Mestral drive home without passengers, and filled a duffel bag with the things Lily had ordered online for their child. The bassinet and changing station and furniture had taken over the third bedroom of the house Mestral lived in. They had mutually agreed that Lily's artistic space be left alone even though she didn't have the strength at the moment to use it. Mestral wasn't sure of the hospital's policies for the neonatal intensive care unit, and so after some reflection, the bag was filled mostly with books and only a few outfits for the baby.
The baby Val would be in NICU for at least a week until the hospital staff was sure she would survive on her own. She had human blood- red, copper-based, type O+ like her mother. The only outward feature that made her stand out was her pointed ears, a Vulcan feature that the hospital had decided was a cosmetic birth defect and were deliberately being very tactful about. Mestral had no issues with letting them believe that was an accident. He was privately extremely relieved that the baby had copper-based blood instead of his own; she would be far better at blending in with all of the regular humans than he.
But at the same time, she had her mother's eyes. That same relentless emerald green that had fascinated him in her mother drew Mestral to his daughter. No Vulcan had green eyes, it was not a possible color tone for their race. Val was lighter-toned than Mestral, but darker than Lily, and the little hair that she had at birth was dark. Mestral may have thought he loved Lily- and he did, in his own way- but the baby had him utterly enraptured. His half-human scion was the work of art that Lily had wished to embody in paint, not with her life. Yet here was the situation that came from that.
An hour later, Mestral was back in the hospital getting approval to visit his child, alone. He was painfully aware of Lily's absence and even with his Vulcan training and meditation, couldn't quite register that she was dead. He would be raising their daughter alone. He had brought a selection of books to read to her. On Vulcan, it was never too early to begin an education and just because his child was half human, that was no excuse.
The books were primarily biographies of various Earth persons. Upon arriving, Mestral was led to Val's plastic crib with its safety lid, so that contaminants couldn't affect her, and he was given a rocking chair to sit in next to her crib. Ever so carefully, the attending nurse laid his scion in his arms, and he immediately observed how small she was. So tiny and vulnerable, and the first of her kind. He looked down at his baby, nestled in his arms, and felt a powerful stirring within. This was his daughter. His child to raise, to continue his familial line.
Mestral used his free arm to rummage through the duffel bag and pulled out a book randomly. A Biography of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That would do nicely, he wanted his daughter to not be confined to the gender restraints of contemporary Earth culture. Mestral would not say he was a feminist, but this concept this planet had of women being regarded as inferior was preposterous to him. He took a calming breath and began in a smooth tenor to read to Valdena, "Joan Ruth Bader was born in Brooklyn, New York on March 15, 1933…."