Project Sapling: Part 3:5

Chapter 31

Graduation came with a sense of encroaching doom. The rumors on base – that a medicinal botany class had been planned for the coming year – made me both elated and horrified. I would be glad to be taking a spot on the staff, if the rumors naming me for the position were true, but that would also mean one terrible sacrifice: The flip of the rumor was that General Preston had asked by name for Erica to be shipped east to him.

I wasn’t sure I was ready for that. If we were separated, there was no guarantee I would ever be able to see her again, even if both of us survived long enough to leave the army. The chances of losing contact with her were terrifying. I found myself in Grandad’s office more than once, begging him to do something to prevent this transfer from occurring, only to be turned out with a pained look and an explanation that it was impossible given the current circumstances.

We accepted our graduation papers with numb hands, aware that we had only a few short weeks of leave before we would be expected to report back to base, me to take up a position on staff, Erica to enlist as a full member of the Regular Army and immediately be shipped East to serve on Presto Preston’s personal staff.

Four hours later, after the ceremony had completed and we were at our liberty, dress uniforms loosened and the press of the crowd escaped, we found ourselves alone in our room in Mac’s staff housing, perhaps for the last time together. Erica had packed half of her bare things a few days earlier, leaving only what she would need for the last few days before graduation, and now flopped boneless and stormy over her bunk, staring at the ceiling.

“Well... This is it, I guess,” she muttered, anger and spite and frustration evident. “End of the line.” She rolled over, looking up at me with a glare. “I’ll write, when I can.”

“Erica, don’t, please,” I started.

“Don’t what, don’t write?” she snapped.

“Please don’t start a fight, not right now. I’m sorry, okay. I’m not happy about this either.” I gulped, shaking my head and searching for words in my frustrated, helpless rage at the situation. “I’m sorry. I... Look, if I can do anything, anything at all, to help you, please, just tell me and I’ll do it. I don’t want to lose you, Erica! What makes you think I like this arrangement?” I knew my voice was cracking and booming around the room, my emotions overflowing their cup and my fear at losing her bubbling up to the surface like oil spreading over water.

She looked at me for a very long time, then sat up, reaching into a drawer and withdrawing from its depths a bottle of alcohol and holding it out for me. “For now? Just have a drink with me, will you. I need to down myself. Promise it’s just this once...”

I considered the bottle, an already-opened bottle of Old Salt 90, quite possibly one of the most flammable options available, with a certain amount of dread. I hadn’t drunk more than once or twice since I had enlisted, and those had been uncomfortable occasions. Holding my breath to avoid inhaling the scent of chemical butterscotch flavoring, I opened the bottle and took the first long swig, regretting it instantly as the liquid burned down my throat and set my stomach on fire. I followed it with a second, nearly choking, and then passed the bottle back to her, shaking my head in a vane attempt to clear the taste.

She took it from me, and took her own long swig from the noxious bottle.

***

“You are WHAT?” Grandad’s face was a study in rage and incoherent frustration, staring at us over his desk with a look that said he wished to be anywhere else, hearing anything else.

So did I.

“Pregnant, sir.” Erica’s voice was small, and quiet, quailing under his fury as she repeated herself. “I got him drunk after graduation and had my way with him, sir, it’s my fault.”

I winced, very uncomfortable, from my spot next to her, holding a rigid attention. It wasn’t a lie, but it also wasn’t a very pleasant way of putting what had happened.

Mind you, what had happened had been rather unpleasant and awkward, so I supposed it fit.

“You are aware that is a violation of conduct, yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know there was a reason Brunhilde required my permission to marry your father, right? You know you are considered military property, correct?”

“Yes, sir.” She gulped, looking guiltily to me.

“You realize I have to discipline you both, correct?”

“But sir–”

“But nothing, Specialist Cole. You have both damaged military property, and you will both be disciplined accordingly.” Grandad sighed, shaking his head and turning away. “You’ll arrange to have it taken care of promptly.”

“WHAT?” Erica stood, abruptly.

Grandad rounded on her, still furious. “You are military property, miss Cole. The military dictates what you do with your body. You are an unmarried woman and therefore the regulations state that you will seek an abortion immediately or face further discipline.”

The blood drained from Erica’s face, eyes going wide with shock before overflowing with tears. “What?” she repeated, quieter this time, her horror evident. “But what if I want to keep it? I...” She gulped back tears, then continued, firmly. “I want to keep it, sir.”

I felt sick.

The flood of half-memory that had hit me the morning after graduation day, when I had woken with a pounding head and queasy stomach and Erica looking at me like she couldn’t stand to ever look at me again, had been bad enough. Now the thought that that unpleasant memory that refused to stop rattling around my head would be grounds to further humiliate both of us, and her in particular, was making me want to simply turn into a puff of smoke on the wind.

“Wait a minute, if she was married she’d be allowed to keep it?” The unfairness of that hit me like a punch to the gut. And then, a moment later, a second fist of pure icy knowledge hit me, grabbing me by the stomach and wrenching the words out of my body physically before I could second-guess myself. “Then marry me, Erica. Permission to marry my child’s mother, sir?” I turned to Grandad with a defiant glare.

He gave me a look that spoke volumes of both disappointment and deep pride, sighed deeply once more, and then nodded, the tension going out of his shoulders like water from a breaking dam. “Fine. Good. Permission granted, Bronson, Cole. Get out of my office and go find a chaplain. I’ll sort the rest out.”

I grabbed her by the hand and dragged her out of the office, guiding her through the hallway, knowing she was blind with tears still.

Finally, she sniffed out a single, soft, “Thank you,” before dissolving into horrified sobs again and leaning into me. “Thank you...”

I did my best to hold her upright, my own shock and horror and disbelief washing over me in unrelenting waves. This was the only way, I knew, to keep her safe. To keep her, for that matter. I was certain that if I hadn’t acted swiftly, the discipline would have included a permanent separation that we could not have avoided.

The separation came regardless.

When the vindictive head of the Eastern Branch learned that Erica Cole was now a married, pregnant woman, and had been assigned to Oz’s clerical staff until she began her maternity leave, the reaction was a swift and decisive reassignment of the party in his mind responsible for the denial of his desires.

I was shipped to the Eastern front three weeks after our marriage license went through. Erica was required to stay on the Western front, assigned a fleet of clerical tasks until such time as her ‘condition’ forced her off duty.

My punishment for misconduct came twofold.

First, a demotion, having been slotted to receive promotion to Staff Sergeant upon graduation, back down as far as General Preston could shove me, leaving me bearing the title of simply Specialist once again. Second, I was assigned to fill the recently-emptied role of medic to a reconnaissance team lead by a particularly belligerent Staff Sergeant with a name I was already too familiar with.

The third form of punishment came when I was informed of the addendum to the uniform code specific to Edward Wright’s unit that mandated a particular, and by my thoughts quite silly, haircut and color, as per “moral boosting requests.” Once the required process was achieved, I decided that I looked like I had a Syrian hamster riding on my skull, the tuft of hair left over-long at the crown of my head sticking straight up in a scraggly, straw-blond triangle thanks to the efforts of the bleach to turn my hair a color it should never have tried to be.

Once I met my new Sergeant, saw the way he styled his tall blond tuft, I understood. This was an attempt to make us Uniform to him, indistinguishable from the man who lead us.

I wondered how many times he had been targeted by the enemy snipers specifically because of that blond flag of hair before he had gotten this ridiculous haircut written into the regulations.

I hated him on sight, and not just because of how I knew his name.

I knew it well.

“So do you piss to the left, or what?” was my over-loud greeting to him upon introduction. There was nothing more that he could do to me, after all. I may as well start my career in the East with as much flourish and power as I could. “My wife told me what you did to her.” Maybe, I could hope, one or two of the men I would be working with would be my allies if they knew what kind of a person their leader was. “And what she did to you in return.”

Watching the blood drain from his face and the frowns and suspicious looks from a few of the men behind him was worth all of the coming months of torment that he could muster. “Your... wife?”

“Yeah.” I flashed the feral grin that tied me as tightly to Oz as Erica’s dimpled chin did to Ondine. I swayed to boom the next sentence over his shoulder, invoking my father’s ability to simply speak at a shouting volume, ricocheting the accusation around the group assembled. “Preacher’s daughter, blonde, bites, I’m sure you know who I’m talking about.” I shrugged, tossed my duffle on my assigned bunk, and smirked at my new commander. I was sure I would be punished for that stunt, if not officially then unofficially, but it didn’t matter. I would gladly scrub latrines for the rest of time to have that fact of his existence laid bare to those he commanded.

My words had spread beyond the confines of our barracks by the time I made it to lunch.

“So you’re the new transfer who knocked Wright down a few pegs.” The woman who dropped her lunch tray on the table across from me looked to be about thirty-five, of Middle Eastern or possible Mediterranean descent, with dark olive skin and curling black hair and dark, slanted eyes, dressed in the jumpsuit of a mechanic at the motorpool. She introduced herself as Marco Spade, and it was only when she reached out one hand to shake that I realized that, like the quartermaster’s assistant Peach who had left me in my father’s jacket so that I would have a brand new one upon return, this person had four arms, the lower set still busying itself with rearranging the contents of her lunch tray. It was only after that that I fully registered the odd configuration of her ears, the rays of cartilage that aided in mobility and expression creating the scalloped edges of the distinct bat-wing shape I had become so accustomed to on Idris and Peach and the rest of the base Geckos I had interacted with that I simply overlooked the feature any more. “Hart owes me twenty bucks – You look just like your dad.” It was said with a sort of amused fondness that made me choke.

My first ally in the East had found me.

***

I couldn’t decide between joy or dread when I found out that I would be having a son. Joy came with the knowledge that if he turned out anything like his father, this boy would be sweet hearted and kind, all too willing to lay his own wishes to the side to help those he loved. The dread followed quick on its heels, with the knowledge that my father’s rot was carried in his blood, and that none of the women who had born his children had managed to have a living son. The baby boy buried under Hildie’s Oleander bush had died of a malfunction of the heart carried on my father’s line. All I could do was pray that the generation of separation would be enough to keep my son in this world.

The clerical duties I was assigned alternated between mind-numbing data entries and enlightening transcriptions. I was officially off active jumps for Chronocrew until such time as my body no longer served as an incubator for another life – the potential for extreme unforseen events was far too large when dealing with a pregnancy and timetravel – but that didn’t mean someone didn’t have to do the manual data and report entries into the fancy new records backup system and check for errors. Half the time, I was doing maths again on the expense reports, filing the recipes, and making copies.

Just after I was informed that my son most likely did suffer from a cardiac abnormality, serious though probably treatable, and would be requiring transfer to a specialist hospital for safe delivery, Oz Roe showed up in my cramped little cubicle in the basement level of the Chronocrew administrative office, dropping a folder package into the pile of papers I was in the process of woodenly transcribing.

“What?” was all I could manage, staring at the folders in noncomprehension and failure to compute.

“Congratulations, kid. You’re solid with the Timefuckers. Soon as you’re able again you’ll be given a permanent assignment.” Snagging the chair from the cubicle next to mine – Selene had told me I was going to give myself a cold if I insisted on working to the full duration of our shift when we were technically at liberty after finishing our assignment for the day, and taken off an hour previous – Oz sat down, slinging his legs around the back of the chair and folding his arms over it, propping his chin on one arm, and extending to me the white paper sack in his other hand. “Quinns loves you, asked for you by name. Said you’re the best Point Sensitive she’s seen in years. Couldn’t easily give you to her with Preston breathing down my neck, but now that that little bit of business is sorted, here we are. And here you are.” He had barely said two words to me since the day Oscar and I had fled his office in shame after receiving permission to marry. Now, here he was, still shoving a suspiciously heavy bag at me and looking decidedly unprofessional slouched over the back of an office chair like –

I flinched, looking away. He looked too much like Oscar would in forty years, posture and face and energy full of defeated love and admiration, for me to keep from bursting into tears. We had been able to see each other once since he was deployed East, over SatCast for an allotment of fifteen minutes. It had been about long enough to catch up on a much needed fight, and then apologize quickly in the thirty seconds before the connection had been cut off abruptly. It would be another three months before we would have another fifteen minute SatCast allotment, by which time I would be hopefully introducing him to our month-old son. I hoped he would look like his father, as much as Oscar did his grandfather. I hoped he would be able to grow up to tell...

The bag bumped into my shoulder, forcefully, and I looked up to see Grandad staring at me with a look of such sympathy and understanding that I couldn’t help but to burst into tears anyway. I took the bag he was still diligently nudging me with, opening it to find an assortment of pastries and cookies.

“Christ, Erica, I meant break an arm, not get yourself pregnant,” he said, shaking his head and sighing loudly, looking down at my swollen belly.

“I know. But I chose this instead,” I informed him, quietly, once I had reigned in my horrible sobbing, and retrieved a cherry turnover from the bag.

“Do you regret that decision?” he asked, equally quietly.

I shrugged, helplessly, beginning to pick the pastry apart at the edges, failing to make the object in my hand into something to eat. “Yes? No? Fish?” Looking up at him, I shook my head, running a hand over my belly and taking a deep breath. “No.”

“Good. Living with a choice you regret can drive you mean all too quick. Trust me on that one.”

I nodded, woodenly. It was a lie, of course. Of course I regretted my choice, of course I should have arranged to fall off the obstacle course and break an arm, I knew that much. This decision had been stupid, desperate, and made in anger and resentment, without any regard to what the outcome would really hold for anyone other than myself. I should have made a different choice, something that would only effect me, not rob my Oscar of his chances to stay safe.

I wasn’t even sure what I was supposed to call him anymore.

Four years of living in the same space had cemented the bond between us, and my mind filed him as my family one way or another. For years we had used the language of siblings, and now? Now that language was entirely vulgar in context. To call the father of my son my brother sounded all too close to something it was definitely not.

And calling him my husband also felt vulgar, for the same reason, and an entirely new one.

He may have made the decision to ask me to marry him, but I had forced his hand there.

“So. A boy, eh?” Grandad’s voice, teasing and warm and friendly as a drenching rain at the end of a parched summer, pulled me back to the present and the shards of pastry in my hands. “Hope he’s a terror. Would serve you right. I cannot wait to meet my great-grandson...” He grinned at me, face suddenly giddy with elation and what I finally registered as pride.

I burst into tears again, this time from the sheer relief of the tension that had been Oz’s anger at me for the past six months. A moment later, he had discarded his office chair and wrapped me up in a tight hug, holding me until the tears stopped, murmuring soothing nothings about how terrible pregnancy was and how it would all feel much less dire and deadly once that was over and done with.

I put aside the backlog of reports I was filing – the one I had been boggling my mind over had been a ten-year old Spike Report from the Eastern front, documenting an investigation of a Temporal Flux large enough to have been a Jump point, but with half the relevant data from the reporting officer simply missing because the report had simply stopped – and let my Grandad guide me up out of the basement and into the sunlight. I would find the second half of the incident report tomorrow. For now, Selene was right – I was tired, and needed rest and food and something to think about other than numbers and what had happened after the officers arrived on the scene at that Spike.

I barely registered that I had eaten dinner until Grandad was taking my tray from me and returning to the table with a plate of treats.

It turned out he had actually secured my permanent place on the Chronocrew two days before I had had to report to him that I had made myself pregnant, scrambling to pull as many strings as possible as quickly as he could to keep me away from General Prescott Preston, overriding his orders by way of my irreplaceable status on Colonel Quinns’s Temporal Stabilization team. If I had managed to keep my faith in his ability to protect me, I would have been told about it a few days later. As it stood, he had been too frustrated and sore at me for choosing to do something so unfathomably life-altering to bring me the news until this moment. The knowledge that my baby was sick had spread up the command chain like lightning, and that was not something past which whatever resentment he had born for my actions could prevail. I was going to need him, and so he had arrived, baring news that I had been chosen specifically for a talent I wasn’t certain I really possessed. Others seemed to think I did, though...

I found the second half of the Spike Report by accident.

Someone, unknown, had clearly gone to considerably lengths to conceal the document, and it made me wonder why it hadn’t been simply destroyed.

I had overturned a filing cabinet with my bulk, signaling the end of my active duty and the beginning of my maternity leave. That, I decided, from my place where I had unadvisedly dropped to my hands and knees in an attempt to wrangle escaping files and keep papers from skittering across the polished concrete floor, was for the best. I was now waiting, impatiently, for Selene to return with a large man or two to assist me to my feet again, since getting back up was not happening on my own.

I had more or less corralled the papers into a pile and was staring forlornly at the heavy filing cabinet, on its side with its drawers splayed open drunkenly, when I saw the corner of a paper sticking out from behind one, the particularly sticky drawer that often gave me grief and whose refusal to properly shut this time had resulted in my frustrated slamming of the thing and turning, too quickly, which had overbalanced me and in turn thrown me into the side of the cabinet in question, knocking it over.

I cocked my head to the side, observing the paper for a moment before reaching out and contorting my wrist to pluck it, or rather them, out from their place behind the drawer. It was three papers, folded together tightly, first in half and then again into quarters, the outermost two segments of paper badly damaged, crumpled and torn, smeared with grease, from what was evidently years of jamming up the drawer someone had once stuffed them behind.

I unfolded the paper with trembling hands, sensing as I did the thickening of air currents and uptick of electricity that accompanied a Point in time, knowing that I had a choice before me, to either read what was on the papers I had just found, or stuff them back behind the drawer where they came from and pretend none of what had just happened had.

believed to be a small spacetime craft of some sort, containing the remains of one alien female, and one infant, also extraterrestrial, live, age approximating human one year. Spacetime craft is of antique design according to expert, dating to a period prior to that of the current Authority, and both occupants appear to be of approximate morphological structure to fit the same era as spacetime craft – see footnote.

Remains of female transferred to morgue at Eastern headquarters for further examination, infant transferred to medical facility at Boise branch for testing and quarantine.

At the bottom of that was an extensive footnote explaining the way that Chameleon morphology had changed over the millennia of their species’ existence, as well as the design of their spacetime craft, and finally a suggestion that the infant in question might have been a temporal refugee, sent to shelter against a cataclysm on any number of the Ghayan colonized worlds during that era. After that, the rest was too damaged to read.

When Selene finally returned with someone to help me to my feet, I took the paper I held, and went to match it with the half I had been struggling with several days previous.

Three days later, they came to take Idris back to his people.

The man who came to knock on our door, flanked by a pair of Regular Army goons, was tall, whip thin, with dark hair and a Mediterranean complexion, steel-gray eyes that made me nervous, and a smile to match. I disliked him on sight, before I even learned of his errand at my front door.

“Ah, you would be the Cole woman.” His words made me dislike him more. “I am Chief Minister Luco Deva, and I believe you are currently standing between me and my object here. Step aside please, ma’am.” His smile deepened, no less cold, and I felt the unconscious tug to follow his instructions in the same place in my bones that my father’s voice had resonated. I stepped aside without meaning to, and he entered my home. “Good, now, I believe you are harboring one of our children here, is that correct?” The door clicked shut, and one of the pair of goons stepped smartly in front of it, barring my exit from my own living space.

“Harboring – No he lives here.” A chill washed over me as I realized why this stranger had arrived on my doorstep, and what it was about to mean. I was stuck with a certainty that only accompanied Fixed Moments where my thoughts and actions overlapped with what memories would follow, and I wished I hadn’t said anything, but I knew that there was no avoiding what was to come.

“Go check upstairs,” the man Deva instructed the goon not keeping me trapped in my house, before narrowing his eyes and turning to me again. “You and I shall have a little chat, shall we? I want to thank you, miss, for your diligence. Without your admirable thoroughness I would not have been able to find our dear Enfanta and take the child back home.”

My skin crawled as I heard yelling from upstairs, Idris shouting something from the office and Marz barking an order, only to be cut off by a tight command from the goon. “Your... what?” I knew what the word meant, but the way he had said it made me feel there was a context I was missing.

“And of course I must thank you for your kind and gentle care of our Beloved One – more over I am told you are partially responsible for saving the child’s life?” Deva purred, his smile sliding into my mind like alcohol and numbing my reactions, slowing my ability to turn this conversation in the direction I wanted it instead of being lead along like a lamb to the sacrifice. “Yes, for that we owe you a debt as well – remember that when the times comes. Without your aid I would never have found the Heir.”

“No, let me go, I’m not going anywhere!” Idris’ panicked voice cut through the fog in my head like a ray of sunlight, pulling me back into the controls of my mind and out of the locked-in space I had been placed into by this Deva man’s hypnotic gaze.

The Regular Army goon had latched one huge hand around Idris’ skinny arm, and was dragging the boy bodily down the stairs, Idris attempting his best to stick himself in the stairwell with all limbs not currently being wrenched on by the goon.

“Careful – do not damage the child,” Deva cooed, turning to go take Idris by the other arm and drag the protesting boy down the last few steps.

I hate these fucking lizards so much.

Deva was obviously a much more powerful shapeshifter than any I had previously met, able to build himself a seamlessly human-seeming body and maintain utter control over his form. There were no telltale third eyelids blinking or batwinged ears, no whipping tail or tongue that tasted the air like a snake, or even just the odd over-perfection that pervaded the Geckos’ best human morphs, simply flat, cold gray eyes that entranced me with a single glance.

The goon who had previously been standing in front of my door took three long steps and clasped both gigantic hands around my shoulders before I could react, squeezing tight, holding me still with my arms pinned at my sides. I could hear Marz’s cursing from halfway up the stairs as they struggled to descend without the aid of their usual companion keeping them steady. Idris had come to be as much of a part of Marz’s essential kit as their weapon or cane were.

I stood, rooted to the spot and powerless, as Idris was compelled bodily though our living room and to the front door, fighting the whole way, simultaneously being cooed at and coaxed by the velvety, honey-voiced Deva and pushed along bodily by the goon three times his size.

“No, I’m not going with you! Let me go, I’m staying here, I don’t want to go with you!” Idris’ voice was pleading and frantic, then angry, and he turned, quickly, to kick out at the goon propelling him toward the door. The man caught the child’s foot in one hand, and without seeming to exert any effort whatsoever to do so, plucked Idris off his remaining foot and slung the child over one shoulder, marching smartly out the door as Idris started to thrash wildly, kicking and beating on the goon carrying him, and scream profanity that a child of eleven should not have known how to assemble.

“Once again, thank you, miss Cole, for your aid in this endeavor. I am sure we will meet again.” With that, Deva left my home, taking the still screaming Idris with him. When the man who still held me pinned by the shoulders released me and left, shutting the door with finality, I fell to my knees, wrapping both arms around my baby in his rounded bubble of safety within my skin, and felt the world go black.

***

When I woke, everything was familiar and unfamiliar at once. The world was bright, and smelled of chemicals and clean sheets and something else, indefinable and slightly sweet. The sounds were both familiar and unfamiliar as well, beeping and humming and whirring and whooshing.

Everything hurt. My head was fuzzy, and I felt weak.

I closed my eyes again.

Hospital.

For a moment, I thought that I had been dreaming, and would open my eyes to see my friend Maria sitting worried at my bedside, having jogged miles carrying me to bring me to medicine.

A moment later, a final sound hit my ears, and my eyes flew open again to see that the person sitting at the side of my bed was Oscar, clean and well and well-dressed in his freshly-pressed parade greens, bouncing a cooing pink baby in both arms and grinning madly though a face wet with joyous tears.

“... ten till toes and one little nose, ten little fingers – where do they goes? One goes there, one goes here, one goes in-to daddy’s ear!” He was singing an inane little rhyme to the gurgling bundle in his arms, one finger wrapped firmly in a tiny, pudgy hand, little fingers curled tight and squeezing, drawing Oscar’s fingertip inexorably toward the tiny, questing mouth.

Oscar looked up at me, abruptly, and I realized I must have tried to say his name, but my throat was too dry to speak and what came out had been little more than a croaking “Os...?”

The already mad, weeping grin was joined with a cackling laugh, and he practically flung himself and our baby onto the hospital bed at my side, depositing the precious bundle in my arms before I had a chance to even sit up, and folding his long frame around me, curling onto his side to fit between me and the railing of the bed, one index finger still clenched in our baby’s chubby fist. “Look at this thing, Erica! Look at it! You made this!” He was still laughing like a madthing, the hand not still held by the baby going to help me to sit up, then brushing the tuft of dark hair off of our son’s forehead and coax the baby’s wrinkly little brow to open, his dark eyes already focusing on points around the room before flitting back to his father’s face. Finally, my baby looked up at my face, found my eyes, and my world became nothing but those two points of infinite love.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, finally, when Oscar had helped me to sit up and drink water and I had finally, finally pulled myself out of the depths of my baby’s eyes, looking up at his father with the first moment of confusion. “You’re supposed to be in–”

“We’re in Chicago, Erica. You needed better facilities...” his face fell, the reality of our son’s health pulled back to the forefront of both of our minds, for the moment overshadowing the sudden irrepressible joy of having him here. “He’ll be alright if he’s given proper medical attention, they said. Might need surgery as he gets older, but he’s going to be able to get older, is the key...”

What lay between us, stated clearly in the haggared expression on Oscar’s face when he spoke, was that Oscar understood what the doctors were saying to him when he was told the bare facts of our son’s condition, and had just spent as many hours as he could pouring as much of his raw Potential into our son as he could to stabilize his unsteady, weak heart enough to hold him without the need for monitor wires interfering.

“I’ve been given leave. A few months. Enough to help you get started taking care of him, at least. It’ll be okay...” Oscar wrapped his free arm around me again, right index finger still held tight by our baby, and leaned into my shoulder, looking down in wonder at the little miracle we had wrought between us. “What do you think we should call him?”

I had given it too many lonely nights of thought not to have the answer on the tip of my tongue. “Do you know what ‘Theodore’ means? Because it’s goddamn perfect.”

“Theodore?” Oscar tested out the sound of it on his own tongue, looking down into the little red face of our little gift from god. “Theo. It is perfect. He’s perfect.” He said it reverently, and grinned up at me, giddy, and I knew he meant it. “You’re right.”

For now, that was enough.

For Now, The End.