Maurey reached for my Coke and drained it. “They shaved me again.”
“I thought that was only for abortions.”
“Doctors must shave every time they poke around down there. I might as well start shaving myself like Mom, save them the trouble.”
Maurey looked awfully chipper, considering she’d just broken her leg and had a baby. Her hair was brushed shiny, and her eyes glittered blue with interest at the baby stuck to her breast. A surf of love rolled over me, only more for Maurey than the baby. The baby was still a little abstract.
She held out a Bic pen. “Want to sign my cast?”
Her encased left leg hung by this pulley-and-hook deal. Her toes were gray.
“Does it hurt?”
“Itches like king-hell, but doesn’t hurt.”
“You never said king-hell before.”
Maurey smiled, which was neat. “You’re rubbing off on me.”
“Holy moley.” I signed—Yer pal, Sam Callahan.
“Is the baby eating breakfast?”
Maurey parted the hospital gown to give me a better view of the baby’s mouth clamped to her nipple. She looked asleep. “Her name is Shannon.”
“That’s pretty, I never heard it before.”
Shannon’s cheeks sucked in and out and the eye I could see opened, then closed slowly, like a tortoise.
“Can I touch her?”
Maurey looked worried for a second. “Okay, but be gentle. Babies aren’t footballs.”
“They don’t travel as far when you kick ’em.”
Maurey didn’t like my joke a bit. For a moment I thought I’d blown the chance to touch my baby. We hemmed around and I apologized and Maurey asked me when was the last time I’d had a bath, which she knew full well was the warm springs.
“You didn’t mind yesterday.”
“Yesterday I was different.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and touched my daughter on the back of her leg, above the plastic ID anklet thing. She was soft as a bubblegum bubble and, I imagined, just as delicate. I had created this. These toes and eyelids and all the potential for greatness and badness and beauty had come from me. I started hyperventilating and had to bend over with my head between my knees.
“I hope she grows up to have my looks and Dad’s brains,” Maurey said.
“How about me?”
“She’ll have your hair.”