A/N: Happy holidays! I planned to hold this chapter back until the new year, then decided...why? Special thanks to reader CitizenKay, who suggested a baby name I ended up using as a middle name. And for the guest reviewer who asked if I live in Chicago, no, no where near it, actually, though I do travel a lot, and have spent time in the city. Mostly, I just do a lot of research. Enjoy...this is a work safe chapter.
Sara brought her big stack of paperwork to Lincoln a few days before her C-Section date. "I thought you were supposed to be on bedrest or something," he told her when he answered the door.
"Yes, well, one exception," she told him. She handed him her fat manila envelope, which contained everything he'd need if…well, everything he'd need. He accepted it hesitantly, holding the door for her and waving her inside.
"Sit down, sit down. What's all this now?"
"This and that," she told him. He knew what it was.
He peered cautiously into the envelope, glimpsing page upon page of legalese. "Hmmph," he said. "Won't even know what to do with all this shit."
"You'll figure it out," she told him mildly. "Or just give it to LJ." This thought was depressing enough to make her add, "We'll probably just burn it in our fire pit in about a week."
"Sounds like the best plan," he contributed.
He pulled out the smaller, sealed envelopes inside, the ones addressed to Michael and the children. She let him. Given all he'd done for them, and continued to do, was willing to do, even if grudgingly, Linc deserved better than to be kept in the dark.
As he pulled these individual letters out and flipped through them, she read the name addressed on each envelope over his shoulder. Each was handwritten in her slanted script: Michael, Mike, Henry…Faith.
He let out a soft sound of surprise, and spun around to her. "Faith?"
She smiled at him. "What do you think?"
He stood there, speechless for a moment. "I think…you guys are damned good at naming babies," he said gruffly.
She beamed at him. "Michael got his way with her middle name…you'll see. But yes, Faith." She lay a hand on her stomach. She couldn't seem to help it.
Lincoln's eye followed her movement, and he smiled at her. "I love it," he told her. He stared at the envelopes in his hand. "And we won't need any of this morbid shit, alright?"
"Alright," she told him bracingly, but watched him tuck the letters back into the manila envelope very carefully anyway.
June 14th dawned clear and calm, or so Sara assumed. She'd been awake long before dawn, but had lain in bed, staring at the ceiling, instead of watching the sun rise. A pretty lame way to start what surely wouldn't be, but just might be, the last day of her life, she decided. But it was too late now: the sun was up, and Michael was up, and Mike was up, and all of them were circling each other with nervous energy.
Only Henry, when they woke him, seemed unaffected, waiting for Ellie to show up like it was any other day, only earlier. "Mama, when's that baby coming?" he asked, with more exasperation than usual. Henry wasn't exactly a morning person, Sara had discovered of late.
"Soon," she said only. Nerves had grasped hold of her, too, dancing through her stomach. It was just as well she wasn't allowed to eat anything this morning. "You'll see her later today." This seemed to satisfy Henry, but Mike glanced at her anxiously, and she had to look away.
She and Michael needed to be at Northwestern's medical center at six am, and Ellie showed up at 5:15, looking just as nerve-wracked as everyone else. She hugged Sara tightly, then said, "Call me right away," to Michael. She absently turned on a somewhat stupid TV program for Henry, then stared at it blankly with him. Neither Sara nor Michael could muster enough concern to argue with this decision.
When she'd delayed their departure as long as possible, Sara hugged Mike, and reminded him that Uncle Lincoln would be there for breakfast and would already have an update. She held him to her tightly and told him she loved him and then forced herself not to say anything more. She'd see him very soon, she reminded herself viciously.
She embraced Henry next, who was less cooperative, wiggling away as he tried to watch his show. Michael looked at his watch, starting to get fidgety, but she said, "Give me a minute," in a very firm voice, and he stilled, letting her say goodbye to their baby boy. Once they got in the car, Michael began an immaterial conversation about traffic, then about the weather and recent wind patterns on Lake Michigan, managing to stretch out an anecdote about sailing all the way to Northwestern. If his trivial prattle was in an attempt to keep her calm, it wasn't working. And besides, she actually had a few things she wanted to say to him, not that he gave her any opening to do so.
They made good time at this hour of the morning, but even after they'd parked, he continued to chatter, so before they could walk in, she laid a hand on his arm, stopping him.
"Michael? I need you to know…"
He'd been expecting this. He shut her down fast. "I won't do this, Sara," he said.
"I have no regrets," she told him, looking him right in the eye, standing there in the near-empty parking lot. He turned his gaze away from her, staring moodily at the skyline, still pink with sunrise, but she pushed on anyway, drawing his attention back to her. She'd say her piece whether he wanted her to or not. "I wouldn't have done anything differently," she told him softly, "from the absolute start."
Typical of Sara to use this opportunity to tell him one last thing to make him feel better, to alleviate his guilt. Michael stared at her, feeling his heart literally constrict. "Be okay," he commanded her harshly, and that was it. That was all he could muster, before turning on his heel and walking her into the hospital to check in.
By 6:30 am, Sara had had her last ultrasound of her pregnancy, and Dr. Mills had given the green light for surgery. "She can perform the C-Section in under three seconds," her surgical nurse informed them. "First incision to first breath. I've seen it."
Michael tried to breathe himself. Just thirty minutes from now, then less than three seconds more, if this woman was to be believed, and his baby girl would be here. And Sara would be fine. She'd. Be. Fine.
The nurse moved to take Sara for surgical prep, and, in an attempt to carry on his litany of 'there's nothing to worry about', he said only, "I'll see you in just a minute."
But Sara cast him a quick, almost desperately hurt look, and he caved, his determined show of bravado falling around him like a house of cards. "Wait, wait, wait."
She waited.
"Remember my brain surgery?" he whispered to her fervently. "I did not leave you, did I?"
When she treated this like a rhetorical question, which it was not, he drew back to look her hard in the eye. Her obvious anxiety rebounded on him. "Did I?"
"No."
"Then don't you dare leave me."
He kissed her, hard. When he saw her next, she was on her back on the operating gurney, and they were raising a sheet between her chest and her abdomen, so she couldn't see the procedure, and he was wishing he couldn't see it, either. He reminded himself to look only at her face, which was looking paler than he'd like, actually. Sara glanced over at him only briefly, however, even when he touched her shoulder and smiled. She seemed focused on something on the ceiling.
"What about the epidural?" he asked, because Dr. Mills had entered the room, scrubbed and gowned.
"Already administered," Sara told him flatly, still looking at some fixed point above them.
What? He'd planned to be there, at her side, for that, given how she felt about it. He bent down to her to tell her he was sorry. But if it had been hard to capture her full attention before, it was impossible now. She wasn't listening to him. She'd gone somewhere else in her head, her eyes still fixed on the ceiling, her breath coming in short, uneven breaths. And Michael realized: this was more than nerves. For all her certainty, for all her fortitude, she was quietly panicking now.
"Sweetheart?" he said, standing near her head as he watched the clock shift toward 7 am and Dr. Mills prepare her instruments on a metal tray near Sara's hip.
It took her a moment to find his face and lock eyes. "I don't know if I can do this," she confessed in a whisper. "If I can't…Michael…I'm so sorry."
"No," he countered, through clenched jaw. "You can." He tried to smile at her again, and failed. But he persevered. "I don't know if you remember," he said, "but there was a moment, in the air ducts at Fox River, when we had to crawl over a particularly difficult stretch. And you said, 'Michael, I can't.' And I had only known you, what? A matter of days, at that point. But I already knew two things about you. I knew that you could, and also that you would." He looked at her. "That was the first time you ever took my hand."
He held it out to her now, and she extended her arm shakily to reach out to clasp it.
"You can do this," he promised. When she didn't answer, he added, "You just need to…have Faith." He smiled at her in earnest until she smiled back at his stupid pun.
Faith Seraphina Scofield was born at 7:00:03 am on June 14th, surrounded by what seemed to Michael like the entirety of the medical staff at Northwestern. He watched the first incision of Dr. Mill's scalpel into Sara's flesh, a single crimson bead of blood rising to the surface of her skin, and then his vision began to blur at the edges and the room began to tilt oddly, and someone said sharply, "Hey! Dad! Eyes up here!" and he remembered he was supposed to be looking at Sara's face. He found it, and stared at her somewhat manically, locking his eyes back on hers, until, true to her nurse's word, not three seconds later, Dr. Mills lifted their baby above the paper curtain blocking their view, and her first cry cut through the air.
She was beautiful and whole and Sara was already reaching for her, but Michael's attention swung instantly back to Dr. Mills. Would Sara's blood clot? Or would her blood pressure plummet? Another second ticked by on the clock, then another. "Stitch her up. Stitch her right back up, right now," he commanded, looking again at Sara's stomach before he could remind himself not to. But it wasn't so bad, really. The incision was there, yes, where reddened flesh now gave way to an under layer of pink, but everything seemed under control. No alarms. No panicked faces. The room was cast in a strange serenity, it seemed to Michael. It wasn't anything like before, with Henry. Nothing was like that. Nothing ever would be like that again, he realized.
"Let me see her," Sara said impatiently. "Is she alright?" but it took two, maybe three more pleas before Michael could manage to track his gaze from Sara to Faith, who'd been whisked away by the nursing staff. They'd already wiped her down and put a beanie hat on her head and someone weighed her, and Michael couldn't imagine how any of that was important right now. He gravitated toward her, and finally, someone put her in his arms, saying, "Congratulations," and he looked down at blue eyes that stared back at him solemnly between cries, coupled by Sara's perfect nose and mouth. The hint of dark brown hair peeked out from her knitted cap, and she waved two balled fists in the air at him.
"Hi," he managed to breathe, just as he had to Henry. Unlike Henry, however, who had transcended peace upon him, Faith commenced wailing at him, fists still flailing.
He brought her to Sara, who laughed at how angry she seemed, upon the rude awakening of being born. Faith was small—only five pounds, six ounces, a nurse said—but otherwise healthy for being four weeks premature. "She's okay," Sara laugh-cried, running a hand over her cheek and beanied-head, her arm weighted down by an IV that Michael knew only contained saline and antibiotics (for now) and a blood pressure cuff. Still, the sight of both threatened to trigger some dark reaction in Michael, another throwback to Henry's birth. He pushed this thought aside and brought Faith right down to Sara's eye level for her thorough inspection. A nurse brought over a blanket and swaddled her, and all the while, thank God, Dr. Mills focused solely on Sara, closing her back up almost as quickly as she had cut her open.
Less than a minute later, the paper curtain was removed and they'd bandaged Sara and raised her bed up enough to allow her to hold her baby. She stared down at Faith and said, "Let Linc know, okay?"
But Michael just stared at them, because, was this real? Had this truly been this easy? He cast a quick glance to Dr. Mills, who checked Sara's BP and pulse again, and added, "All good." Blood spattered her scrubs, but only lightly, nothing like Dr. Coleson's, and the gloves she peeled off and tossed in the trash bin were only marginally stained red. She laid a hand on Sara's knee and said, "The epidural block won't wear off for another few hours, so if you want your family to visit, I suggest sooner rather than later. I'll stop back in to talk to you about pain management after that."
She nodded and said again, "Michael, call Linc. Mike will be worried for nothing."
Worried for nothing.
What an absolutely beautiful statement.
When he stepped into the hall to phone Lincoln, his brother seemed equally baffled by foreign phrases like 'everything went fine' and 'they're both doing great.'
"What do you mean?" Linc kept barking into the phone. Then, "But it's only 7:15 am!" He went from suspicious to cautiously optimistic pretty fast though, laughing with relief.
"Told you we have a great doctor," Michael reminded him, because now that everything was alright, he could enjoy feeling a bit cocky. "Bring the boys over so Mike can see Sara and the baby before his STEM competition," he requested. "Oh, and tell Ellie the news, too."
Sara and Faith were moved out of the OR to their own room, where Michael sat on Sara's bed with her, awaiting the kids' arrival. He tipped her face to his to kiss her, saying, "Did this really just happen?"
Sara presented their daughter to him, letting him settle her between them, into the crook of his arm. "Exhibit A," she said. Faith slept now, in that way of newborns that suggested slumber was a full time, all-encompassing job.
"Exhibit B," he added, tracing the line of Sara's jaw with the pad of his thumb. "How are you feeling?"
"Good," she promised.
"When Dr. Mills comes back, will you consider—"
"Just let me enjoy this, Michael."
He smiled apprehensively at her, but looked back down at Faith and said, "She's beautiful, Sara. I don't care if you say I'm biased."
"I'm glad you're biased," she said. "She looks perfect to me, too."
After what seemed like only a very short time later, they heard the organized chaos that signaled their children's arrival echoing down the hallway, and then Mike burst through the room, trailed by Lincoln and Henry. He went straight to Sara, while Henry said, "Where is that baby, Dada?"
She was in Sara's arms again, and Mike peered down at her after embracing his mother gingerly. "She's so small," he marveled.
Lincoln held Henry up so he could survey the baby, too, then asked to hold her.
"Well, hi there, Faith," he cooed, which would have been music to Michael's ears after his brother had acted so stubbornly pessimistic all pregnancy, except…
"How do you already know her name?"
"Wait, what's her name?" Mike wanted to know. He hadn't fully heard his uncle.
Simultaneously Lincoln apologized, "I didn't realize it was a secret this time!"
He flung a glance at Sara, and Michael followed his gaze, asking resentfully, "You told him?" He'd thought the name would remain just between them until her birth, like with Henry.
"I…uh…no, not exactly," she hedged.
"What's her name?" Mike asked again, more impatiently, so Michael let his questioning of Sara drop, for now.
"Faith Seraphina," he told Mike. "Faith because having faith—in what is right, in what and who we trust—has always served our family well, and Seraphina for your mom."
When Lincoln scoffed at this middle name, Sara said, "Not my doing." She turned back to Mike. "But I suppose it's only fair, since you're named after Dad."
Mike beamed at them. "I like it."
Henry said, "Faif?" glancing between the baby and Sara and Mike and Michael.
Sara confirmed this for him, telling Linc to lower the baby again so Henry could get a good look.
They all stayed for about another twenty minutes, then a nurse began the process of gently herding them out. The timing was perfect really; Michael worried about Sara's pain relief from the epidural wearing off, and Mike needed to get back home for Henry Pope to pick him up for the bridge competition.
"Remember," he told him, "you need to carry it by diagonal corners, one of you on each end."
"I know, Dad."
"And don't forget that you toyed with the suspension ratio, so you'll need to add a little wiggle room into your calculations you present to the judge panel."
"I know," Mike repeated. He smiled at him. "I got it, Dad."
Michael knew he did, but knowing it didn't lessen his desire to be there with him. It tore at him, as he looked between Mike, in the doorway, and Sara and Faith, in the hospital bed. "Call as soon as you know anything," he made him promise, as he departed with Linc and his brother.
When Michael came back to Sara's side, she said immediately, "I'm sorry about Linc. He happened to glimpse her name on some paperwork."
He sat down on the side of her bed, bringing Faith onto his lap. "What paperwork?"
She was silent for a moment. "Just some documents I had him hang onto, for safe keeping." When he glanced at her in confusion, she added reluctantly, "Legal stuff, that I thought I'd take care of ahead of time, to make things easier for you and the kids, if…"
Dread, cold and tight, slid down Michael's spine. Knowing the danger had passed, that this feeling of fear was now unnecessary, did little to dilute it. "What kind of legal stuff?" he asked, though he suspected he knew. "Medical directives?" he pressed, his mouth dry. "That sort of thing?"
"With Henry, there was so much I wished you didn't have to deal with," she tried to explain.
But he just said, "Sara." A brittle reprimand.
"You know how you needed to feel very prepared this time? With a plan?" She waited for him to nod. "So did I."
His brain understood this, but every other part of him rejected her logic. "What all did you put together? I want to see this paperwork."
"No, you don't," she told him. "And I can destroy it all now." Her plans for a bonfire would become reality. The thought made her smile in satisfaction. "Although, I might as well keep the will."
"A will? Really?" Just how worried had she been that she wouldn't live through this? Because she'd done a damned good job convincing Michael of her confidence.
"And the letters."
He had the sense he shouldn't even ask. "You wrote letters?" he choked out.
She nodded, and tried to say casually, "You know I like the last word."
He narrowed his eyes at her, but found himself saying, "Can I read them?"
This request gave her pause. "You can read yours," she decided. "Maybe I'll hang onto the kids'. Give them to them one day."
She leaned against his shoulder to peer down at Faith, and he looked with her, because his eyes were in danger of clouding if he kept looking at Sara. "Do you think she looks more like Mike or more like Henry?" she asked.
Michael wasn't sure. He could see himself in his daughter, certainly—her coloring was similar to his, and her eyes and hair—but Faith wasn't the mini-me Henry was. She blinked up at them as her eyes sought to focus on their faces, and maybe it was Michael's imagination, but he thought he saw something fierce and determined shining through them. He bent to kiss her tiny nose. "More like you," he told Sara.
She smiled softly, but he watched her expression shift to a grimace. "Is the epidural wearing off?" he asked her.
"Yes," she sighed. She didn't bother to try and lie, which Michael took as a bad sign.
"Am I wasting my breath if I beg?" he asked softly.
She'd closed her eyes. "Can you get Dr. Mills? I want to ask her a few questions."
Before she could change her mind, he set Faith into her bassinet by the bed, more than happy to oblige.
The pain encroached, the heavy-duty anesthetic from the epidural fading slowly from her body, like a tide receding. It would be hard to bear soon, Sara knew. She'd wanted to try to nurse Faith first, before the pain hit in earnest, but she realized now that wasn't going to happen. The thought of balancing even such a small, lightweight person against her stomach sent a shudder through Sara.
"Toradol," she told Dr. Mills, when she approached her bed, trailed by Michael. It was the strongest non-narcotic pain reliever she could think of, like taking an extra-extra strength Advil. And it was slow to cross membranes, which meant she wouldn't pass it along to the baby in her breastmilk, like she would with narcotics.
"I'll have to check for availability," Mills said, though Sara could tell she was peeved that she hadn't thought of this solution herself.
"It's not too often used," she explained to Michael, admitting that it didn't work quite as well as narcotics. "Though it will be far better than nothing," she added, to remind him of the other option.
It took Mills awhile to produce a supply of the drug, and Sara did her best to suffer in silence while she waited. "Does the incision ache?" Michael asked, and she nodded tightly, though the pain was not an ache. It was a fire now, a scorching blanket of agony thrown over her, and she felt her eyes well with hot tears she hadn't intended to shed.
"Sweetheart," he said helplessly.
"It will be fine," she told him through clenched teeth, casting an arm over her face. "Why don't you…check in…with Mike?"
Out of her peripheral vision, she saw him glimpse the time. "The competition hasn't even started yet," he informed her.
That's when she knew this would be a very long day, if she couldn't get this pain under control. Thankfully, Dr. Mills was back within the hour. She started to ask Sara if she preferred to take a dose by oral pill or IV, then looked more astutely at the stoic set of her jaw and decided, "IV."
The relief was mercifully swift as the Toradol raced through Sara's system; within just a few minutes, she felt her muscles unclench and relax, and within five, her eyes had closed. No wonder she enjoyed drugs, she thought ruefully. They were wonderful. She heard Michael say 'thank you' to someone, or maybe 'Thank God,' and she roused herself to see if Faith should nurse, but felt Michael's hand guide her back down. "She's sleeping," he said. "Why don't you try to as well?"
She decided that was a very good idea.
While Sara and Faith slept, Michael supposed he should close his eyes, too. After all, he'd been awake since before dawn, watching Sara through half-closed lids, as she'd stared at the ceiling of their bedroom. He watched her now, too, instead of resting, studying her as she succumbed to sleep, counting each steady rise and fall of her chest under her hospital gown. He shifted his gaze to their daughter, in the bassinet beside the bed, and then lifted her into his arms gently. She didn't wake.
He hadn't been exaggerating, earlier. He thought Faith was truly beautiful, never mind that newborns weren't known for their looks. Because by 'beautiful', Michael hadn't just meant physically, though she was…she was. He meant her spirit, her soul, the light he could already sense shining from her. He knew he sounded as corny as a greeting card, but Michael didn't care. He meant all of it.
He studied her parted lips and her closed eyelids and dark eyelashes, her pristine, pink cheeks, her unblemished skin almost translucent. He tried very hard not to allow his mind to drag him brutally back to that cold night on the rooftop patio, when he'd told Sara they could not possibly have this perfect baby girl. He reminded himself he couldn't have known, he hadn't realized, that he had only been human…but it didn't help. He continued to judge himself with merciless condemnation. He wondered if he'd ever look at his daughter and not punish himself anew for the measures he'd thought he'd needed to go to that night. He fervently hoped so, because he planned to lay eyes on her as much as possible for the rest of his life.
"Forgive me, Faith," he entreated, just as he had to her sonogram image in utero. "It was because I love your mother so very much. You'll see how much. You'll see it always." This thought buoyed him somewhat, as Faith slept on, so trustingly, in his arms.
After watching her sleep awhile more, Michael made phone calls, starting with leaving a message for LJ, in a conference session in Miami. He rang Ellie next. Lincoln had given her the basics when he'd brought Henry back home, but Michael filled her in on the details. Talking to his son briefly on Ellie's phone—Henry wanted to know whether that baby was still there—reminded him to call Henry Pope, who didn't pick up. A moment later, however, a photo came through of Mike's bridge decked out with a blue ribbon, and Michael's FaceTime app bounced to life.
Mike's beaming face greeted him when he accepted the call, but the first thing he said was, "Mom's still okay?"
"She's great. How'd it go? Tell me."
Mike regaled him with the tale of his win step by step, assuring him he hadn't forgotten any part of his report he'd presented to the judge panel, and showing him, with Pope now holding his phone, a reenactment of his demonstration. "There were some other really good bridges," Mike enthused, taking back the phone to span the camera across the room to show his dad the competition.
"I am so proud of you," Michael told him, a phrase he would have uttered whether Mike won or came in last place.
"Do you think I could be an engineer one day, Dad?" he asked. Behind Mike, Michael could glimpse spectators walking around the table Mike's bridge sat on, surveying his work with interest. Pope shooed them away if they got too close in their admiration. It made him smile.
"Yes, or any number of other things," Michael told Mike. "Anything at all." He hoped Mike knew he'd be in awe of whatever he did.
"Can I come back to the hospital and be with you now?" Mike asked. Pope said something to him, and he added, "I can come straight there."
"Everything is fine here, if you'd rather go home and take it easy," Michael offered. "Ellie's there with Henry, and I know it's been a very busy morning." An understatement, for sure.
"I'd rather be with you and Mom and Faith," Mike insisted, and Michael relented.
"Your mom will love that. We'll see you soon."
He called Sara's clinic next, because Stacy had asked for an update, when they had one. The person who picked up at the reception desk wasn't Stacy, however.
"Dan, hello." Shit. "It's Michael Scofield."
Dan's tone shifted audibly from pleasant professionalism to acute anxiety. "Is she alright?"
You know what? Michael wanted to tell him. You don't get to do that. You don't get to care this much. I do. I get to care. But he said only, "Everything went fine. The baby was born early this morning. I thought I'd get Stacy. She wanted to know."
Dan sounded so relieved to hear this, Michael almost pitied him, waiting through this whole morning for news. "Stacy's at lunch, but yes, she'll be glad to know it." He paused. "We all are."
"I'm sure Sara will call in when she can," Michael told him, giving a cursory goodbye and disconnecting the call without offering the standard details: name, weight, height. It was petty, but he found he didn't want to discuss his daughter with Dan.
Faith had woken with a soft cry by the time he set his phone down, causing Sara to stir, too. He watched her open her eyes and take stock.
"How are you feeling? Better?" he asked.
She tried to sit up gingerly and winced. He frowned at her, raising her bed using the control panel a nurse had taught them to use. "Better," she conceded.
He offered her Faith, who quieted almost immediately at Sara's breast, her eyes gazing solemnly up at her mother's face as she nursed. Was there a more beautiful sight than seeing his child nourished in this way? Michael didn't think so, right now.
"What?" Sara said self-consciously. "She's doing great."
Michael just nodded mutely and leaned forward to meet his lips to hers. He probably surprised her with the intensity of his kiss, but she only smiled at him when she drew away, a hand cradled protectively over the top of Faith's head. "More good news," he told her, showing her the photo of Mike's award-winning bridge on his phone screen.
She smiled. "This is turning out to be a pretty good day," she noted.
"Not bad," he agreed. He caught her eye, and they both laughed, Sara wincing again.
Henry Pope dropped Mike off at the hospital a little after 2 pm, met the baby, congratulated Sara, and departed without letting them thank him nearly enough for helping out today.
"It was fun," he insisted. "I told you I looked forward to watching him win." He let them know Judy had been cooking some meals for them, which she'd drop off with Ellie.
Sara watched him leave with a brief wave, and said, "There was a time I'd definitely thought we'd closed the door on that relationship, both of us."
Michael nodded. "Just one of a long list of things I'm grateful for, right now," he told her.
They let Mike hold Faith for a while, as Sara plied him with questions about his competition.
"Remember how Henry immediately grasped my hand?" Mike said, trying to tempt Faith with his pinkie finger.
"And he's never let go," Michael smiled.
"I'm sure Faith will join the Mike Fan Club, too," Sara added.
"If Henry lets her," Mike laughed. He looked down at Faith, and mused, "She'll always be ten years younger than me. That's a whole decade."
"I know you'll always be there for her, her biggest brother," Michael told him.
"When I can drive a car, she'll only be six," Mike noted.
Sara shook her head in denial. "Don't remind me how old you're getting," she said. "You're my first baby. You'll always be."
Mike looked at his dad, then at his sister. "When I was a baby, there was no one to hold me in the hospital," he said bluntly, in that manner of his that cut straight to the heart of things, without discretion.
"I did," Sara corrected him swiftly. "I held you." She looked at him, and he studied her face, his eyes intent on her. "I'd had no idea I could fall in love with a person so fast."
This made Mike smile slightly, but he said to Michael, "But you weren't there. It wasn't like this, with everyone together."
"I'm sorry it had to be that way," Michael told him gravely. "You're right that it wasn't the same as today. As now."
Mike looked between his parents. "Was I…not supposed to be born then? Do you think I was supposed to be born later, when Dad could be with us, like Henry and Faith?"
Sara studied him in consternation. Was he asking, in ten-year-old Mike logic, if he had been planned?
Before she could answer, Michael said definitively, "You were born to two parents who loved you, and who loved each other. That means you happened exactly as you were meant to happen."
"You were a gift," Sara added quietly, lying back against her pillow. "A greater gift than you'll ever know."
Surely, Mike could have poked holes in this sentimental rationale, but remarkably, he accepted these answers. "Well, we're all here now," he said with satisfaction.
Yes, Sara thought with certainty. We're all here now.