I let out a half-choking cry when I uncovered a tiny pink face, turning red when the wind howled past. Its eyes were shut and unmoving, its little thumb lodged in its mouth. I couldn’t tell if the baby was dead or alive, so I was undecided of what to do with it. If I took it home and turned out to be dead I’d have to get rid of it, which would look suspicious to the neighbours. If it was alive and I left it here I would’ve committed murder.

I bit my lip and poked the baby’s cheek. Nothing. I poked it again, this time more gently. To my surprise the baby responded, opening its mouth and letting its thumb fall out. It squirmed again, wriggling in my hands like it wanted out.

My heart pounded in my chest. It wasn’t a kitten or a puppy, but it was alive. No matter where it'd come from, I couldn’t just leave it here.

I wrapped the baby back up and pressed it close to my chest. Thinking better of it, I unzipped my coat and slid the bundle in, zipping it back up as best I could.

I must’ve looked like a moron, stumbling my way through the blizzard back to my apartment with an uneven bulge in my torso, but that didn’t matter.

When I finally got home I was ever so grateful to feel the warmth. I threw open the door, kicking off my boots at the front and turning on the lights.

My little apartment welcomed me back. It was little more than a living room that functioned as my mini office and bedroom, right next to the small kitchen with its extended counter, since there was no room for a dining table. The bathroom at the back had no bathtub, so I’d probably have to bathe the baby in the sink.

A sense of panic came over me, as I realized I had another living thing with me that could die at any minute. In my head I kept thinking: this was a baby, not a toy. It was alive and extremely fragile. Under certain temperatures it would stop breathing. If it didn’t eat certain types of food it wouldn’t eat at all. There was no way of knowing if anything I did would accidentally kill it.

I ran over to the wall and cranked up the heat to the highest setting. Throwing off my coat, I set the little bundle on the counter and unwrapped the blankets to free the baby’s face. There had to be a faster way to warm it up.

Then I remembered the oldest method on earth shown in almost every romantic TV drama. Quickly, I stripped down to my underwear and bra, tossing my chilly office clothes to the floor. I took off all the blankets around the baby until it was stripped naked.

It was a girl, I thought, then checked. Girl confirmed.

Pity settled into my stomach. I’d heard about things like this happening. My parents had had the choice to keep me or discard me when they learned I was a girl. They chose to keep me, my mother rambling that our red threads wouldn’t snap because of my sex.

But this poor thing didn’t have anyone. It had been abandoned in the alley where it wouldn’t be found on a cold night like this. It had been left to die.

The fact that this child should’ve died that night made me angry. Determination rose within me, a new vow forming that I was going to keep it alive in vengeance for what had been done to it.

I took the baby in my arms. Its body was ice cold and its cries were weak. But I rocked it gently, placing it next to my breast. Hurriedly, I swaddled us in the blankets from my single bed, hoping my three cotton blankets and comforter would be enough.

The baby continued to cry, and I realized it might be hungry. What did babies eat again? Formula? I didn’t have any of that in my shabby kitchen. I barely had any groceries. Anxiously, I paced, the possibility that I might kill the kid before morning settling into my mind.

Since I didn’t know how old the baby was I had no idea what I should feed it. It didn’t appear to have any teeth yet, so something soft might do. My laptop sat lonely on my desk against the wall. Inching over, I reached out and pulled it onto my bed. Still rocking the baby, I searched up some quick homemade baby foods for infants without teeth. The only recipe I had all the ingredients for was congee. Wait, could newborns even eat congee?

Still, it was better than nothing.

I made a nest in the blankets for the baby so I could get dressed. Cooking with an infant in the house wasn’t easy, I tell you. I had to keep checking on it to make sure it wasn’t dead, though my apartment being small made it easier. A few times I tried to make it cry so at least I’d know that it was alive.

I bit back a curse when the baby soiled itself and my bed when it cried too hard. By then the rice was already boiling, so I could afford to try soak up the urine with paper towel. I took a bath towel and wrapped the baby in that, hoping it would catch any future excrements.

It was around 1:00 a.m. when the congee was done. My hands shook as I spoon fed the baby, having cooked the porridge down as best I could so there’d be no lumps.

It was truly a miracle that the baby ate at all. At first it didn’t eat very much, but gradually it cried for more. Breathing a sigh of relief, I fed it as much as it would take.

By 2:00 a.m. I was absolutely exhausted. Overtired, still slightly cold, and now with another’s life in my hands, I wanted nothing more than to sleep and forget it all.

As my eyes began to drop a faint sound snapped me awake. Looking down at the pink bundle in my hands, wrapped in nothing more than a bath towel and sitting atop blankets soaked with its own urine, a warm and fuzzy feeling sparked inside me.

The baby was laughing. Its eyes had opened a bit, revealing beautiful, sparkling brown eyes. Its cheeks were tender and soft as I brushed the backs of my fingers against them. The baby giggled some more as I tickled it beneath its chin.

We almost didn’t meet that day, but somehow we had.

If my mother had been there she would’ve said that it was the will of the gods, who had forged our destinies long before we were born, tying the red threads around my ankle to the infant’s before me. She would’ve said our thread was no more, since we had finally met, me and my true love.

I didn’t know what the future would bring, nor what was going to happen to us, nor if what my mother had said about the gods was true. All I knew was that I had another life in my arms, a life I had grown to love in a less than two hours.

Anything in my own life could wait. I could deal with that.

But right there, right then, you were the only one that mattered.