The flight seemed to take forever. It was almost a five hours. I wondered if I would get there in time, or if the baby would already be here. I wondered how much danger the baby was in by being a month early. I kept thinking about her going through this all alone. I could hardly stand the thought of it. All I knew of having a baby was what I’d seen in the movies and on television, but it looked very painful. No one should be alone in that kind of pain. Vicki shouldn’t be alone… in pain or not. I was going to do whatever I had to do once I got there, to make sure it never happened again.
I took out my laptop and typed in: premature labor and delivery. I read through a lot of medical sites. None of them seemed to worry much about a baby that was born at thirty-five weeks. It seemed that everything major would be developed and working by that time, the major concern would be weight and developmental milestones. After that, I read through some of the testimonials of people who had children born premature. One woman who’d had her baby at thirty-five weeks noted that at that point the child wasn’t even considered premature, but “pre-term.” She said he was four years old now and keeping up with his peers in both his growth and his development.
Another mother said her son was only three pounds at birth. The doctors thought he would be small and sickly most of his life. He’s fifteen now, she said and over six foot tall. Reading all of that made me feel better. It also made me feel strange. I knew I was getting attached to the idea of having a son. I just hadn’t realized how attached.
I was thinking about things now in the future; when he learned how to walk and talk, when he started school, when he had his first girlfriend. I wanted to be there for all of it. I wanted to be someone that he could look up to and respect. I didn’t want to just be some rich guy who had a gaggle of lawyers at his disposal that told him what to do and how to do it. I also wanted to be with his mother. I wanted Vicki more than I had allowed myself to admit. I care for her so deeply that my chest physically aches when I think about it.
Cassandra can take the money. The tabloids can have a field day. My parents can give me their quizzical, disappointed look. I don’t care because I knew that this had actually worked out perfectly. I’d fallen for her by accident and it took everything that happened in between to make me realize that she was the one I’d been waiting for my entire life.