The man smiled and the woman screamed. So she pushed once more, and the entire world changed.

The blue-clad strangers and the sterile machines faded away. Sun flooded the room. Only the two of them remained. Then came the piercing clarion of an infant’s first cry, and the two realized that they now were three.

Everything happened in slow motion, and also too fast. The child gasps a lungful of air and cries. It’s a she…she’s our daughter! The tiny girl passes from arms to arms, legs kicking, a quick snip. Her eyes; are they brown? The woman, the mother!, takes baby to her breast, feels the new closeness. The man and the woman did not yet know that they’d remember these seconds forever.

Sun still flooded the room, but was outshone by the moment. The man laughed and the woman sighed and their baby cried and the entire beautiful world was all right.