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“No, ours is upstairs. This one is a simulation.”

She bursts into a laugh that instantly lifts my mood. “I’m glad you still have a sense of humor. The nurses just told me I’ve been out for a while.”

“Yeah, and I’ve needed my sense of humor to be able to get through it.” I choke up a little, grateful that she’s okay. “Would you like to hold our daughter?”

“Daughter?” Arella takes our baby from me, cradles her, then tears up. “She’s beautiful.”

Seeing the person I love the most in the world hold a child we created together—there aren’t enough words in the dictionary to describe all the joy rushing through me.

“Liz said she looks just like you,” I say as I gently tuck some of Arella’s hair behind her ear.

“Is Liz here? Tell her to come in.”

“No, she left a while ago. Earlier, she taught me how to properly strap on a diaper.”

“Did she teach you how to properly hold a baby too?”

I let out a laugh. “Yes, she did.”

“Thank god. I saw the way you were doing it in our parenting class with a fake baby. The whole time, I told myself you’d come into it naturally with a real one.”

“I got some good tips from Professor Google too. I’m like a pro now.”

Arella cups the side of my face, and I lean into her palm. Her touch erases all my anxiety. “I’m so proud of you, honey. Thank you for taking care of our baby while I couldn’t.”

“Don’t give me all the credit. Without Google, Liz, and all these trained women around, I might have poked at you until you woke up to help me.”

She gives me a knowing smile. “Did you think you were going to lose me?”

“Yep.”

“Did you think you were cursed for almost losing your wife on the same day you lost your parents?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely.”

She chuckles and rolls her eyes. “Come here, honey.”

I lean over our baby to give Arella a kiss. The second our mouths collide, every swarm of nerve-wracking thoughts from the past gut-wrenching day disappears. My wife is alive, she’s awake, and she’s going to be okay.

I only stop kissing her once our daughter gets a little fussy. I call our midwife back in to help Arella breastfeed for the first time—another sight I never imagined could give me so much fulfillment.

The entire time she feeds, I stand back in awe of everything my woman is.

I hope that every morning she woke up nauseous, the constant lower back pain, and those fifteen hours of labor she went through are worth it for her.

Everything I had to go through to get here is already worth it, just to see my wife looking at our daughter like she’s the most precious thing in the world.

Once our baby falls asleep in Arella’s arms, the midwife returns to the living room. I take the time to fill Arella in on finding out that our daughter is a Zordi, and not just any Zordi, but possibly the most powerful Zordi on the planet.

When I get to the part where our daughter could have the power to bring people back to life, Arella makes the same ick face I did.

“Are you saying our daughter can make zombies?”

It’s nice to know her mind went there too. “Mia said the Helio hasn’t shown signs of being active for centuries. She said our daughter is merely a host for it to exist.”

“Aren’t you a lucky man? You’ve got two of the rarest humans in the world under one roof.”

I’m not sure if lucky is the right word, because I don’t feel lucky. Mostly, I just feel the need to enclose my wife and daughter inside an impenetrable dome. Since they are so rare, they must be protected.

That’s when it hits me: I know what my purpose is now. This is why I survived the explosion that killed my parents. This is also why I survived all the other shit I went through, especially those three years I spent without Arella. The world kept me around to protect my wife and our little girl.

I take a moment to let that realization sink in.

My eyes close, and I bask in the rush of warmth that spreads through me.

I imagine the rest of my life with my little family and silently vow that I will do everything in my power to give them the best and protect them at all costs.

It feels good to know I was meant for something all along.

“Would you like to know our baby’s name?” Arella asks.

I open my eyes, blinking away the happy tears. “You have a name picked out already?”

“Yeah. I had a name picked out for both genders. If our baby was a boy, I was going to name him Victor.”

My heart swells up as I think about the loving man who deserved so much better than what he got. “That would have been a great way to honor my dad with more than just a letter in my tattoo.”

“Yeah, but since she’s a girl, her name is Katie.

” Arella has been seeing a lot of Katie in her dreams lately.

Like many of her dreams, they don’t give her the full picture, so I’ve been filling in the blanks as much as possible.

Together, we have cried and mourned over the loss of the brave young woman who’s a huge reason why we are here today.

“Do you like the name?” Arella asks.

I place a tender kiss against her forehead. “Yes, baby. Katie is perfect.”