I pointed to each wire, lead, sticker, Band-Aid, piece of gauze, and tube that the baby had and explained each and every one.
By the time I was finished, he was breathing a little easier.
“Now,” I said as I looked at the chart. “The baby is twenty-nine weeks. From here on out…”
I then went on to explain complications that the baby may have, not sugarcoating any of it.
By the time I was done, he was looking slightly green.
“That’s not to say that he’ll run into any problems,” I continued. “Just that it’s a likelihood that we’ll prepare for. And, a lot of times, you’ll go home with him having a great day. And the next day you’ll come back and he’s taken a bad turn. But I don’t want you to get discouraged. He’s doing great.”
Sadly, I had so many other things that I had to do that I couldn’t continue to hold his hand.
Luckily, during that time that I’d been explaining everything, Peyton had gotten Eerie to leave.
She was standing out in the hall near the elevators, the phone pressed to her ear, glaring daggers at us through the glass.
After assuring him that he’d be okay, and that he could touch the baby, I went back to work on my other patients.
At one point, Sierra and I met back up at the nurses’ station.
“What happened to your ring?” Sierra asked as she came up to me.
“When we went tubing this past weekend? It’s now at the bottom of the river,” I admitted. “That’s what was in my ‘non-floating floating bag.’”
“Oh, that sucks,” my charge nurse, Peyton, said as she heard my explanation. “How’d that happen?”
I hadn’t even realized that she’d come up to me until now.
I turned so that I could look at her as I explained what had happened.
“The waterproof, floating bag that I bought off of Amazon wasn’t as floaty as it advertised. It sank like a freakin’ stone,” I grumbled darkly. “I would’ve left zero stars if I could have. You can bet your ass I’m writing a terrible review.”
“You should ask for your moneyback at least,” Peyton admitted.
I agreed.
It was on my to-do list.
That was twenty bucks that I’d never get back.
Movement caught my eye, and I once again looked up to find Eerie standing at the glass, practically pressing her nose to it, glaring hard at Nathan.
“She’s going to be trouble,” Sierra grumbled under her breath. “I just know it.”
I agreed wholeheartedly. The sad thing was, she’d been trouble for me since I’d met her.
“I have no clue what Nathan ever saw in her,” I grumbled, glaring at Eerie through the glass of the NICU.
Sierra raised a brow at me. “You really don’t see it?”
I frowned. “See what?”
“Look hard, Reg,” she ordered, jerking her chin at the woman.
I turned my face around and stared at Eerie.
I’d always hated her.
You know that saying ‘anything you can do I can do better?’ Well, Eerie did everything better than me when it came to appearances.
She had short, curly reddish-brown hair the same color as mine. Soft, white skin that seemed to glow thanks to the iridescent light she was standing underneath of out in the lobby next to the bank of elevators. She was skinnier—skinnier than me by far. Where I had curves, Eerie had real curves. The kind that drew a man’s eye and kept it there.
Her eyes were the only thing that I could say were worse than mine. Though, worse is a relative term depending on who you ask.
Where mine were a mix between blue and green—aquamarine if you wanted to be specific—hers were a really light shade of blue.
Honestly, I’d always loved her eyes because they looked almost unreal.
“You see it?” she asked after I’d been staring for a while.
No, no I didn’t.
Peyton picked up the phone, said something under her breath, then hung it up before marching toward the glass doors. “Fucking perfect.”
The hour must be up.
Visiting hours were from seven to ten, eleven to two, and three-thirty to five. During the hours that the NICU was closed, the doors were locked.
Peyton heading toward them meant that visiting hours were now back open.
Yay.
I looked away after I glanced once again at Eerie who was eagerly waiting to get into the room.
“I see that her hair is better styled than mine,” I admitted to Sierra. “I see that her skin looks silkier.” I held up my skinned elbow that I’d gotten from my fall in the parking lot the other day. “I see that her eyes are—”
“Obviously,” she interrupted my words, “you’re not going to come to this conclusion on your own. You and Eerie could pass as twins. You’re both the same height and build. You both have the same hair color. You both have the same smooth, silky skin that just begs you to reach out and touch it. Honey, Nathan chose Eerie because of her similarity to you… and she knows that. If she had that pointed out to her today, I’d highly doubt it would be a surprise to her. It’s probably likely that she realized your similarities in high school, understood why Nathan had chosen her, and decided to be a complete asshole to you from then on because she had to push you away from him.”
I looked at her in surprise. “He didn’t really do that.”
She nodded her head. “He really did.”
I couldn’t…
“That’s insane,” I found myself saying. “That’s utterly, completely, one hundred percent insane.”
I looked down at the patient chart in my hand and flipped to the next page, trying to distract myself as I took a few notes.
“It’s also true.”
I blinked at the male voice that was behind us.
My mouth dropped open when I turned to see Nathan standing there.
“I overlooked her personality,” he said. “Because I could pretend that she was you when I would close my eyes.”
My mouth fell open in obvious shock.
“I don’t want him in there
