His hands tightened on the wheel. “I told you I wanted us in the delivery room. I should’ve pushed harder. I should’ve—”

“You don’t get to rewrite this and make it your fault.”

He exhaled and stared ahead. “I hate that we missed it.”

“I know. But we didn’t miss her.” I glanced into the back seat, where Sophia was secured in her car seat. “She’s here. She’s ours. That’s what matters.”

When we got home, the bathroom looked exactly as we had left it. Towel on the counter. Water gone cold in the tub.

Daniel stood in the doorway, staring at the baby tub like it had betrayed him.

“I can’t,” he said.

I stepped forward and held out my arms. “Give her to me.”

Daniel stood beside me, watching as I carefully bathed our daughter.

After a while, he said, “She’s stronger than we thought.”

I looked down at her. At the tiny line on her back. At the impossible truth that she had already survived something.

“She always was,” I said.

He rested a hand on the counter. “We just weren’t there to see it.”

I thought about the years it took to get her.

I remembered every tear shed in parking lots, clinic bathrooms, and the dark side of our bed while Daniel pretended to sleep because he didn’t know how to help.

I thought about all the times motherhood felt like a door that opened for everyone but me.

Then I looked at Sophia—warm and slippery in my hands, alive and stubborn and ours.

“We’re here now,” I said.

Daniel met my eyes in the mirror.

And for the first time since I saw that incision, the fear inside me shifted into something else.

Because they had treated me like an afterthought. Like a technicality. Like motherhood was something I would receive after the important decisions had already been made.

They were wrong.

I lifted Sophia from the water and wrapped her in a towel, tucking it under her chin. She made a soft, offended sound, and Daniel laughed despite himself. It was shaky, but real.

I pressed my lips to the top of her damp head.

No one would ever decide again whether I counted.

I already did.

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