There was something about hospital waiting rooms, he thought as he sat with his hands clenched in fists on his knees; the very laws of time seemed to cease to exist, in these places. Every second seemed to last for an eternity, and yet there were moments when he would glance at his watch, and find himself shocked to discover that ten whole minutes had passed, in the blinking of an eye. It must be something about the nature of anticipation, he supposed, something about that feeling of being balanced on the edge of a knife, tragedy on one side and joy on the other, and having no sense of which way he would fall until the doctor came out, and gave him a push.

Cursed with both an overabundance of time and a crippling lack of it, Harry's thoughts tumbled chaotically through his mind, running over everything that had happened in the months since he'd first learned of Ruth's pregnancy. There was that terrible moment, when he'd been convinced he was about to lose her forever, only to hear the words I'm pregnant pouring out of her, shattering his heart as all the fear and all the love and all the horror he felt somehow doubled in an instant, as he stopped worrying about her and started worrying about them. There were those lovely dinners, when they danced ever nearer to one another. There was the night she fell into his bed for the second time, and the night she left him there, cold and alone. There were doctor's visits, and quiet conversations, whispers in the dark of the night as they shared their burdens with one another. There was a nursery, full of furniture and blankets and clothes and nappies they had bought together, boxes of her books and bags of her clothes and a bed that felt empty, without her in it.

There was a dream, a hope for the future, a hope with a name, now. Sophia Grace. Over the last few months, he'd devoted rather a lot of time to thinking about her, their little peanut. He thought about what she might look like, and how she might feel, cradled in his arms. He imagined sleepless nights, and first days of school, imagined ballet recitals and football matches, imagined telling bedtime stories and healing hurts both real and imagined with a well-placed kiss. He fretted about whether he'd live long enough to see her off to university, whether he'd see her wed, whether he'd be there, when she needed him. He worried about Ruth, and how she'd cope, if he left them all too soon. He thought about Catherine, and Graham, and every mistake he'd ever made.

Most of all, though, he'd thought about Ruth. Over the last few months, every moment he wasn't working, she was on his mind, in one form or another. She'd given him plenty to ponder, his Ruth. In the beginning, he'd wondered how she was feeling about all this, about having a child thrust upon her, so unexpectedly, so late in their lives, at a time when they were barely even speaking to each other. And coupled with that, he'd wondered how she felt, knowing she was pregnant again after the last time had gone so horribly, horribly wrong. They'd spoken about it now, and he didn't have to wonder, and for that he was incredibly grateful. In the last few months he'd drawn closer to her than he'd ever been before; she'd allowed him into her heart at last, and he'd found it to be much like his own, battered and bruised and somehow beating on, despite all that.

She'd been excited about the arrival of their baby, had Ruth. She'd done all her research, planned the whole thing out the way only she could, and now all her plans were turned to ruin. Harry didn't know why this was happening now, might not ever know, and he didn't know how they would ever recover, if…

It didn't bear thinking about, did it? They both loved their little peanut – Sophia, he heard Ruth's voice whisper the name in his ear – so fiercely, so deeply, and they'd never even seen her face. She had bound them together, had saved them from themselves, had given them the push they needed to finally be honest with each other. To finally love each other, and damn the rest.

Please be all right, he prayed. Please.

In the midst of this reverie, their friends came to him to offer him comfort in his hour of need.

Malcolm and Beth dragged themselves into the waiting room, each of them looking a bit nervous and entirely exhausted. He knew how they felt; it had been much too long since any of them had had a decent night's sleep. Somehow Harry found the strength to stand, and reached out to shake Malcolm's hand.

"Thank you for coming," Harry said, because it seemed like the thing to say, in a moment such as this. His voice sounded shockingly hoarse and unsteady to his own ears.

"What's the word?" Malcolm asked as they all took their seats on the hard plastic chairs.

Such an uninviting place, Harry thought as he glanced around. Makes you feel as if they don't want you to hang about. Which they probably don't, come to think of it.

"They've had to do an emergency C-section. I don't know why," he carried on quickly, when he saw Beth open her mouth to ask the question. Always with the questions, this one.

"They said the baby was in distress and then they threw me out. I've been waiting-" he glanced at his watch-"nearly thirty minutes, and they haven't told me anything."

Beth's brow furrowed in confusion. "It shouldn't take that long," she said in a low voice. "Ruth was telling me about it, the other night. If it's an emergency, they do it as quickly as possible. They should have finished by now."

I could have done without knowing that, Miss Bailey.

"It'll be all right, Harry," Malcolm said, shooting Beth an exasperated look. "Surely no news is good news, in a situation such as this?"

Harry found he heartily disagreed; the only good news he could imagine was that Ruth and Sophia were both fine and well, and if that were the case, he knew he would have heard by now. It was taking so bloody long, and for him that seemed to spell only disaster.

They were quiet for a time, each of them lost in their own thoughts, but surprisingly, it was Malcolm who broke the silence. Surprising, because Malcolm had always been such a somber fellow, never one to chatter on incessantly, unless it was about protocol or some particularly interesting new gadget he'd put together. Malcolm was not typically much good in emotionally delicate situations, but he was Harry's oldest friend, and when he started to speak, Harry's heart felt that little bit lighter for it.

"I couldn't believe it, when I saw she was pregnant," he began, giving Harry a timid little smile. "I suppose you two finally got your act together."

Harry grunted. "Didn't have much choice, really. To be honest, Malcolm, things were not going well between us, before the baby. I'd buggered it up-" Marry me, Ruth –"and she ran for the hills, the way she always did."

"She's been through so much, Harry," Malcolm said, as if Harry needed reminding. She'd lost her father, and her step-brother, lost her friends, lost her life, lost her husband, her step-son, her baby, lost her way. And in a way, Harry felt responsible for all of it. Well, maybe not her father, and certainly not Peter, but the rest of it. A heart is a heavy burden, she'd told him once; he was suffocating under the weight of his own, at present.

"She'll be all right," Beth said in a small voice.

Oh, Beth, Harry thought sadly. She was so bloody young, and still had so much to learn. She reminded him a bit of Zoe, and a bit of Tessa, before it all went wrong; she reminded him of so many bright young women who had come across his path, walked onto the Grid and looked to him for leadership, each of them burned and broken before their time.

"What's happening on the Grid?" he asked gruffly, trying to distract himself from his more immediate problems.

At this, Malcolm and Beth exchanged a long glance.

"Well," Malcolm began slowly, "Lucas took the fake file to the Chinese, as planned. It looks like they bought it; they certainly entered the codes, because just after you left, the bomb was activated. They had set up shop in an old warehouse, and the explosion leveled the whole building."

Good, Harry thought with a fierce wave of satisfaction. In the end, he'd kept the truth about the bomb away from Lucas, wanting to inflict as much devastation as possible on his enemy, wanting to destroy all those who would dare threaten his Ruth.

"And a few minutes after that, Lucas came walking onto the Grid, with Doctor Lahan in tow," Malcolm continued.

That was surprising; Harry had given up all hope of ever seeing Lucas North again. The man's loyalties were still in doubt, but the fact that he had come back to the Grid, come home, rather than turning tail and running for the hills, spoke volume about his character. He was grateful, too, to learn that the woman had lived; Lucas would never have forgiven him, if she had died. Harry knew a little something about how that felt, himself.

"Dimtri's put them in interrogation rooms, and he's going to leave them there overnight. They'll be fed and their wounds will be tended to, but he wanted more time to investigate what happened at the warehouse, and to determine if the Chinese threat has been neutralized."

"Lucas won't thank us for that," Harry said.

"He's just relieved the woman is alive," Beth told him.

As I would be, Harry thought.

Silence fell again as they waited, and time moved in fits and starts all around them. A phrase came to Harry, something his mother used to say; she would described this room as being one of those places where the veil is thin, where the divide between this world and the next shrank to almost nothing, and everything that happened carried with it a strange, almost ethereal quality. Abandoned roadside churches and old graveyards and hospital waiting rooms, places where anything could happen, and time itself lost all sense of meaning. She was a very spiritual sort of woman, his mother, not particularly concerned with religion but deeply concerned with possibility. He missed her every day.

Harry's watch told him nearly an hour and a half had passed, when the doctor finally came to see him.

He was a young man, this doctor, young, and tall, with dark circles under his eyes and prematurely stooped shoulders. Harry had no goodwill for this man, who had been so short and tense with them before Harry had been ushered from the delivery room, and he felt only dread upon seeing him again. Ponderously Harry rose to his feet, and braced himself for the worst.

"I'm sorry, we weren't properly introduced before," the doctor said, extending his hand. His skin was papery and dry, and the scent of antiseptic clung to him like a miasma.

"Harry Pearce."

"John Noble," the doctor returned his handshake firmly. "Would you like to have a seat?"

"No, I would not. Tell me," Harry nearly barked at the man, his whole body trembling with fear. Tell me Ruth's all right, tell me Sophia's well, please let me see them, please.

"Very well," Doctor Noble sighed. "We believe that Miss Evershed's premature labor was caused by polyhydramnios; it's a condition where amniotic fluid builds up, in the womb, and results in increased pressure. To make matters worse, the umbilical chord was wrapped around the baby's neck, which is what caused her to go into distress during the delivery."

Harry might not know very much about babies, but he knew enough to be drowned by fear, at those words. He sat down heavily in the nearest chair, dropping his head into his hands. Dimly he felt the reassuring touch of a hand on his shoulder; Malcolm, he knew, though he could not bring himself to look up. The doctor was still speaking, and Harry struggled to process his words, fighting back a rush of tears. He couldn't bear it, couldn't bear the thought of losing their little peanut, not now, not when they were so close-

"The operation was a success, though we have been monitoring the baby. There's some concern, with her having been born so early, that her lungs might not be fully developed."

Harry's head shot up at this news. "She's alive?"

The doctor nodded, smiling. "Born about-" he checked his watch "an hour and fifteen minutes ago, and in miraculously good health."

I'm going to kill him, Harry thought darkly. I'm going to absolutely bloody murder him.

"Are you telling me my daughter has been back there, all alone, for over an hour-" Harry was nearly snarling, as he rose to his feet once more, but the doctor held his ground.

"Forgive me, Mr. Pearce, but our first concern was for Miss Evershed and the baby. We needed to be sure the baby could breathe on her own and as for Miss Evershed-"

Oh God, no. It wasn't that he'd forgotten about Ruth; he'd just assumed that if she weren't well, the doctor would have said something before now. She was so strong, his Ruth; she didn't look it, with her huge, warm eyes and gentle figure, with her soft voice and her kind heart, but she had bones of steel, and had survived traumas that would have broken a brave man in half. Of course she was all right, he'd told himself, she's Ruth.

Now, though, now he was afraid.

"There were some…complications. She's lost rather a lot of blood. It took us longer than usual, to stabilize her."

"But she's all right?" This from Beth, her words muffled by the hand she'd clamped over her mouth in shock.

The doctor nodded, and relief took Harry like a punch to the gut.

"She's stable. We'll be bringing her back to her room, in just a few minutes. In the meantime, Mr. Pearce, would you like to meet your daughter?"

There was nothing in this world Harry wanted more than to see his child. Nothing, except perhaps to see Ruth, to see her holding his child, to know that both of his girls were safe and well. He nodded dumbly, and started to follow the doctor from the room, but something pulled him back.

Harry walked back across the room, and shook Malcolm's hand one more time.

"Thank you," he said softly.

Malcolm was grinning fit to burst. "Congratulations, Harry," he said in a voice choked with emotion. Harry had to turn away, quickly, before he lost it completely.

"Beth," he started to speak, but she cut him off, all but flying into his arms. She hugged him fiercely for a long moment, and then pulled back, blushing.

"Congratulations, Harry," she said with a sheepish grin.

This day just keeps getting stranger and stranger, Harry thought in a daze.

"Would you mind-"

"I'll go right now," she cut him off, clearly anticipating his next words. "I'll get some things together, and I'll be back as quick as I can."

"The baby things are all at mine," Harry said, running his hand through his sparse hair and wondering at how quickly things could change. They had a baby, now, a proper baby who would need clothes and nappies, a baby he was going to hold in his arms in just a few moments.

"If you don't mind, Harry, I still have a key. I can go with her," Malcolm volunteered.

Harry nodded, and that was that. Malcolm and Beth departed to see to the necessities, and Harry turned back to the doctor.

"Right then," Harry said, squaring his shoulders. "Let's go."