I'd done this before. I'd stood in corridors and waited for news that would change everything. Years ago, when Steph had taken in Eira—a baby that wasn't hers by blood but was hers by every measure that mattered. She'd been scared and alone, twenty-five and suddenly a mother. The system that was supposed to help had been slow and indifferent. And I'd sat in a social services office not unlike this waiting room, understanding for the first time that "bridge" wasn't just a metaphor—it was a job you took on when you decided to love people that the world didn't know how to hold.

The doors opened, and I looked up automatically. A midwife, young and efficient. "Your daughter is progressing well. Labor is established. She's handling it beautifully. Another few hours, probably."

Daughter. I had a daughter now. Not by blood, but the distinction felt irrelevant. I'd been her father since the moment they arrived at the cottage, since the moment I decided that family wasn't something you inherited—it was something you built, one stubborn decision at a time.

"Can I see her?" I asked.

"In a bit," the midwife smiled. "Right now, she needs her partners. But you can sit with them if you'd like. Room Three."

I walked back through the double doors into a world I didn't fully understand. The machines beeped their constant, electronic reassurance. The walls were a pale blue that was probably supposed to be calming but just looked like the color of someone's sadness. And there, in the third door on the left, was the room where the future was being assembled, one contraction at a time.

The "drift" took her then, fully. She wasn't looking at us anymore. She was inside the wave. Her hair was damp with sweat, clinging to her forehead in dark spirals.

"Water," she rasped.

I held the cup, the plastic straw trembling against her lips. Peter was a ghost in the corner, pacing a three-step path between the window and the door. Step, turn. Step, turn. His boots made a dull thud on the floor. Every few minutes, he'd stop and look at the clock, his jaw tight.

"Where's Steph?" she gasped after a particularly long surge.

"She's coming, love," Peter said, stopping his pace. "She's just coming over the bridge. She'll be here."

The room felt small. The world outside the hospital—the cottage, the college, the London ghosts—had ceased to exist. There was only the green line on the monitor, the smell of antiseptic, and the raw, terrifying power of a girl becoming a mother in the full of a Welsh winter. The February frost was scratching at the window, but inside, the heat was rising.