They seemed to stay in the same place for a while. The doctor came in to check her, which hurt Amy more, and this time she screamed, and a few minutes later they rolled her down to the delivery room, and she started pushing. Paris was holding both her hands and trying to help her breathe, and after a while a nurse suggested that Paris get behind her and hold her in an upright position. It was uncomfortable for Paris, but it seemed to help Amy as she kept pushing, but the baby was going nowhere. They continued pushing, with no visible results for more than two hours, and Amy was screaming all the time now. Paris wished there were something more useful she could do for her, but she kept talking to her, and encouraging her, and all of a sudden Amy gave a hideous howl, and the doctor said the baby was finally coming.
“Come on, Amy … come on … that's it … push again …” Everyone was shouting at her, and Amy couldn't stop crying. Paris wondered if her own deliveries had been as awful. It didn't seem like it, but she couldn't remember. They had seemed easier than this one. And then finally, finally, they could see the top of the baby's head, as Amy worked harder than she ever had, and with three horrible screams, the baby finally slid out. Amy was sobbing in Paris's arms, and the baby girl's wail filled the room, as Paris saw her and began crying. The doctor cut the cord, and gently handing her over Amy, she handed her to Paris, as Paris leaned down to show her. “Look how beautiful she is,” Paris whispered to Amy. “You did such a good job,” she said, as Amy closed her eyes, and they finally gave her a shot, which made her woozy. The baby weighed eight pounds fourteen ounces. She was a big one, though Jane's had been bigger, but this had seemed harder and longer. It was four o'clock in the morning when they left the delivery room, and went back to the room that had been assigned to Amy. It was at the far end of the hall from the nursery. The hospital staff knew that this was an adoption, and Amy would be relinquishing her baby, and they tried to be sensitive about it.
They took the baby to the nursery to clean her up, give her eyedrops, and check her Apgar scores, as Paris sat in the room with Amy while she slept off the medication. And while she was still asleep, they brought back the baby. She was looking around, alert, with a little cotton cap on, wrapped in a pink blanket, and the nurse silently held her out to her new mother, and Paris took her, and held her close to her, as their eyes met.
“Hello, little one …” The baby had round pink cheeks, and big eyes that were baby color, and had yet to reveal what they would be, and a fuzz of white duck hair on the top of her head. She looked like a little doll in Paris's arms, and as Paris held her, she drifted off to sleep, as though she knew she had come home to her mother at last.
“What's her name?” the nurse whispered.
“Hope,” Paris said, as she looked down at her. The word had just come to her as she saw her. She had been considering several others, but Hope seemed to suit her perfectly.
“I like that.” The nurse smiled, as Paris sat looking down in wonder at the new life that was hers now. And she realized as she did that if Peter hadn't left her, this moment would never have happened. She had found it finally. The gift. The blessing that she hadn't been able to find in the agony for two and a half years. She knew it was there somewhere, but she had never found it, and now she had. The mystery of blessings tucked away in tragedies and disasters. This was the blessing. The hope she had longed for. It had come now in the form of this sleeping baby.
They sat that way for hours, as Amy slept off the drug, and Paris held the baby, and finally they both woke up. They gave Paris a little bottle with glucose in it to feed the baby, and they gave Amy a shot so she wouldn't lactate. They sat together all morning, quietly talking. The pediatrician had checked Hope out and said she could leave at six o'clock that evening, if Paris wanted. Amy was staying till the following morning, and Paris hated to leave her. She called Alice Harper at home to say that the baby had come, and she was delighted for her. Alice said that she should leave whenever the hospital said the baby could be discharged.
“What about Amy?” Paris asked, feeling anxious. She was calling from her cell phone in the hallway, and had left the baby in the nursery to do it.
