They named the baby Bakhita Joy. Her birth mother was African-American, and the baby's first name paid tribute to an African saint: St. Josephine Bakhita, a nun canonized three years ago.
Bakhita means fortunate in Arabic, but there was nothing fortunate about this baby girl's life.
If her adoptive parents, Scott and Carol Paine, were of different character, there might have been no joy in her life, either.
Bakhita Joy was born July 17 in Tampa with fluid in her skull where a brain belonged. The condition, called hydranencephaly, is rare and hopeless. The Paines were blindsided. There had been no warning during the pregnancy, none at all.
Before she left St. Joseph's Women's Hospital, Bakhita had surgery to drain the fluid from her skull. The Paines took her home. They tried to treasure each day, watching from minute to minute what her tiny body could do. From the first, Paine said last week, "she was a fighter."
She could breathe on her own. After a while, she could take formula from a bottle. She even began to gain weight. But she couldn't maintain a normal body temperature. Even in summer's staggering heat, they often had to wrap her in a couple layers of flannel pajamas and caps.
"She was never destined for the Class of 2021 at the University of Tampa," said Paine, an associate professor at the school and a former Tampa City Council member. "It wasn't important to us where she was going to end up. What was important to us was whatever . . . would enrich her life, make her stronger."
Every day, Paine saw what he thought was progress. At the end of August, he and his wife were feeling so upbeat they talked about what wheelchairs Bakhita might need in two or three years.
Then, early Monday, the infant refused to eat. Her breathing changed.
"It became rapid, somewhat raspy, and there were periods when it would stop," Paine said.
They called the doctor. He put it simply. The miracle of her short life was coming to an end.
"Most likely," Paine recalled the doctor saying, "the very small part of brain that she had to support respiration and heart rate started to fail."
Paine's wife was holding Bakhita in her arms when the baby died a few hours later. He held Bakhita's hands.
When you ask how it feels to be without Bakhita, Paine uses a confounding word in the context of loss. He calls himself "grateful" to have been touched by her life.
"We had six complicated, challenging, emotionally powerful weeks with Bakhita," he said. "We see this as a gift."
He didn't want to imagine what might have been, if she had been born healthy and the God he believes in had awarded her a future.
I asked Paine whether he wants to adopt again, after what he's been through. He almost can't imagine not adopting, he said.
He and his wife are Catholic. They are among those rare creatures, people who live by their beliefs. They have eight surviving children - three biological, five adopted - ranging in age from 1 to 34. When they look upon the world, Paine said, they just see children in need of families.
It would be easy to make this political. As Paine briefly noted, this was a baby who wasn't aborted, whose single mother brought her to life despite stressed circumstances and gave the baby a second chance, life in another family.
But I won't make this political.
Let this be a lesson about a family who understands love, its risks and consequences, and who can turn a loss into a triumph.
Bakhita Joy Paine was buried Saturday. On the eve of her funeral, the family put together a photo collage of Bakhita to display during the services.
In some of the pictures, Paine said, you really couldn't tell. His baby girl looked like any other infant, who one day would grab rattles, stand on wobbly legs, pet the dog.
The truth was different - her skull was all but empty and would never be fixed - but no matter: The mere sight of this baby all but shouted love.
