red-rimmed and soaked in the kind of pain words couldn’t reach. She didn’t look angry. She looked...empty.
“I didn’t know,” he said. “My phone?—”
“Don’t,” she said again, quieter this time. “Don’t give me that. Not tonight.”
Adair's mouth opened, then closed. He nodded slowly because she was right. No excuse would be good enough. No explanation would rewind the hours she spent weeping, contracting, alone in a cold room with strangers telling her when to push.
“You missed everything,” she whispered.
He broke at that. His head dropped into his hands. “I know. I know, I know…”
She didn’t comfort him. Just turned her head back to the window and said nothing.Because what was there left to say?He missed his daughter’s life.
All of it.
All however many minutes or if any.
He missed the way Sabine’s body shook when they handed her the silence that was supposed to cry. He missed the moment their son was escorted out screaming for his mama because strangers tried to hold him while the woman he loved bled into the sheets. He missed the moment Sabine stopped believing he would show up and now she was gone too. Not physically but something in her had left.
No amount of weeping at her bedside would bring the moment back. Bring their daughter back. He wanted to touch her. To hold her. To fall into her lap and beg for forgiveness.
But he didn’t.
Adair just stayed there, on his knees, swallowing his grief in silence.
Because he finally understood?—
This wasn’t a moment he could fix.
This was a moment he would carry. Forever.
SAYING GOODBYE
The nurse came in quietly, like she didn’t want to disturb the sadness. She didn’t speak at first. Just gave a soft nod, eyes flickering between Sabine and the tiny bundle swaddled in her arms.
Sabine had been holding her for hours now. Skin to skin. Her baby girl. So small. So impossibly still. She counted her fingers over and over.
Ten.
Toes, too.
Ten.
Tiny, perfect, lifeless.