Author's Notes: This one is for Lisa aka mingsmommy, as her reward for stumping me with my own fiction on my LJ. I hope she enjoys it, and that you do, too:)
His Girl
by Kristen Elizabeth
Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man. --Rabindranath Tagore
The baby arrived with a throaty scream, a rush of bloody fluid and a joyful shout from the doctor.
"It's a girl!"
And Gil Grissom fell in love for the second time in his life.
His fingers were numb when the nurse put the sterile scissors in his hand. She had to guide him through cutting the cord. He'd always thought it an inexplicable ritual, but as he squeezed the blades together, it suddenly made sense to him.
Sara was the first to be aware of the baby's existence. Her body had housed their child, sustained her, changed as she grew, and strained the last ten hours to bring her into the world. And even though he'd been with her through all of it, for nine months, their daughter had belonged almost entirely to Sara.
But now, with the cord cut and the baby no longer attached to her mother, it was his turn to protect and shelter the life they'd created.
The baby was screaming, having been expelled from her warm home and snatched up by strangers who scraped her face with cloth and sucked mucus out of her nose and mouth. She wailed out her misery, flailing her balled-up little fists as she was passed to him.
The numbness had spread to his arms, but he took her, suddenly unwilling to let another second pass without having touched this physical proof of his connection to Sara. Her little face was red and scrunched up. Yet as he stared down at her, he could see both himself and the woman he loved there, a fascinating combination of features that he imagined he'd never grow tired of studying.
Her cries tapered off and she opened her eyes. Basic biology told him that all she could see at this point were blurry shapes, but the way she looked up at him made him wonder if she actually could see him. And if she could tell that he was going to be her provider, her caretaker, her champion, her teacher, her support in all things great or small. That he would love her whole-heartedly and unconditionally until the day he died, and even then that he would try to negotiate something with whatever power existed above, in order that he might still watch over her.
Eventually, he would have to share her with Sara again. But for that moment when her unseeing eyes met his and he realized that if she asked him to, he would move mountains and dry up seas for her, she belonged only to him.
He'd waited fifty-one years to become someone's father, and it had been worth the wait.
Fin