Few months later
Mark
Sophia's water broke two weeks before her due date, on an ordinary Tuesday evening while we were sitting on the couch debating nursery paint colors, and I watched her go very still mid-sentence, her hand flying to her stomach.
"Mark."
"What's wrong?"
"I think that just happened." She looked down at herself, then back up at me, somewhere between shock and disbelief. "My water. I think my water just broke."
I was moving before I'd even fully processed it, old instinct and new terror colliding at once, grabbing the hospital bag we'd packed weeks ago, calling ahead to the maternity ward, helping Sophia into the car with hands that weren't entirely steady despite twenty years of training that usually kept them perfectly calm in far more dangerous situations than thi
