Some nights, I sat beside their beds and remembered the moment Dr. Hisham first told us we were expecting seven babies.
I remembered the eighth.
The ninth.
The missing identification number.
The seven minutes of lost footage.
And the fear that had nearly broken me.
Sometimes people asked whether I considered the birth of nine children a miracle.
I always gave them the same answer.
“Every child is precious. But the miracle was not the confusion in that hospital. It was that we kept searching until every one of our children was accounted for.”
One evening, Mamdouh found me sitting beside the cribs, watching the babies sleep.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
I looked at our children.
“How close we came to letting fear take away the joy of meeting them.”
He sat beside me and took my hand.
“We didn’t lose that joy,” he said. “We just had to fight harder for it.”
