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The sound of heavy rain falling against the windows of the hospital room fills your ears as you sit up in the plastic framed bed. All around the room are bouquets and vases full of fresh flower arrangements that had been brought in by Tony and Carmela as well as some of the other men and their wives. Held safe and comfortable in your arms is baby Rosaria. Born two hours ago now, Rosaria is swaddled in a soft pink blanket and fast asleep in the warm crook of your arm, releasing the occasional quiet coos and sighs in her sleep. Your eyes soften as you watch her. Even now with her still being so small, the glaring resemblance she holds to him is easy to spot. She has a head of thick, dark hair exactly like his. Her eyes bear a striking resemble to his own, though they hold a curious innocence.
You bite down the inside of your cheek, drawing a small amount of blood, and tighten your gentle hold on the infant at the mere thought of him and his absence. Christopher. You had been heartbroken at first. It had felt like he had torn your heart out from your chest and threw it to the floor without a care in the world. You had called him at least one hundred times, both when your water had first broke in your apartment bedroom and when you were in active labour at the hospital. You had been desperate. He had been nowhere near you when you most needed him. He had left to “handle some business” a mere hour and a half before your water had broken. All of your calls had went straight to voicemail, the recorded sound of his thickly accented voice crackling through and telling you to “leave a message” had been a consistent, humiliating bucket of cold water being thrown over you.
Now, that earlier heartbreak, that earlier sadness, has been overshadowed by something else; a burning, unrelenting anger and a cold, heavy acceptance. Now, your own phone is closed and turned off, resting atop the rolling tray beside the bed.
It was not like you are or even were unaware of the cause. You knew. Of course you did. You had seen the countless, mocking track marks scattered across his olive skin that peeked out from the long sleeved tops that he favoured all of a sudden. You had watched him fall asleep across from you at the dinner table of your flat and even at restaurants, his head leaning on his palm and his fingers still brushing the handle of his fork. You had seen his care for his own appearance slowly begin to wilt away. The two of you had countless fights over it. He had sworn that it was nothing as bad as you claimed it to be. You had thrown countless mugs and vases at him for treating you like nothing more than an obedient mob wife who was expected to sit and observe but not speak a word, for treating you and the baby as second to first runner ups to drugs.
Those fights would always end with Christopher down on his knees with his hands cradling your baby bump and his dark eyes wide with primal desperation, begging for you to understand that the drugs were a simple ease of the constant weight that was on his shoulders, begging you to believe that he would be done with it after every reoccurring argument. For some reason, you had always forced yourself to believe him. Perhaps it was out of the love you had for him, or because you had hoped you and his own child meant more to him than the needle did. You had hoped and forced yourself to believe a lot of things, for the sake of the baby and for the sake of your own heart. Now, they had all come crashing down on you in a way that was final and irreversible. Gone was your previous lenient and hopeful attitude toward him. Unbeknownst to him, he had snapped the final, fragile straw.
Tony is perhaps even more angered than you are. You had seen the sharp tick in his chin and the darkness in his eyes when he and Carmela were finally allowed onto the hospital room to see you. He had been holding his phone in a visibly tight grip, almost cracking the plastic shell as he pat you on the shoulder with his free, heavy hand and promised to find Christopher, having already sent multiple men out looking when you had first called Carmela on your way to the hospital and told her that Christopher was nowhere to be found and was not picking up his phone. Your heart is so split up inside. Part of you still cares, part of you hopes that Tony will not have him hurt or even hurt Christopher himself for the sake of the Christopher you once knew and cherished. Part of you is spiteful, part of you hopes that Tony does have Christopher hurt in a way that will still not come anywhere close to being as painful as what he has put you through.
The unmistakable click of the thick door to the hospital room opening snaps you out of your trance within an instant. You look up from Rosaria with a small smile, half expecting to see Carmela appear again due to her having been reluctant to leave you alone in the hospital. Your face falls when you see Christopher instead.
He looks awful. It is the very first thing you notice. He looks worse than you have ever seen him before. His eyes are bloodshot and glazed over, whether with tears or euphoria, or perhaps both, you cannot tell. The deep violet bags beneath his eyes are deep and dark in colour. His usually neat hair is a mess atop his head with greasy tufts sticking up in random directions, a clear sign of him having ran his hands through it more than once in the past ten minutes. His clothes are soaked with rain water and rustled with countless creases, a dark stain is blotched across the knee of his trousers. His coat sleeves are pulled down tight around his wrists in an attempt to keep the littering of track marks hidden. Your nose wrinkles at the sudden, stale smell that overpowers the bunches of fresh flowers and fills the small room, clinging to him like an unshaken mark of his actions. “Babe!” He heaves. His breathing is ragged and laboured, no doubt the aftermath from him running through the sterile hospital halls like a madman in an attempt to find your room through all of the numbers and halls in the maternity ward. “Shit. I can explain, I swear to god.” he breathes. You watch him step further into the room and let the door fall closed behind him, not speaking a word for now though you can feel your throat burning with a whirlwind of emotion. “I was out doing that business for T all last night and the damn car broke down outta nowhere. I was stuck on the side of some road for hours with no reception on my phone and-” He scrambles to explain in an almost manic manner before pausing as his wide eyes finally fall down to the tiny bundle held in your arms.
Christopher chokes out something between a gasp and a sob when he realises what he is looking at, bringing a shaky hand up to scrape through his thick, greasy hair. “Oh god, babe. Is that her? Is that our little girl? Our Rosie?” He sniffles, taking three quick steps closer toward the foot of the hospital bed. Your cold expression almost cracks when he mentions her nickname. It is the name that the two of you had decided on the moment you found out you were having a girl, a name you had heard him whispering back to himself and seen him ordering to be embroidered on expensive boutique clothes before he allowed himself to fall too deep. Your hold on the infant tightens instinctively as you subconsciously pull her further into the safety of your chest, further away from his shadowing figure. “Stay there, Christopher.” You demand, your voice croaky and damaged from the hours of labour but still fierce and ice cold in tone. His thick eyebrows furrow inwards at your instruction, the shocked expression on his face morphing into a look of stubborn confusion and genuine hurt. “What? Why? I wanna see her. I know I was late but-” he starts. “You were late, Christopher?” You snap, interrupting him in a way that makes his dry lips part to release words that he fails to find.
You blink back the burning tears of anger that threaten you, staring into the darkness of his eyes. “You missed it all. I called you a hundred times, multiple times, over and over again. Just to receive nothing back, from the one person who was supposed to be there the most.” Christopher tears his eyes away from you and Rosaria, opting to stare down at the clean floor beneath his dirty shoes instead, feeling the burn of shame even through the lasting haze of heroin. “Now you come here, hours later, telling me you were on the side of some road and you had no reception? For hours on end, Christopher? No. There was no road. There was no breakdown. I can smell the heroin on you, I can smell the motel room on you. You look like death-” You spit quietly as to not disturb Rosaria, the words spilling from your mouth without a second thought as all that you had pent up for the past hours breaks free upon him. “-and as for the business you were doing for Tony? You’re full of it. Tony was here, Christopher. Unlike you, he was here and he expected you to be here. He has men out looking for you right now, for gods sake.” You watch as his gaze darts over to the door of the hospital room, swallowing thickly as if expecting Tony himself to walk through right then and there. You shake your head and turn your attention to Rosaria as she coos in her sleep, turning her little head to nestle further against your chest. “Do you think I’m stupid, Christopher? Did you seriously think, for even one second, that I would believe any of that?” You ask.
His head snaps toward you, his dark eyes filled with tears. “No, of course not. I know you’re not fuckin’ stupid, babe. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever known, the best damn person in the world.” He rasps, wiping beneath his nose with the side of his dirty hand. “It was only one hit, babe. It was one, I needed to calm down. I was gonna come home to you right after, I swear to god I was. I don’t know what the fuck happened. ‘m so fuckin’ sorry.” He takes another step toward the hospital bed, peering down at the baby in your arms, at least the small amount of her chubby face that he can see through the blankets and your protective arms. “Look at her. She’s beautiful, like a princess.” He breathes, a look of intense love and almost childlike wonderment washing over his exhausted face. “She looks like you.” You mention, though your tone is still almost emotionless toward him, still seething inside from his mediocre explanation. That information brings a small, soft smile to his face. It is the kind of smile that makes you see the old Christopher in him, somehow managing to resurface even in the most overpowering of waves. “Can I hold her?” Christopher asks.
The question almost makes you laugh in a way that is devoid of any real humour. You stare at him, your mouth opening and closing for a few seconds before you can finally get the words out. “Jesus Christ, Christopher. Are you stupid? Look at your hands!” You whisper shout, unable to hold back your searing anger at him still not seeming to understand. “You’re filthy and have god knows what all over your hands. You’re still trembling from the comedown and you think I would hand her over to you? Not only could you not show up for her birth but you show up now looking like this and still have the nerve to ask to hold her.” His expression tightens as his temper rises, spurred on by the drugs that still linger in his bloodstream and fog his mind. “The fuck does that mean? You think I would drop my own baby? You think I would bring any harm to her at all? She’s my kid too. I got a right to hold her.” He rebuttals yet shoves his hands deep into his pockets, the sober side of himself somehow manages to slip through the weighted mist as he speaks, causing there to be a lack of audible confidence in his own words.
You bring a free hand up to massage your temples. The whiplash from seeing glimpses of his old, sober attitude appearing and then seeing the usual, drug infused attitude completely wash them away so quickly is more intense than ever. Your head is filling with too many emotions all over again. As much as it pains you to see him in such a state, your heart is burning with anger for your baby, for the fact that her father was too busy on a bender to even witness her first breath. “Just… sit down, Christopher. Or leave for all I care. It doesn’t make much of a difference anymore. We need to have a talk, a serious one. About us, and about her now too. All of this has to stop.” You sigh heavily, gesturing over toward one of the chairs in the corner of the room. Christopher hesitates in his spot for a moment, still desperate to hold his daughter for the first time, but relents like a dog with his tail between his legs when you shoot him a piercing glare that silently threatens to kick him out instead, or call hospital security and Tony to take him out for you.
Christopher throws himself down into the chair and immediately tucks his head into his shaking hands, digging his fingers into his hair. You watch as his shoulders slowly begin to shake and his leg begins to bounce. “I’m sorry, babe. I know it ain’t enough but I’m so fuckin’ sorry. Please don’t take her from me. Please don’t leave me. Both of you, you’re the two good things I’ve got. I’ll do whatever you want.” He sobs, his voice trembling and watery with vulnerability. His accent is thicker than ever with clawing emotion as the lasting seriousness of the situation seems to come slamming down on top of him, sobering him and overwhelming him all at once.
You cannot see into the future. You do not know if he will ever be able to go back to who he once was. You do not know what Tony and the others will do to him once they hear about his arrival at the hospital. All you do know is that the two of you have an exhausting and long overdue talk ahead of you.