Chapter 24
The weeks that followed were a dream wrapped in soft cotton.
Layla’s mornings began with Zack gently rubbing her back before she even opened her eyes. He downloaded every pregnancy app he could find, reading out facts as if they were gospel.”
“Did you know our baby’s the size of a plum today?” he’d say, eyes wide with awe.“]
She’d laugh softly, resting her hand on her slowly growing belly. “So, what you’re saying is… we’re raising a fruit salad?”
By the time her belly rounded and her favorite jeans no longer fit, Zack had turned their guest room into a nursery. Pale yellow walls. Hand–painted stars. A rocking chair he claimed had “the perfect rhythm for sleepy lullabies.“}]
Layla often caught herself staring at the ultrasound pictures pinned to the fridge, brushing her thumb across the grainy black–and–white silhouette. The first time she saw the baby’s heartbeat flicker on the monitor, her own heart had clenched. So small. So alive. So hers.
Still, there were moments she couldn’t shake the past. Late at night, when the world was quiet and the house hummed with the kind of silence she used to fear, she’d find herself wondering about
Brent. Was he still in the hospital? Was he okay?
But the thought would always drift away, like smoke in the wind, when Zack reached for her hand or whispered, “I love you both, so much.”% They decided not to learn the baby’s gender. Zack said he didn’t need to know to love it fully, and Layla liked the mystery of it. Like the universe was still writing their story, one heartbeat at a time.
Then came the kicks.
Tiny at first. Like bubbles. Then stronger. Fierce little thumps that made Zack press his face to her belly and gasp like a child.
“Was that a foot?! That was a foot, right?”
Layla grinned. “Or a very passionate hiccup.”
Their days blurred into a tender rhythm–prenatal appointments, baby name debates, long walks in the park with her hand tucked into his. But pregnancy wasn’t all glowing skin and happy tears.
There were nights Layla couldn’t sleep, hips aching, nerves on edge. Mornings where nausea hit so hard she cried into the toilet. Days she felt too swollen, too tired, too emotional.
Zack never flinched. Not once. He ran warm baths, rubbed her feet, whispered affirmations as if they were spells: “You’re the best mom our baby could ever have.”
Then, on a cold and rainy Tuesday in early spring, Layla’s water broke.
She stood in the kitchen, one hand on her belly, the other holding a cup of tea. “Zack,” she called out calmly. “I think it’s time.”
He came flying down the stairs half–dressed, phone in one hand, car keys in the other.
“Do we panic now or after the contractions start?”
In the hospital, time moved both impossibly fast and painfully slow. The hours blurred into beeping monitors, warm compresses, breathless pushes, and whispered encouragements.
Zack never left her side.
When the final push came, when Layla’s scream tore through the air and their baby’s cry followed seconds later–it was as if the world
paused.
A nurse placed the tiny bundle in her arms, and Layla stared down, breath hitching.
Tiny fists. A button nose. Eyes blinking up at her like they’d known her forever.]
“It’s a girl,” the nurse said softly.
Layla felt Zack’s lips brush her forehead, his voice thick. “She’s perfect. You did it, baby.”
“No,” Layla whispered, never taking her eyes off the child in her arms. “We did it.“8
They named her Iris–after the flower that symbolized hope, courage, and a promise of new beginnings.
In the days that followed, their home was filled with new sounds. The coos and cries of a newborn. The lullabies Zack hummed off–key. The soft, breathless laughter that spilled from Layla’s lips when she looked at her daughter.)]
She thought about all she had survived. The grief. The heartbreak. The nights that stretched on forever. And now–this. A new life. A new chapter. A family.
As the sun rose one morning, casting golden light across the nursery floor, Layla held Iris to her chest, heart full and still in awe.
“I didn’t think I’d ever get here,” she whispered, brushing a kiss to her daughter’s forehead.
Zack, standing at the door with sleepy eyes and tousled hair, smiled and joined her on the rocking chair.
“You were always meant to,” he said. “This… all of this was waiting for you.”
And in that moment, Layla finally understood: She hadn’t just healed. She hadn’t just survived. She had become.§ And life–messy, beautiful, unexpected–had never looked more precious.
