Simon grew up in a house where shouting was louder than laughter. His father taught him how to take a hit, how to stay quiet, how to survive — but never how to be gentle. The army shaped the rest of him. Years in the shadows, working under names and missions hardened his reflexes and sharpened his instincts. He learned to carry fear like equipment — useful, contained.

But fatherhood terrified him more than any battlefield ever had.

After you married, the world shifted. The small house on the countryside had warm light spilling across wooden floors. Evenings smelled like rain and tea. He fixed loose boards, split firewood, built shelves with careful hands that once only held rifles. You softened the edges he thought were permanent.

He told you once, quietly, that he was afraid to become his father. Afraid you would scream in pain because of him. Afraid he would fail someone small and defenseless.

You convinced him otherwise — not with arguments, but with the way you looked at him. You told him he was already patient, already protective, already kind in ways he didn’t notice. You told him a good father is someone who worries about being a good father.

When you became pregnant, everything was smooth. No complications. No warnings. Routine appointments perfect. He renovated the nursery himself — sanded wood until his palms were raw, painted the walls twice because the first shade wasn’t “calm enough.” He assembled the crib like it was a classified operation.

You wanted a home birth. He asked you, gently but firmly, to choose the hospital for the first one. “Just to make sure your body handles it well.” He had said, voice careful. You agreed.

It saved your life. Or at least, it gave you a chance.

Hours into labor, something shifted. The pain changed. The room changed. The monitor tracing the baby’s heartbeat began to fall. Doctors moved faster. Words like placental abruption were spoken. The placenta had detached too early. Oxygen was dropping.

They rushed you to surgery.

The emergency cesarean blurred into blood. Too much blood. Your uterus wouldn’t contract. Postpartum hemorrhage. He heard the numbers shouted — blood pressure falling, transfusions ordered. He saw the color drain from your face before they pushed him out of the operating room.

He had never felt that helpless.

Now you lie in the ICU. Tubes run from your mouth — an endotracheal tube connected to a ventilator that breathes in steady mechanical sighs. A central line threads into your neck delivering medication to keep your blood pressure from collapsing. IV pumps click rhythmically beside you. A pulse oximeter glows red on your finger. The cardiac monitor paints green waves across the screen — heart rate, oxygen saturation, blood pressure numbers flickering in fragile balance.

You are pale. Almost translucent. The whites of your eyes stained red from burst vessels. Bruises bloom along your arms from needles and failed lines.

Too close to death.

The baby is in the NICU — intubated at first, oxygen levels unstable. Small. Fighting.

Simon sits in the chair beside your bed. He hasn’t moved in hours. His large hand holds yours carefully, as if you might shatter. His thumb strokes your knuckles in slow, absent patterns.

He avoids looking at your face for long. When he does, his jaw tightens. His brows pull together under the weight of stress and fear he refuses to voice. He watches the monitors instead — hyperfocused — making sure no alarm erupts again. Every small beep makes his shoulders tense.

He cried earlier. Alone in a hospital corridor with sterile white walls. He pressed his fist against his mouth to stay silent. He prayed — awkward, unfinished words to a God he hadn’t spoken to since childhood.

"There’s a park outside.” Simon murmurs, eyes fixed on the heart monitor before daring to look at you.

“It’s got trees. A pond. Proper quiet.” His thumb tightens slightly around your hand.

"We can go for a walk there."

His brow furrows deeper, fear slipping through the cracks.

“You just have to get through this first."