“You’re doing pretty well too, all things considered,” Hart said, answering Naomi’s next unspoken question. “It’ll take you a while to recover, but you shouldn’t have any lasting effects. Just a few more scars than you had before.”

Naomi remembered her mother’s C-section scar, like a little zipper just above her bikini line. The autodoc would give her a scar so thin it’d heal almost invisible, but she’d be able to feel it.

“Want to see her?” Hart asked.

“God, yes.”

Naomi managed to get up and shuffle to the cot right next to the autodoc Hart had set up so Naomi would be able to rest near the makeshift incubator. She was pumped full of painkillers, so nothing hurt, exactly, but her body still knew it’d been through the wringer. She resisted the urge to lift her medical gown and see the wound and her partially deflated stomach.

Naomi placed her hands against the glass of the autodoc. She could see in better from this angle.

Her first thought was that she didn’t realise babies could be so small. Her daughter was such a fragile little thing, covered in a fine layer of down. She hadn’t plumped up yet and was too thin, arms spindly. Her skin was red, tiny hands reminiscent of a salamander, her veins still visible through her skin. Her eyes were still shut, but there was a whisper of hair on her head—dark black, like Evan’s, rather than Naomi’s own lighter brown. She had a serious, small face, but was that pointed chin a mirror to Naomi’s own? She stared through the glass in wonder for minutes, hours. Her breasts were sore and heavy. She wanted to hold her child, cradle her close, feel the first painful latch and then the rush of endorphins. To run her hands along the softness of the skull, delicate as a bird’s. Her whole body cried out with a fierce possessiveness.

Mine. That’s mine.

“Have you thought of any names?” Hart asked.

Naomi had been turning names over in her mind. She and Evan had come up with a shortlist, but it was up to her to make the final decision once they met.

“Yes, but I’ll sit with it for a day, make sure it feels right.” She paused. “Does Evan know? Did anyone tell him?”

Hart shook her head. “There hasn’t been time, and we weren’t sure if you wanted to tell him yourself.”

“He would have worried,” Naomi said, still staring down through the glass.

Eventually, Hart placed her hand on Naomi’s back, rubbing between her shoulder blades. “You should lie back and rest,” she said. “And express your milk.”