When someone hands John a tiny, red-faced old man, bundled in what he thinks might be a dishtowel, his brain does something complicated and goes suddenly offline. He's pretty sure they came for a baby, he and Rodney – that Sunshine's been trying to give them a baby for several rounded months and eight-and-a-half sweaty, painful hours – but this is an old man he's holding; nineteen-or-so inches of tiny old man in a knitted cap, mouth working tremulously as if there might be a cry behind those lips. John would hand the old man back and protest that they came for a girl if not for two things – that he saw this child born mere minutes before, saw his very own flesh-and-blood slide into the world, and that he feels a bewildering force of love for this old-man-daughter that defies the limits of his ribs and heart to carry it. "Hey, um – Mere . . ." and wow, he really doesn't have a lot of breath stocked up to handle this, "You know. Meredith."
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