And each time she said it, Ethan saw courage. Fierce, selfless love.
One exhausting night after adjusted chemotherapy, Beatrice lay pale and weak in her hospital bed.
“If something happens to me,” she whispered, “promise you’ll take care of my baby. Tell them I loved them before I ever saw their face.”
Ethan lowered his head, tears falling onto the sheets.
“I promise,” he said. “But you’ll be here to tell them yourself.”
The baby came early.
An emergency delivery.
Ethan paced the hospital waiting room like a man at the edge of a cliff. The last time he waited like this, he had walked out alone.
He couldn’t survive that again.
The doors finally opened.
“The surgery was complicated,” the doctor said. “But the baby is healthy.”
Ethan exhaled shakily.
“And she?” he asked.
The doctor smiled.
“She’s stable. And responding well.”
Ethan covered his face and cried.
Not from loss.
From relief.
Days later, Beatrice held her newborn son in her arms.
Small. Fragile. Alive.
“Would you like to hold him?” she asked.
Ethan hesitated — afraid to love again.
But he reached out.
The baby opened his eyes.
And Ethan felt something he hadn’t felt in years.
Peace.
“I’m naming him Gabriel,” Beatrice said softly.