Debbie Doll | Ringo Starr ✅

40

Two Months Later

As Cynthia had promised, I didn't feel a thing during delivery - hardly, anyway. It felt like a dull ache between my legs, similar to that which I felt after Ritchie and I spent a day in bed together. I watched as my two children were born; a daughter, and a son.

Our son wasn't born screaming.

As I held our daughter, I turned to Ritch, who was staring at the midwife who was holding our son, desperately trying to coax some life into his little lifeless body, still slick with amniotic fluid. The midwife dashed out of the room with him, and I screamed for Ritchie to follow after them and not to leave our little boy alone.

My screaming caused our little girl to start crying, which I hated, but I had to worry first about our son, who had nobody with him in that moment who cared for him.

When Ritchie returned about twenty minutes later, his was red and blotchy, his eyes bleak and no longer shining orbs of blue like they had been for the entire time that we had been together. He took one look at me and I knew.

My heart sunk.

We had one child.

He came over and buried his head in my shoulder, putting his arms around me and our surviving child as he cried and I cried, and that set the little baby off as well, who I had just managed to stop wailing.

"Our baby..." I cried, "our baby... our Zak..." I couldn't even think about it. It felt wrong to be holding one baby when we had lost another. I looked at the baby in my arms, who was still squawking. "Shush, it's okay, baby..." I tried to calm her down, knowing that she was going to scream her lungs out of her otherwise. Poor thing had no idea what was going on. We had been settled on names for boys, because we had been sure that the twins would be... we had been half right, at least.

But we had no girls names picked out.

Ritchie held his head up and wiped away his tears, doing the same with my own.

"I want to call her Daisy." He said quietly, stroking her cheek as she continued to cry, though she was definitely settling down.

"Why?" I asked quietly, just looking at her, hoping that she would fill the void in my heart.

"Because she's perfect," he leant down and kissed the top of her head, "and because it means new beginnings, and I think we need one of those."

We should have had a new beginning with two babies, but we had been robbed.

We had to accept that.

Feeling raw, we took our daughter Daisy home the next day, holding her tight in our arms as she slept in our bed, the two of us watching her. She was so perfect, and I already loved her more than anything in the world - more so than Ritchie, even - and I could tell that he felt the same.

"She looks so small by herself." I gently trailed my finger across her belly.

Ritchie nodded, humming softly in reply. "She shouldn't be alone."

"She's not alone." I told him, tearing my eyes off of my perfect little girl for just a few seconds to look at her father, "she's got us... and she'll have other siblings too, right? Other brothers and sisters?"

Ritchie chuckled, "you thinking about the next one already, my love?"

I hung my head, looking back at Daisy. "I just can't help but think of what we've lost, and want to fill the hole..."

He nodded, knowing exactly what I meant. "Daisy will have so many that she won't be able to remember all of their names -"

"But we won't let her forget about him, will we?" It hurt to even say his name. Zak. I had to remember it. I had to remember him. The only way that he could live was in our hearts.

I swallowed, feeling fresh tears begin to fall down my face.

I hadn't even gotten to hold my little boy.

"She'll know about him." Ritchie promised. "Everyone will."

I smiled at that and laced our hands together across our sleeping baby. I watched her, marvelling at the way her chest rose and fell and how her nose twitched every minute or so. I was in total awe.

"We made her..."

He had been staring at her too, mesmerised. Everything about our Daisy was perfect.

I nodded, "how did we make something so pure?" He asked me, "something so perfect?" We didn't take our eyes off of her, afraid that our precious miracle would disappear if we did. I wondered if I would ever stop staring at her.

"Do you think she'll want to be in here with us forever?" I asked my husband, referring to how easy she had been to put to sleep earlier that evening.

"I hope she never leaves. She's daddy's little angel." He dipped his head and kissed her cheek.

"She's everything." Ritchie nodded. He agreed.