Sunny nodded, panting, eyes gone wild and panicked again.
“It’s okay,” Dom murmured. “Squeeze as hard as you want.”
“Oh! Owwwww! What are you doing?” Sunny cried, trying to get away from Bailey’s probing fingers.
“Squeeze!” Dom insisted, getting Sunny’s attention. “Squeeze my hand!”
“Owwww! FUCK! OWW! NOOOOO!”
Sunny screamed.
Literally screamed.
Everyone in the building had to have heard it.
But Bailey had it. She had found the crook of the baby’s shoulder with her fingers and she eased the baby’s arm up the birth canal. Sunny’s scream echoed off the tile walls and then it happened so fast it was a blur. With the shoulder dislodged, the baby slid out like a slippery fish and Bailey caught him, trying to hold on. For a moment she thought she was going to lose her grip, but then Dom was there, cradling the infant in his shirt.
The two of them lifted the baby up to Sunny’s waiting arms. She sobbed, gathering him up and rocking him. Bailey felt tears stinging her own eyes and when she glanced at Dom, she thought his eyes looked suspiciously glassy. He blinked and cleared his throat, looking at the baby.
“He’s not crying. Is he okay?” Sunny looked up at them.
“Babies don’t have to cry as soon as they’re born.” Bailey laughed, reaching over and shading the baby’s face from the fluorescent lights with her hand. His squint turned to a wide-eyed stare at his mother’s face and she watched, smiling, as the two of them fell in love. It was the only love at first sight Bailey had ever witnessed.
“What about the… uh… cord?” Sunny looked at the thick, still-pulsing umbilical cord still attached to baby. “Aren’t we supposed to cut it?”
“Don’t worry.” Dom spoke up, surprising Bailey. “The only reason they cut cords so fast in hospitals is so they can separate mom and baby. They want to weigh and measure and get all their jobs done.”
“Oh.” Sunny blinked in surprise, looking between them and then down at the baby in her arms, getting lost again in his gaze.
Bailey was still looking at Dom like he’d grown two heads. She couldn’t believe he’d said it—or even known. Immediate cord cutting wasn’t so much a procedure that had grown out of evidence-based medicine but rather a hospital policy created for the convenience of staff.
“Shouldn’t we cover his head?” Dom mused, looking around the bathroom for a solution to the problem. Bailey watched, incredulous, as he stood and leaned against one of the sinks to untie his tennis shoe. He was wearing white athletic socks and he tugged one off.
“Work?” He held it out to her. “It’s clean—I just showered and put it on before I left for class tonight.”
“It’s kind of brilliant, actually.” Bailey met his eyes, taking the sock from his hand, and something happened when they touched. She didn’t know if it was just the adrenaline still coursing through her or his proximity—she was eye-level with the man’s crotch and she could have counted each of his zipper’s teeth if she wanted to—but she felt something between them that hadn’t been there before. He’d always been very professional with her. Even a bit stern. But the warmth in his eyes now was like walking out of an ice-cold freezer into a sultry, Miami heat. The change was sudden and astonishing.
The baby cried, a soft mewling cry, like a kitten, and it broke whatever spell they were under. Bailey turned toward Sunny and she smiled at the way the now elated new mother had already forgotten the pain of labor. She was too enamored with her newborn.
“Here, let’s put this on. Babies lose eighty percent of their body heat through their heads.” Bailey couldn’t help laughing as she slipped the open end of his sock over the baby’s dark, downy head. He had very little vernix—the white wax-like substance that protected babies from amniotic fluid in the womb—which indicated he had come on time or even a little late. He looked great—good color, lungs sounded clear, bright eyes, everything intact.
“Apgars of seven and nine, I’d say.” Dom had put his shoe back on and was leaning over to look at the baby. Sunny was checking her baby over like every new mother always did—ten fingers, ten toes.
Bailey blinked up at Dom, and she knew he saw the question in her eyes. How did he know about the Apgar scale? The test was actually developed in the 1950s, when most mothers were heavily drugged during childbirth. Those babies were often born with poor reflexes and some even struggled to breathe because the drugs they gave the mother crossed the placenta and went into the baby. The test was developed to quickly assess the newborn and was named after the anesthesiologist who developed it. There were several factors involved, but it basically went from a score of 0—which would be a floppy baby, not breathing, no pulse—to ten, which would be a perfect score.