Chapter Thirty Two

I t was all far messier, bloodier, and smellier than Cordelia had ever imagined it to be. On the other hand, her heart was full and she was crying when she finally heard the baby scream.

Then Lydia looked up at her and an instant message passed between them. Cordelia gripped Magda’s shoulders, pulled her in and held her tight. “Just a minute,” she said. “Just give Lydia a minute.”

Magda was panting, sweating and crying and on the phone Oliver was crying just as hard. She turned to Cordelia. “You were here,” she said.

“Every step of the way,” said Cordelia.

Magda’s eyes were big in her face. “Is it going to be alright?”

And it wasn’t a pronoun mistake. She wasn’t calling her baby it. She didn’t mean just the baby. She meant every day of the rest of her life. Was every day after this going to be shattered and broken?

Cordelia glanced over at Lydia, who was examining the baby, hands bloody and covered in god knew what else. She squeezed Magda’s shoulders again. “She’s in good hands.”

Good hands. Good, safe, strong hands. Hands that could be trusted. Hands that Cordelia had held and stroked and knew that she should trust. She was asking Magda to entrust her child’s life to this woman and she wasn’t even able to trust her heart to her? A woman who refused to make promises she knew she couldn’t keep.

How stupid was that?

How stupid and broken and flat out wrong.

Because Lydia was everything. Lydia was a rock. Lydia had led them all through this with calm confidence and if Cordelia couldn’t see that, couldn’t extrapolate from that how Lydia could lead anyone through anything, then she didn’t deserve someone that amazing.

Then Lydia was turning to both of them, was smiling, and Cordelia could feel Magda holding her breath. But Lydia was practically beaming, offering up the baby who was wriggling now, small and red and messy.

“Magda, meet your daughter.”

Cordelia bit her lip because any second she was about to start sobbing. Then she looked up and saw that Lydia was looking at her, looking at her in a deep and important way that meant something that Cordelia couldn’t quite put her finger on.

But she knew that things had changed.

Something had changed.

“She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Oliver was sobbing over the phone.

“Have you chosen a name?” Cordelia asked to stop herself falling apart.

“Jacqueline, after my mother,” Oliver said, wiping his eyes.

“Over my dead body,” said Magda.

“But Mags, we talked about this,” said Oliver.

“You call her that then we’re calling her Jaqueline-Agnieszka after my mother too.”

“You can’t call our daughter something that I can’t even spell,” moaned Oliver.

The baby snuffled a little and Magda’s face lost its irritation as she looked down. “What about Ewa?” she said. “Even you can spell that. ”

The camera was pointed at the baby, and Oliver’s face softened. “Ewa,” he tried. “Yes, Ewa, I like it. Little Ewa.”

And this was what it was all about, wasn’t it? Not babies necessarily, though Cordelia wouldn’t draw a line. But about creating something together, whatever that may be. About compromising and arguing and fixing until you were proud of what you had together. About trusting.

She could do that.

She could do that for someone like Lydia.

So what if she was going to live an hour away or ten hours away. People did that all the time, didn’t they? It shouldn’t be a deal breaker. She should trust that Lydia knew what she was doing because Lydia did. She should…

Should.

She grinned to herself.

“Um, I’m no expert here,” Magda said. “But, er, I don’t think we’re actually done?”

“You just have to pass the placenta,” Lydia said calmly, swooping in.

Magda looked up at Cordelia and then carefully, preciously, passed Ewa to her. Cordelia grasped the little bundle, unfathomably light in her hands.

“Cord?”

“Yes?” said Cordelia, already entranced by the wrinkled nose and tiny fingernails.

“If anything happens, Cord,” said Magda.

Cordelia looked at her. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Yes,” said Magda, eyes still big. “But if it does.” She looked down at her daughter. “If it does, you need to be her mum, okay?”

“Oliver will—”

“Oliver will fall apart and be useless. You’ll need to keep him in line,” Magda said briskly. “You’re her godmother, it’s up to you to make sure she gets the strong female role model that she needs.”

“I’m her what?” asked Cordelia.

“You heard,” Magda said, face already starting to crease a little in pain .

MAGDA WAS FEEDING Ewa, the two of them cuddled up on the couch, Oliver still on Facetime, watching on adoringly. Lydia was packing things away, throwing towels into the washing machine, scrubbing her hands.

“That was incredible,” said Cordelia, coming up to the kitchen sink.

“It usually is,” said Lydia. “One of the better parts of being a doctor.”

“I’m not sure I really realized,” Cordelia said, leaning against the counter. “I mean, it sounds stupid, but I don’t think I realized just how important you are. You’re there at the beginning and there at the end. You’re the first person some people see, and the last person others see. I guess… I guess I understand why they call it a calling.”

“Cordelia Beckett, are you being sentimental?” Lydia laughed.

The rain spattered against the window, the wind slowing a bit now. “Seems like a sentimental kind of night, doesn’t it?”

“It’s a busy kind of night,” Lydia said. “Now, I want you to keep an eye on Magda. Everything should be fine, but if there’s excessive bleeding then you need to ring me immediately, alright? Anything that seems a bit… off, just call me. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

“Where are you going?”

“I still have another patient, remember?” Lydia said, drying her hands off on a clean kitchen towel. “But you’ll be fine here. There’s no one I trust more.”

Cordelia nodded. She’d forgotten about Toby’s grandmother in the heat of the moment. “I’ll deal with things here.”

“I’ll get an ambulance over here as soon as I can. The two of them need to be checked over, even if I’m relatively sure that everything’s fine.”

“Right.”

Lydia paused for a second. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “There’s no one I’d have rather had here with me. ”

“Not even an obstetrician?” Cordelia said.

“Well, maybe one of those as well,” grinned Lydia. “Now I need to go.”

THE RAIN WAS no more than a steady drizzle when the shining blue lights of the ambulance finally gleamed through the windows. Cordelia checked her phone. Two twenty five. She watched carefully as the paramedics loaded Magda and the baby into the back of the ambulance.

“Sure you don’t want me to come?”

Magda fussed with the baby and shook her head. “You’ve done more than enough. Anyway, Oliver’s already at the hospital. Which seems weird. I mean, for the husband to be there before his pregnant wife.”

“Um, you’re not pregnant anymore,” Cordelia said.

Magda laughed. “Guess there go all my excuses then.”

“Yes, we’ll just have to stop the car every five minutes because you’ve actually got a small bladder, not because you’ve got a baby inside to blame it on,” Cordelia said. She leaned in and kissed Magda’s cheek. “Well done.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you,” Magda said, beaming down at Ewa.

Whitebridge was quiet as Cordelia walked home, the light rain tickling her face.

She walked down streets she’d known since she was a child. Streets she’d never really thought to leave before. She loved it here. It was safe, it was home. But only now was she starting to think that perhaps leaving might not be so bad. If there was something worth leaving for.

When she got home, she fell into bed exhausted and was asleep before she knew that she was falling asleep. And it was light when she woke up, a brand new sparkling morning shining in through the curtains that, now that she thought about it, probably really weren’t thick enough.

She stumbled into the shower and only when she got out of her room did she notice that Lydia’s door was open. She poked her head in. The bed was still made. Lydia hadn’t come home.

Downstairs, she brewed some coffee using coffee filters that Lydia had remembered to buy. And it was sort of an anticlimax.

Important things were burning inside her, but she had no way of letting them out. Lydia wasn’t here. The things she wanted to say couldn’t be said. She growled to herself as she drank her coffee. People in the movies didn’t have to wait around to make their big declarations of love.

Huh.

The L word had just sort of… slipped into her thoughts just then.

And now that she rolled it around in her head, it didn’t seem so bad, it didn’t seem so scary.

She was about to try and say it out loud, just to practice in case Lydia came back soon. Because, who knew, she might not be able to say it, only think it, and she didn’t want to make an idiot of herself. But the doorbell interrupted her.

“Love,” she muttered underneath her breath as she went out into the hall. “Love.” It was a sharp word, with a lovely round middle.

She was still thinking about it when she opened the front door.

“Cordelia.”

She shook her head. “Hunter, what are you doing here?”

“What do you think?” he said, stepping forward and leaning against the doorframe.

“I think that this isn’t your house.”

He sighed, his face still handsome even though it was so familiar. “Cord, I had to see you again.”

“I’d have thought that you’d seen far more than enough of me.” She stayed in front of the door, not letting him in.

“When I saw you before…”

“You mean when you broke into my house.”

“I had a key!”

“Which you should have given back,” said Cordelia .

“Fine. Whatever. When I saw you, Cord. I realized what an idiot I’d been. And you looked so sad and so fragile and…”

Cordelia sighed. “Hunter, I really don’t know why you’re here. I’ve had a long night and I’m really not in the mood for you.”

“Can you at least hear me out?”

She shrugged and after a moment’s thought stepped aside to let him in. She might as well put an end to this now. That way she’d be free to move on. If Lydia ever came back, that was.