“Can’t you drive any faster?”

As Allison squeezed the armrest of their Suburban with a herculean grip, the joint groaned in protest and seemed in danger of snapping.

“Yes, dear,” her mousy, bespectacled husband said in the same tone one might take with a potential jumper at a bridge. He looked down at the speedometer of the vehicle.

55 miles per hour.

He looked back to the road just in time to see the 30 on the speed limit sign on the corner of Losey and Cherry St.

Usually, Allison loved seeing her hometown.

Galesburg was the kind of town that still had parks full of children and front doors that never locked. It had a main street that meant something. At the convergence of many of the major railways in Illinois, it often found itself passed through but rarely stopped in. Old brick roads mixed with newer asphalt and leftover hitching posts from the time when horses and carriages still dotted the streets.

She enjoyed driving slowly through it, taking in the sights of hundred-year-old houses and homey mom and pop shops and restaurants.

But today was different.

Blue and red lit up the rear-view mirror, and a police siren blared out from the squad-car behind them.

John resisted the deep-seated urge to pull over. Instead he thought of his wife, of his soon to be born baby, and of just what the hell he was going to say to the police once they got to the hospital. This sort of thing always worked in movies, right?

Three blocks from St. Mary’s John saw the parking lot, and the mess of traffic blocking the road to the entrance.

St. Mary’s Hospital in Galesburg, Illinois is not what you would call a bustling place. Its sprawling halls seldom saw rare diseases or cases of any real importance. Rather, St. Mary’s was simply “the hospital” for residents of the sleepy Midwestern town. So it was when Allison Corvidae had moved to Galesburg, and so it had stayed all the years between then and now.

“Dear, I think we may have to stop for the police now-” He began.

Allison, who was generally known for her quiet demeanor, was trying not to scream.

“Jonathan Corvidae, if you stop this car before we get to the door I will murder you!” Allison hissed through gritted teeth.

“Honey, it’s just that-”

She glared at him.

“Yes, dear.”

The bumper of the SUV shot sparks as it rolled across the concrete curb, jerking the occupants and causing Allison to wince in pain.

“Remember your breathing dear: two in, two out.”

Jonathan wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to be doing at this point, so he dug into all of the romantic comedies they had watched together while they were dating.

It didn’t work.

The narrow-eyed stare that Allison gave him raised the hair on his neck, he knew he was lucky that looks could not in fact kill.

One last jolt from banging over the parking barrier at the edge of the parking lot and they were screeching to a halt in front of the emergency room doors. John stepped out and yelled.

“We need a doctor, my wife is giving birth!”

He was immediately tackled by a police officer.

As Allison was wheeled up to a hospital room on the third floor her husband was crammed into the back of a black and white.

“Where’s my husband?” Allison kept asking, but the nurses only told her to relax and to breathe. Labor was hard, and complicated, and for the first several hours it seemed no progress was being made.

Late in the night, however, Allison heard a familiar voice calling through the halls of the hospital.

“Allie? Allie, baby, where are you?”

“John!” Allison croaked, and then stronger “Jonathan!”

John burst into the room, his shirt un-tucked, his glasses askew, his breathing heavy, but his eyes bright with excitement.

“We’re about to put her under, sir. There’s some risk here to mom because the baby is not cooperating, so we’re going to have to do a C-section. You should stay outside the room, so it’s a sterile environment,”

John ignored her, moving instead to the bedside and taking Allison’s hand.

“Baby I’m here, it’s alright.”

“Sir, did you hear me? It is best if you go outside,” the nurse stated more forcefully.

John, at a whopping 5 foot 4, didn’t tower over anyone, and his slightly doughy 160-pound frame was far from imposing, but the iron in his voice left no room for argument.

“No. I’m staying right here.”

The nurse sighed with exasperation and snapped to. Within a few minutes a doctor had appeared, scrubbed in, and prepared for the surgery. John got squeamish at the sight of blood, so he stayed focused on his wife’s beautiful blue eyes, her stark black hair, and her radiant smile.

“It’s gonna be OK, I’m right here,” he told Allison as she slipped off into a drug-induced sleep.

About twenty minutes into the procedure, when things seemed to be going well, John heard the doctor mumble in surprise.

“What the heck? How on earth did that get in there?”

“What is it? What’s wrong,” said John, turning to look towards the foot of the bed. The doctor was holding up a small but fully-formed feather; it was thoroughly soaked in blood, but definitely a feather. John saw the blood and watched his vision swim, then darken. The last thing he heard as he blacked out was a nurse’s voice.

“Sir? Are you feeling ok?”

Then nothing.

“Jonathan,” a soft voice spoke into the darkness through which John was swimming.

“John there’s someone you need to meet.”

The voice was so warm, so soft, so familiar. Suddenly, as though someone had flicked a light switch, it hit him.

Allison!

Light started to slowly fill his vision from the edges, soon pictures were swimming before him and eventually the hospital room came into focus. Allison was looking over at him from a bed and there was a short woman in scrubs in front of him. He seemed to have been moved into a regular patient room, rather than the operating room.

“Hold still, darlin’,” the plump little blonde chided when John tried to look around.

“You took a nasty spill and you got quite a gash on your forehead to show for it! But don’t you worry we’ve got you and momma here all set up in a nice new room, ok?”

Just thinking about the sight of blood again made John queasy, so he shut his eyes tight and tried to stay very still. The woman was putting something cold on his forehead and he could feel her fingers working quickly and efficiently, a dab of some liquid, then covering his cut with some kind of cream.

Finally with a light pat she said, “All right! I think it’s time you met the little angel, how about you?”

John snapped his eyes open, the thought of his newborn child pushing any lingering discomfort out of his mind.

“Yes! Where is he? I can’t wait to meet him,” John began to say excitedly.

“She,” Allison lightly interjected.

“She?”

Allison chuckled at the stunned expression on her husband’s face.

“The doctor said this kind of thing happens fairly often; the ultrasound seems to indicate one way and then the parents get a surprise instead.”

Jonathan was lost in thought, though he must have been scowling slightly, because Allison looked at him with increasing worry and finally said, “John, you’re not mad, are you?”

“What? No,” John said “I just realized we painted her room all blue! What if she hates it? And we’ve hardly gotten any toys that a girl is likely to enjoy, and we don’t even have a girl’s name picked out!”

Allison laughed.

It was John’s favorite laugh, the deep, belly-laugh that he associated with their most genuine and happy moments.

“Oh John, ever the pragmatist. Go and meet Lauren, already!”

“Lauren?” John said questioningly, testing the word for how it sounded in his head and of course teasing his wife with the delay.

“Yep, I love it, Lauren it is.”

John stood up with a helping hand from the nurse.

“Are you feeling any dizziness or trouble with your vision,” she asked.

John shook his head “no.” He wouldn’t say he felt great, as his head was pounding pretty hard, but he was definitely unwilling to wait to see his baby girl.

As the nurse walked John through the halls of St. Mary’s, she introduced herself. Peggy had worked at the hospital for nearly 12 years, and she loved the maternity ward most of all. Something magical about the first time a parent got to see and hold their child really made her feel close to God. As for himself, John wasn’t an overly religious fellow. In fact, the closest he came to regular prayer was when he got stuck behind a train on the way to work and was already running late.

Peggy continued to blather away while John’s mind wandered.

John was naturally an introspective man. Apparently Allison had thought it endearing, because it was during one of his deep-thought sessions that she had approached him five years ago in the library of Knox College. Theoretically studying for his French final, he had been staring out the window of the first floor, a half-dozen opened textbooks on the table in front of him and a pen in his hand. The instrument was hovering scant inches over a blank notebook page when suddenly his table was occupied by a body.

A very pretty body.

Jonathan blushed with embarrassment as he remembered how the first thing he had noticed was Allison’s short pencil skirt and shapely legs perched matter-of-factly upon his books. So intent had he been on her legs, in fact, that she had to cough lightly to get him to look up at her face.

“We’re here, sir,” Peggy said softly, in a voice barely over a whisper.

John snapped out of his reverie, he stood in a dimly lit hallway in a quieter section of the hospital. Before him was a large plate glass window and behind it several dozen small beds, most of them empty save five or so with tiny bundles of blue or pink cloth and tiny red-faced babies in various stages of sleep. His eyes scanned the group until he saw her. He didn’t know how exactly he knew, but he knew it was his Lauren.

“C-can I go in and hold her?” he stammered softly, fearful his voice might wake the children.

“I’m sorry, sir, no one is allowed in there but hospital staff,” the nurse began. “But I can bring her to you.”

John waited as she softly opened the door and approached the crib. The nurse leaned down and picked up Lauren, tiny pink blanket and all, and gently brought her out.

All the parenting classes in the world couldn’t have prepared John for that first moment he held her in his arms, or the soul-baring beauty of her golden eyes when she opened them.

With a tiny yawn, Lauren stretched, taking her father’s breath away. Her small, pudgy fists reached out, and she brushed John’s arm softly, instinctively grabbing onto it.

“Holy Mary,” gasped Peggy.

The cut on John’s forehead itched fiercely, but his attention was wholly on his daughter. He muttered a quiet response to the nurse’s exclamation.

“I know, she’s so beautiful, look at that blonde hair, and those eyes!”

He glanced up at the nurse, who was oddly silent, she was gawking at him as though he had sprouted a third eye.

“What? What’s wrong with you?”

The nurse stared at him, shock in her eyes and said, “I-it’s gone!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” John demanded, backing away slightly from the nurse. Lauren started to fidget in his arms and her perfect features broke into a tiny frown, and started to redden.

“Mr. Corvidae, your cut is gone, it’s just gone!”

The woman was shaking like a leaf in the breeze. John shifted Lauren onto one arm, cradling her against his chest, he reached up to his forehead. Nothing. It was smooth, unbroken skin; no bump, not even a twinge of pain or tenderness. He felt his eyes grow wide.

“How?”

Lauren screamed. Demonstrating a powerful set of lungs her newborn cries echoed throughout the hall, startling both of the adults and causing the other babies to stir as well.

It was only two hours before the first reporter arrived.

“Kent Dailey, pleased to meet you,” exclaimed the tall, well-dressed man as he burst into Allison’s hospital room. Peggy followed him, red in the face and squeaking her displeasure.

“Sir, you can’t just barge in here! This is a patient room! It is for families and friends! You’re going to have to leave or I’ll call security!”

Allison was irate. Not only was she unkempt, her hair a mess, no make-up, and wearing nothing but a thin robe, she was also breastfeeding when Kent barged in.

“Get out! I don’t care who you are, get out!” shouted Allison, hurrying to cover herself. She looked at John and practically growled. “Who is this man and what the hell is he doing here?!”

John stammered as he began to tell off the intruder, but he was interrupted by the mans commanding baritone.

“Yes, Kent Daily, WGNTV,” the man flashed what he certainly thought was a dashing smile and waited a beat, as though he ought to be recognized from his moniker alone. Seeing there would be no dawning revelations, he continued, slightly deflated.

“I’m a reporter,” he said with a glint in his eye. “We’ve heard you were the subject of some kind of miracle. Care to tell us about it sir?”

Dailey accompanied his question, which was stated more like a command, with a blinking audio recorder and a fixed, plastic smile.

Allison exchanged a glance with John, who shifted his gaze nervously between Allison, Peggy, and the stranger. The man questioning them had all the trappings of a sleaze. His cheap suit and product-filled hair oozed smarm. He seemed harmless enough, though, considering. John took his cue, as ever, from Allison. Slowly she nodded, indicating her consent.

“What exactly is it you want to know?” John asked slowly, in his manliest and most intimidating voice.

“Start from the beginning, and don’t leave anything out. How were you injured?

The interview lasted all of five minutes; it didn’t take long for Kent to realize that the saps he was interviewing knew nothing. The “story” was probably made up anyway, as the man clearly had no head injury of any kind. As he walked down the hallway towards the front door of the hospital, he listened to the audio.

“I don’t know, she was in my arms and starting to get fussy and she did this adorable yawn...”

He clicked the recorder off again. Garbage, nothing he could use, no good quotes, and the parents were barely religious, so he couldn’t really play that angle either. He strolled past doors labeled as janitor’s closets and patient rooms when suddenly he came to a halt. The door next to him had a small, plastic sign that said “Security.”

I wonder. He tried the handle, it turned, clicked, and the door swung open, revealing a cramped, dimly-lit room full of video monitors and empty soda cans. On top of a messy desk sat an archaic computer and the chair behind it was over-filled by a pudgy, acne-covered man who looked very, very surprised.

“Hey, you can’t be in here, man,” said the blob in front of him.

Kent scanned the man quickly and found a name tag on his wrinkled, mustard-stained shirt. Dave. Typical, banal sort of name.

“Dave, don’t worry, buddy. I just have a quick couple of questions for you. The name is Kent, Kent Dailey.”

A short while later Kent was rushing from the room, looking around surreptitiously. As he shut the door behind him, he clutched a USB drive like it was a fabled golden ticket. He had to fight the deep urge to skip down the hallway with glee. This was going to be good.

Allison was still lying in the hospital bed while John napped on the couch. As she flipped through channels on the old, box-style television that was sitting on the bureau across the room from her, she was barely paying attention, preoccupied with thoughts of her newborn baby girl and the mysterious events of the morning. In her left hand, she held the remote loosely and clicked through the channels absentmindedly, but in her right she held a feather.

It was the strangest thing, a small, ivory feather; the doctor said it looked like a dove or sparrow feather. The real mystery on her mind was how it had gotten into the operating room to fall onto the table during her surgery. It was, after all, impossible that it had been inside her, right? It wouldn’t be the only impossible thing that had happened that morning, she thought to herself, glancing at the unbroken forehead of her slumbering husband.

“... We bring you this special report, a woman has given birth to a miracle child at St. Mary’s hospital in Galesburg, Illinois..”

The TV blared a familiar voice, her eyes snapped into focus just in time to catch the beaming, saccharine face of Kent Dailey.

“Let’s roll the video.”

A moment of static was followed by a security camera feed of the hallway outside of the newborn room. She saw John walk into the frame, the large cut on his head clearly visible, accompanied by the nurse, Peggy. They spoke quietly for a moment, and then Peggy went inside, returning a moment later with Lauren in hand. John gingerly took her from the nurse. Allison chuckled, he looked so nervous yet so at home with her in his arms. Suddenly she saw Lauren’s tiny hand emerge from the blankets and touch John. A small shimmer of light shone from John’s forehead and she watched as his cut rapidly faded away.

Allison’s jaw popped open; their faces were plastered all over the news. She sat up quickly in bed, letting out an involuntary cry of pain as her stitches pulled tight. John woke instantly at the sound of his wife’s pain and rushed to her side.

“What’s wrong baby? Are you ok, do I call a doctor?”

Allison couldn’t speak, the pain was incredible. All she could do was point at the television. The clip was replaying, with commentary from Dailey and his co-anchor, some ditzy brunette who usually did the weather and was likely chosen for her looks.

“...There you go, folks, you saw it here first. Our very own miracle, right here in Galesburg. More at eleven! For now, let’s head over to sports, Mark?”

It took less than a day for the story to spread, and by the next morning reporters from several major news networks were outside the doors of the hospital, begging for interviews.

More startling were the dozens of sick and injured, alongside a small horde of other people who crowded the parking lot. Allison and John had spent the entire morning receiving visitors to their hospital room. It started with a few extra nurses showing up to make conversation, but by mid-morning there was a knock every few minutes.

“I’m tired of it, Allie,” said John as yet another knock came to the door. “They shouldn’t be pestering us, we’re no different from anyone else in this damn hospital. We deserve some privacy!”

John walked to the door and yanked it open, fully intending to give the offending staff member a scathing rebuff. To his chagrin, however, the person at the door was a frail man, startled nearly to falling over by John’s sudden and forceful opening of the door.

John gaped, with words stuck in his throat as he was totally off guard. The man before him looked to be in his early thirties. Rail thin and bald, he stood shakily in a hospital gown, one hand using his IV pole for support. A stiff breeze could well finish him off, it seemed.

“I’m very, very sorry, sir,” began the man. “My name is Eric. I--I’ve been here a while and I heard about your daughter.”

Unsure how to proceed but feeling awkward for having scared the man, John let him continue.

“It’s just that... I’m told I don’t have much longer,” Eric continued, emboldened slightly by John’s silence.

“It’s cancer, got my dad, too. But here I am, at the end of my rope, and the doctors say my best bet is to get doped up so as to have a ‘peaceful transition.’”

He let out a scornful, barking laugh.

“As if that was supposed to make me feel more, I don’t know, comfortable with it.”

John was not a man who enjoyed awkward conversations, and for some reason, the cold, grim acceptance that he felt from this man as he callously discussed his imminent death put him even less at ease than usual.

“I’m, ah, very sorry for you,” he said, kicking himself immediately for how flat and forced it must have sounded.

“Don’t be,” said Eric. “I brought it on myself, I smoked my first cigarette at eleven years old, I drank myself to sleep every night since I was nineteen. I’ve wasted my life, what little of it there was, anyway. I’m not even sure why I came up here, I just... I always wanted kids, and when my girlfriend left after I got sick...”

He trailed off a bit, the last bit of light in his eyes dulled as he spoke of his misfortune.

“I,” he paused, “I don’t suppose you’d like to come in for a moment,” John offered, motioning to the room behind him.

“Do you suppose it would be ok?” Eric asked quietly. “It’s just that I’ve never been a part of anything, never seen anything big. I never saw the states, I never traveled overseas or met nobody famous. I guess, maybe I thought if I could just see her, maybe it might give me a sense of having done something before I go.”

“John. Let him in, come on over here, Eric, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” Allison spoke from the bed, Lauren bundled in her arms.

Always the kindest woman, John thought. How could he not be in love with her, with a heart so warm?

Eric gingerly approached the bed, his steps unsteady and slow. As he got near, Lauren let out a coo and reached out with both hands in the air, causing the three adults to chuckle unanimously at her antics.

“She truly is beautiful,” Eric began, “may I?”

He slowly reached a finger out towards Lauren’s outstretched hand when Allison nodded her approval.

Eric felt Lauren’s tiny hand wrap around his outstretched finger. She was warm and had a surprising strength to her. When she opened her eyes, they were like fresh-forged gold, with a depth beyond her age. As she held his finger, he felt renewed, at peace. His cares and worries slipped away and he felt strengthened. He didn’t know what it was he had been searching for, whether something to hope for or a way out, but he knew he had found it. She had given it to him.

John watched carefully.

From a few feet away, he could see the change overcome Eric as Lauren gripped his hand. His complexion regained a healthier flush of pink, his back was less bowed, and his eyes seemed brighter.

“Thank you, I’m sorry to have bothered you. I don’t even know what I came here to find,” stammered Eric. “I’ll leave you two alone, they’ll be wondering where I ran off to.”

John nodded, his mouth slightly agape. He was mystified at the change that had overcome the stranger.

As Eric left, he said, “The doctors say I have a couple of weeks left, if... if you wanted to drop by. I don’t have any family or friends really, I’m in 116...”

He was clearly embarrassed as he ducked out of the room.

John noticed that his steps had more energy, the pole was less for support than it had been, and he seemed to move with a new purpose.

“Did you see that,” breathed Allison, her eyes wide.

She spoke to her husband in a voice barely above a whisper. The two stared at their young child, in awe of the effect she’d had on the man.

The Corvidaes spent the next week shut in at the hospital, hoping to wait out the storm of media outside. Eric stopped by several more times during their stay. Miraculously, he had been declared cancer free just four days after his first meeting with the family. He claimed Lauren was the reason, given the circumstances Allison and John had no doubt he was right. He came in to share the news with them, bringing with him a bottle of champagne, for which they were scolded by an irate Peggy. He was so grateful in fact, he had tried to offer the family money, but they declined. He swore to pay them back somehow, someday.

Finally though, Allison was healthy and whole and they could find no further excuses to stay inside. Far from having abated, the crowd had swelled as rumors flew from nurses who had handled Lauren.

As they stood in the waiting room, staring out the large plate-glass windows at the crowd, Allison snaked her hand out and gripped John’s.

“What have we gotten ourselves into here, John,” she said, her voice laced with worry.

“How can we raise a child like this?”

John felt the concern in her voice tighten around his heart with vice-grip. He felt the same. Outwardly though, he stayed strong, flashing a smile at his wife, he said in as comforting a voice as he could muster, “One day at a time, dear, one day at a time.”