From the fear, emerging healthy and strong

THE PARENTS: Laurel Hostak Jones, 30, and Derek Jones, 40, of South Philadelphia

THE CHILD: Arthur Roland, born Jan. 3, 2021

THAT NAME: Laurel is obsessed with Arthurian legend, and Roland came from The Dark Tower series by Stephen King, books that Derek loves.

He was the Apple store trainer who quoted both Socrates and 2001: A Space Odyssey on his first day with the new hires.

She was the only trainee who got the references.

“I was head over heels,” Laurel recalls. “He had a great smile, great eyes and seemed like a smart, really interesting person.”

Derek remembers an astute trainee with bright pink hair. “Officially, I was not someone she reported to [at work],” he says. “But we didn’t hang out until months after she was done training.” Then, he invited Laurel over to watch a new episode of Doctor Who. “We were pretty much in love immediately.”

That was the fall of 2015. The following summer, they moved in together and adopted a cat. And the year after that, Derek and his mother took some antique jewelry that had belonged to his grandmother and had it made into a one-of-a-kind ring.

He’d thought about proposing during a summer trip to Paris. But he couldn’t wait. On his birthday in May, after the two saw Hamilton on Broadway, he popped a bottle of champagne — and the question — on a rooftop terrace in Manhattan.

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They married at the Morris Arboretum; Derek recalls the moment before the “first look,” when he felt Laurel’s hand on his shoulder and turned around. For her, an indelible moment came at the evening’s end, when the DJ played “Hey Jude” and guests ringed them in a huge, spontaneous dance-floor hug. “We sang and swayed and cried,” she says. “All our friends, just holding us.”

Laurel wasn’t certain she wanted kids. But after watching Derek’s goofiness and ease with other people’s children, she was persuaded.

“When I thought about having kids, I wanted a boy, to raise a little feminist boy who can help fix the world. Also, having someone who will look into your eyes and think you hung the moon.”

After marrying, they figured the perfect time would come … after they’d saved enough money or secured the just-right jobs. “It’s something we were kicking down the pike,” Laurel says, until one afternoon when Derek said, “Why don’t we just start trying?”

They didn’t get pregnant on the first attempt. Or the second, the third, or the fourth. “By the time 2020 rolled around, we were getting a little discouraged,” Laurel says. Then, a few weeks into lockdown, she used a drugstore test before she’d even had her coffee. The two watched while it flashed, unequivocally, “Pregnant.”

They told their parents on Mother’s Day. They announced it more broadly with a Facebook video — Derek on drums, Laurel on ukulele, singing a song about a magic babe from the movie Labyrinth. And they kept strict COVID-19 precautions, declining invitations even to outdoor gatherings.

On a babymoon trip to Gettysburg, they stayed in an Airbnb and toured the site in their car. “For the most part, we were hermits,” Derek says.

Laurel was due at the end of December. As public health experts forecast a wintertime surge in COVID cases, she began to worry: What if hospitals stopped permitting a support person in the room with a laboring woman? What if one of them got sick?

The day after Christmas, a Saturday, Derek woke up with chills. Hours later, he developed a fever. He began to cough. He scheduled a COVID test, and the two began to quarantine in the house; Derek stayed upstairs while Laurel slept in the first-floor guest room.

His test results came in an email on Monday. “I couldn’t hug Laurel. We looked at each other from across the room. We cried. Later, I got to the point where I could barely stand. I contemplated calling 911. I still had six or seven days of pure hell in front of me.”

Laurel’s mother flew in from Colorado and quarantined in a hotel. Meanwhile, Laurel and Derek FaceTimed from different parts of the house. “It was so much to hold all at once — the grief of him not being in the room when we have our first child. Also [wondering], am I going to get sick? Is my husband going to be OK?”

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Derek’s positive test meant he would not be allowed in the hospital for their son’s birth. It also meant that Laurel almost certainly had COVID, too, although she remained asymptomatic. Her test results came back — positive, indeed — on Dec. 30, her due date.

Laurel’s water broke at 4 a.m. on Jan. 2. That afternoon, Derek drove her to Pennsylvania Hospital; her mother met her there. After a chaotic stint in triage — Laurel fainted after a blood draw, then needed medication to halt her rapid contractions — she and her mother settled into a delivery suite.

When it was time to push, Laurel’s mother reached for her daughter’s hand. Derek tuned in via FaceTime. Arthur emerged with pursed lips and huge, bright eyes.

Then — after initial skin-to-skin contact, and a first round of breastfeeding — nurses bundled Laurel and the baby into a wheelchair and took her to a recovery room, where no visitors were allowed, for the next two days. It was there, alone with a newborn, that she realized she’d lost her sense of smell.

At home, it took another two days — distancing in the house and wearing masks — until Derek’s doctor gave him the all-clear to rejoin his family. “We ripped our masks off,” Laurel says. “We looked at each other across the couch and I said, ‘Do you want to kiss?’ ”

Laurel wonders sometimes how Arthur will tell the story of this time to his grandchildren. She thinks about how she and Derek tell it to themselves: a period of grief and tears and terror, yes — but also of strength, solidarity, and luck.

“We have a healthy, beautiful boy. I’m here. Laurel’s here,” Derek says. “If we can get through this, we can get through anything.”