Crying. The crying is all she hears. It overwhelms her, engulfs her, and consumes her until she is all but drowning in it. She faintly registers the doctor telling her that it's a boy and for a moment, that is the only thing that matters in Emma Swan's life - the little baby boy to her right. Her son, her child. She's consumed by the desire to look at him, hold him, soothe his tears, memorize his face. Does he have her sparkling green eyes or Neal's muddy brown ones? Will his hair grow in soft blonde curls or dark brown tufts? She needs to know, she has to know and dear lord, her precious baby is still crying.
As she begins to turn to him, to reach out and calm him, her daze vanishes and she is reminded of the decision she made months ago with a clear mind. Reality hits her like a battery ram.
He's not hers.
He can't be hers.
He deserves better. Better than a runaway foster kid in jail for a mom and a no show father who put her there. Her - no the - baby was innocent, untainted by this cruel world. He would never need to know how to steal a car or swipe a wallet. He will never discover the best places to sleep on the streets or where to hide from foster dads when they get a little too drunk and a little too handsy. He won't have her life. It's the one thing she has ever been certain of.
The baby will have two normal parents. Parents who will give him a home and a good life. They'll buy him toys, set up playdates with the neighbor kids, and read him stories before bed. He will get the perfect childhood, the peaceful suburban life she spent so many years desperately trying to grab for herself. She couldn't get it back then, and she couldn't get it now. Someone else would have the privilege of providing that wonderful life for her baby.
Not yours, she reminds herself.
After all, why would he be? How is it possible that Emma Swan would be blessed with something as incredible as a baby- one she had the means to provide for, one she could keep. No, life had kicked her down enough times to instill its lesson: Emma Swan wasn't worthy of a normal life. She would never get a happy ending, a family, or someone to love her.
Her birth parents left her on the side of a freeway, her adoptive parents - who claimed to love her for three years - sent her back to the foster system the moment that pregnancy test came back positive. Foster parents beat her, starved her, and in the end, cast her out on the streets. The only man she had ever loved - the only person she had opened herself up to - had betrayed her and sent her to a prison cell, pregnant and alone.
She turns her face away and her fingers grip the railing of the bed. She holds on for dear life, testing the last of her willpower. She knows if sees him, let alone holds him, she won't be able to let him go.
And she has to let him go.
"It's not too late Emma, you can still change your mind," the doctor pleads.
No. It is too late. She can't change her mind.
Can't they see she isn't doing this for herself? That she isn't some irresponsible teenager desperately trying to avoid the burden of a child? She's doing this for him - to give him his best chance. Didn't the doctor realize just how badly he was tempting her by begging her to reconsider? She didn't deserve to be a mother.
"I can't be a mother," she mumbles out, still gripping her bedside, straining to hold back tears.
The doctor muttered some final words to the nurse before he walked past her, carrying a sleeping bundle out the door.
Emma swore she didn't have any heart left to break, that is was all dead and frozen from years of abuse and abandonment. She was wrong. The last shreds her fragile heart rested with the baby boy that was being whisked down the hall - away from her forever.