Philadelphia Eagles receiver Marquise Goodwin and wife Morgan persevere through pain for the promise of family

THE STORM HAS finally passed. It’s just before 5 o’clock on an inky-dark morning in mid-February as Marquise and Morgan Goodwin approach Northside Hospital in their black Range Rover. For the past several days, a biblical deluge has soaked everyone and everything in Atlanta, transforming nearby parks into lakes, flooding underpasses and making travel treacherous. For the moment, the skies have cleared, and with the exception of one minor nervous-dad driving miscue, Marquise — an Olympic long jumper and veteran NFL wide receiver — and Morgan — a former collegiate sprinter and hurdler — seem entirely unfazed by the weather, or anything else, during their short drive to labor and delivery. After all, they’ve been navigating the path to parenthood for going on three years now.

Up since 2:30 a.m., too excited to sleep, Morgan has been folding and refolding her favorite green blanket and checking her eyelash extensions in the mirror while playfully scolding Marquise for needing the biggest suitcase. “It feels like I’m about to play a game or something,” Marquise confesses in a whisper. “This has been a long time coming.”

Signs of the long, incredible journey that Marquise describes as both brutal and beautiful are all over the nursery back in the Goodwins’ temporary Atlanta apartment. The metal shelves in the walk-in closet are full of baby supplies they’ve waited three years to open. The room itself is painted in neutral colors and decorated in lambs and rainbows, symbols of sacrifice and renewal. And like any parents who are both grieving and expecting, when the Goodwins come in here to daydream, they often find themselves overwhelmed with conflicting feelings of sorrow, fear and hope.

The balancing act continues in earnest this morning. Birds chirp in the dark as a hopeful Morgan, dressed in black from head to toe, except for her pink fingernails, strolls toward the hospital entrance. She’s carrying a bag full of new infant clothes as well as three fist-size heart-shaped metallic urns that contain the ashes of three babies they’ve lost.

LISTEN: On the ESPN Daily podcast, ESPN’s Dave Fleming joins Mina Kimes and talks about Marquise and Morgan Goodwin’s long road to parenthood that was fraught with loss, sadness — and ultimately joy.

This early in the morning, the elaborate glass atrium entrance to labor and delivery is so deserted that even when Marquise says, almost to himself, “I’m not nervous, I’m exciiiiited,” his voice echoes loudly.

“How many weeks are you?” asks the administrator behind the check-in desk.

“Thirty-seven,” says Morgan, calm, in charge, unshakable.

“Is this your first baby?”

For a millisecond, the weight and significance of such a seemingly innocuous question flickers between Marquise and Morgan. There’s a nearly imperceptible list in their body language. It’s as if that storm has returned, once again, and they were just rocked by a rogue wave. The moment passes quickly, though, just a temporary reminder of the life-changing journey they’ve been on all just to get back to this morning’s terrifying precipice where, they are painfully aware, it could happen all over again.

“Technically, yes,” Morgan replies. “I’ve always got to say ‘technically.'”

“Because we’ve got babies,” Marquise adds. “Can’t forget our other three.”

“I didn’t,” Morgan says. “They’re here with us.”

As they finish checking in, Morgan’s hand moves in the most instinctive, maternal way, toward the bag carrying the urns. And as the Goodwins disappear down a long, blindingly bright hallway, deep into the hospital, she keeps one hand on the bag and the other on her stomach.

WHEN IT HAPPENED, when, as Marquise puts it, “all hell broke loose for the first time,” the Goodwins were doing nothing more than relaxing on the couch, watching TV, praying and reminiscing. It was Nov. 11, 2017, the night before the 49ers hosted the Giants at Levi’s Stadium. Since their classic college courtship at the University of Texas at Austin — first date at the outlet mall, engaged near campus on Mount Bonnell in 2014 — the Goodwins had been living out a track-and-field version of “Love & Basketball.” “He’s my best friend,” says Morgan, 26. “I need him. He needs me.”

Morgan, née Morgan Snow, was a nine-time All-American hurdler for the Longhorns. At 5-foot-9 and 185 pounds, Marquise earned a spot on coach Mack Brown’s football team with his pure speed, but he was also a two-time NCAA outdoor champ in the long jump and one of the favorites heading into the 2012 London Olympics. There, however, thrown off by an early foul, he finished a disappointing 10th.

He rebounded in dramatic fashion the following February at the 2013 NFL combine, posting an eye-popping 4.27-second 40-yard dash. The Buffalo Bills selected him in the third round, making him just the eighth Olympian since 1980 to play in the NFL. A hamstring injury kept him out of the Olympics in 2016 — the year the couple married — and in 2017, he jumped to San Francisco, where he became one of the first pieces in coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch’s rebuilding project, eventually signing a three-year, $20.3 million contract extension. “Like you see in the fairy tales, that’s how it planned out in my head,” Marquise says. “Kids, little white picket fence, the American dream.”

The Goodwins are a puzzle-piece couple. They’re each distinct and accomplished personalities whose contours and cutouts have snapped perfectly into place with the other. She is strong but softens once her guard is down. He’s a receiver diva in public — with his own custom diamond-encrusted “MG” logo and Gucci quarantine masks in every color — but in private, he’s thoughtful and resolute. Together, the Goodwins are effortlessly authentic and unreservedly both blunt and tender with each other. After five minutes with them, it’s impossible not to be enchanted and mesmerized and rooting hard for them as prospective parents. “The energy, the spirit, the faith, it’s magnetizing,” says Adrian Colbert, Marquise’s cousin and a former 49ers safety who’s now with the Miami Dolphins. “It’s love. Real love. Like what everybody strives for.”