Rose's collapsed back against the bed as she felt the baby separate from her body.
Sweat beaded across her forehead, causing the stray hairs that had fallen from the pony tail to cling to her skin. Exhaustion etched in every muscle of her body, she tried to shove it away as her eyes desperately searched the room from person to person, anixiety causing the machine monitoring her vitals to beep in warning as her heart rate escalted.
Seconds later, a sound broke through the clinical words of the staff and whirring of machinery as Rose struggled to pull herself up, the first cry of her newborn baby causing her chest to tighten. "Where.. Where is she?!"
A nurse closest to her tried to ease her back but Rose weakly pushed at her hands, feeling strength she didn't even physically posses, keeping her upright.
"Ms. Tyler, its alright. You need to lie back down. They're just cleaning her up. "
Moments later, another nurse from the opposite side of the room turned, and cradled in her hands was an impossibly tiny bundle of pink clothe. Rose's hands reached out and the nurse who had tried to restrain her before pressed her shoulder back time she allowed herself to go back without a fight and as the nurse reached Rose, she gently lowered the crying infant into her mothers waiting arms.
Her eyes drank in the small face before her and the entire room faded away as Rose looked at her daughter for the first time. She was red and scrunched up, tiny mouth wide and toothless as she cried and and Rose was sure she had never heard anything more perfect. A soft cry of her own bubbled its way up her throat as pure, undiluted joy caused her heart to clench and the reality of it set in.
Her daughter, her baby. This beautiful, tiny, perfect creature that she had nurtured and who had grown inside of her. The very person she had so anxiously been waiting to meet for what seemed like such a long time.
All of Rose's fears and doubts melted away, and for that moment in time, for that very instance in the small warm bubble that enveloped them both, all the sorrow she had been suffering, the pain of loss and grief that had weighed so heavily on her since that day at Bad Wolf bay,the worst day of her life; it all evaporated. Nothing could touch either of them, not in this moment.
Her lips came down to brush against the soft skin of her forehead, cradling her impossibly close without squeezing too tightly and the cries began to ebb away as Rose brought a finger up to caress the small patch of brown down-like fuzz over and over again, marveling in how anything could be so soft.
She felt tears course down her cheeks and closed her eyes, nuzzling the tiny features with her nose, taking in the scent that perfumed her tiny body. It was unique and yet, there was something so incredibly familiar about it. Not that she needed to try and guess at what it was. She would know it any where, but she marveled that it could smell so much like him.
It wasn't until the nurses had gotten her cleaned up and transported them both into a recovery room that she was alone and it was only then as she continued to hold the sleeping child that she let her eyes drift upwards to the window, the blinds left open upon her request. She watched the stars.
The precious bundle in her arms was the best gift he had ever given her, out of all of time and space, every experience and every memory; This was it. Nothing could ever or would ever compare. And he would never even know.
"Thank you... Doctor." She swallowed hard.
The words were murmured softly, so she was sure that that couldn't have been the cause of it, but when she look down, tiny eye lids fluttered and her breath caught as she saw the briefest flash of blue.