The Walk Into the Room
Hospitals always smell like something sterile and hopeful at the same time. But for Andre, they also smelled like home — like the life he built with Keisha before he tore it apart.
When he reached the door of the delivery room, he froze.
He didn’t want her to see him like this — chained, escorted, wearing state-issued orange instead of the jeans and button-up he wore on their wedding day. Shame washed through him like fire.
But then he heard her.
“Andre?”
Her voice — strained, breathless, full of pain and longing — snapped something inside him.
He stepped in.
Keisha lay on the hospital bed, her face twisted with contraction, tears streaming down her cheeks.
But when she saw him, her whole body broke with relief.
“Andre,” she sobbed. “You came. You’re here.”
He knelt beside her — the chains rattling as he reached for her hand.
He couldn’t wipe her forehead.
Couldn’t hold her waist.
Couldn’t wrap his arms around her the way he wanted to.
But he held her hand.
And in that moment, it was enough.
He squeezed through the pain.
Through the contractions.
Through the fear and guilt and heartbreak.
He whispered prayers into her shoulder, apologies into her palms, love into the space between every contraction.
“Breathe, baby… you’re doing incredible… I’m right here… don’t let go.”
Keisha wasn’t pushing alone — she was pushing with the strength of a woman whose husband had come back to her, even in chains.
