Convalescence

Naomi

“Bo?” 

“Hey baby,” Bo unfolds from the painful looking position he’d managed in the chair beside the bed, reaching up to gently touch Ruth’s head. “How’s my girl?” 

“Bo, what happened?” her voice is hoarse, painful sounding, and just turning her head heightens the pounding sensation sitting behind her eyes. Had she been hit by a truck? Everything feels so heavy, so weighed down, but by what? She feels her stomach, feels where a tightly stretched bump should be, where her daughter should be kicking her in the ribs and the lungs. When she only feels the soft press of previously stretched skin, the panic is sharp and hot, tears and nausea and frantic eyes searching the room for answers. “Where’s the baby? What happened?”

“Easy, sweetheart, easy,” Bo soothes, combing his hand through her tangled brown hair. “You had a rough labor. She was delivered about twenty hours ago. The doctor had to do a C-section.”

“Wh-what?” Ruth draws up in fright, tensing away from her husband.

“You labored for thirty hours, Ruth.” He finally spits it out, resigned to telling his newly conscious wife the whole story, no matter how much he wanted to spare her a little bit of the trauma. “You weren’t progressing and the baby’s heart rate was dropping.” his hand falls to her stomach, bringing her awareness to the bumpy line of stitches she hadn’t noticed. “You were losing consciousness, so they did an emergency C-section to get the baby out and get you both stabilized.”

“Did it work? Is she okay?” Ruth’s haze is darkened by fright, now. Where is her baby? “Bo…”

“She’s in the nursery being fed.” Bo smiles tenderly but the reality of the situation had been sobering. He’d sat at Ruth’s bedside in tears for a long time after they’d taken baby Perez to the nursery; the elation of having a daughter had been short lived compared to the reality of the situation. She’d been blue for what felt like a long few minutes (it was seconds, the nurse had assured him) before she’d gasped for air with a sharp cry, and they’d ushered her away to get her stable while Ruth laid open and unconscious on an operating table. “She was stabilized easy enough, but you didn’t react well to anesthesia. When they tried to wake you to feed her, you wouldn’t wake up. You were unresponsive.”

“I – you must have been worried sick,” Ruth whimpers, looking up at her husband. “Bo, I – “

“Hey, no, baby, take a breath,” he draws his thumb across her cheekbone, swiping at the tears hanging onto her eyelashes. “It’s alright. You’re okay, now. You’re awake, she’s in the nursery. They’ll bring her back up as soon as I tell them you’re awake.”

Ruth just nods, settling back a little while Bo presses the call button and informs the nurse of Ruth’s condition change. It isn’t long before a nurse comes in to take Ruth’s vitals and call the doctor for a bag of fluids. “You probably feel a little groggy?”

“Yes,” Ruth nods, blinking heavily. “Very. I feel I need to sleep for another week.”

“Well, everything is normal, but you are a little dehydrated, so we’ll get you started on an electrolyte drip,” the nurse reaches down to touch Ruth’s forehead, smoothing the lines there with a gentle brush of her thumb. “Don’t you worry, baby, you’ve got a pretty little girl down in the nursery, I’m going to go get her brought up to her mama.”

“Thank you.” Ruth whispers, sinking down into the bed.

“You’ve got one hell of a husband, you know?” the nurse tips her head toward Bo. “He was there the whole time. Hasn’t left your side.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ruth smiles affectionately over at her husband. “He’s a good one.”

The nurse smiles at them both and takes her leave, with the promise of having baby Perez in the room in a short minute. It isn’t long before a bassinet is being wheeled in the room and with Bo’s help, Ruth takes her baby girl to her chest.

“We still have to name her,” Bo reminds her softly, kissing her bare shoulder. “Any ideas?”

Ruth just shakes her head, barely able to compose a thought for the multitude of emotions. Her tiny baby girl is here, in her arms, with a head full of her daddy’s black curls and her Mama’s stubborn will and she can see that soon, her pretty blue eyes will darken to a familiar chocolate shade.

“She’s such a pretty girl,” Ruth breathes, stroking the silky black curls. “We make pretty babies, Bo.”

“We do, don’t we?” Bo tips his head, nuzzling into her shoulder. “How are you feelin’ now, baby?”

“Better but still tired,” Ruth leans her head against her husband’s, tilting her face to press a kiss into his black curls. “We should name her after our moms.”

“Mom’s name was Rahab…” Bo lets the name hang in the air. “I love my mom but let’s not subject a kid to that. Kids are cruel, baby.”

“What about Naomi Rae? We could call her Nomi,” Ruth suggests, smiling down at her doe eyed baby girl. “Or, she can go by Rae when she’s old enough to decide what she wants to be called.”

Boaz just smiles, his eyes fixed on his wife’s enchantment. She had been so scared, the day she burst into his office with a positive pregnancy test and teary eyes, afraid she’d never live up to the expectations set by Rahab and by Naomi and even her own mother, God rest her soul. But looking at her, now, it seems as though she was always meant to be a mother, always meant to have a baby in her arms.

This doesn’t mean Bo feels any desire to keep her barefoot and pregnant, unless that’s what she wants, he’s just relieved to see her settle into motherhood without the anxieties of the past holding her back.

“I like it. Naomi Rae Perez,” Bo breathes, reaching for his daughter. “She was six pounds, twelve ounces and about eighteen inches long.”

Ruth just nods, eyes filling with tears. She had missed so many of the details; every new thing she learns about her sweet Nomi feels surreal. How long she had been, what she had weighed, the head full of silky black curls, the sweet doe-like eyes. Everything about her existence feels surreal.

When the nurse comes in to fill in the blanks of the new arrival card in the front of her bassinet, Ruth can barely get her name out, clutching the baby to her chest.

Naomi Rae Perez

6 lbs., 12 oz., 19 in.

Born to Boaz & Ruth Perez, Mayor and Mrs. of Bridgeport