She pointed at herself.
“I was informed after rounds this morning. I was going to call you, but then…” She looked over my shoulder and her voice lowered. “Their baby died. He just stopped breathing and we couldn’t get his heart restarted. The doctor came in and worked the baby with us but…” She blew out a breath, wiping her eyes. “He died.”
My stomach dropped and I pulled her into my chest, wrapping my arms around her and holding her tight.
“Fuck,” I said. “Of course you’re allowed to not call me when that happens.”
I felt like a grade-A asshole.
She rubbed her nose along my chest for a moment before pulling away and wiping her eyes.
“Let’s look at our guy,” she ordered. “Give them some privacy.”
I looked at them over my shoulder, wondering if the devastation would ever go away.
I highly doubted that it would.
I looked away from them and toward my own child.
One that had just as much of a chance of dying as theirs did.
“How’s he doing?” I wondered.
“He’s doing well,” she said. “His O2 stats are wonderful. We also got him to take his pacifier for a little bit today.”
“I thought pacifiers weren’t good,” I wondered.
At least, that was what I’d always heard, anyway.
“Pacifiers are great, especially for premature infants like Dare,” she said. “They help the baby learn to bottle feed.”
They had my son on a feeding tube. There was a nasogastric tube that went down his nose into his stomach that was used to feed him formula.
The sight of that tube going into my baby’s nose was making my heart palpitate just looking at it.
“Cool,” I said.
Anything that would get that NG tube out of my baby faster was a-okay in my book.
“I also wanted to talk to you about breast milk,” she said.
I frowned. “Um, what?”
“We talked to Eerie about this, but she said absolutely not,” she continued. “But then I thought, what’s it matter if we talk to both of you?”
“What about breast milk?” I pushed.
“Okay, so formula is great for your baby. But, in cases of prematurity, we like to encourage parents to use breast milk. Normally the baby can tolerate it a little better, and it’s so much healthier—or better for them in all ways. The only problem is, you’d have to go to a milk donation bank. All milk from them is sent through a significant health screening, so you’ll for sure be getting…”
“I said no yesterday!” Eerie’s angry, way the hell pissed off voice, bellowed.
I whipped my head around in anger.
“Eerie,” I said quietly. “Keep your voice down.”
I looked over at the crying men that were mourning their child and found that I was getting pissed.
There was something that would be great for our baby, and she didn’t want to do it?
That pissed me off.
Like big time.
***
Reggie
These babies in the NICU needed all the help they could get.
The baby that had just perished had been doing well. He’d been fighting and going strong until this morning. One second he’d been fine, and the next he had a massive stroke that had taken his life way too early.
“I don’t care!” Eerie yelled. “You’re trying to convince this man, who might I add had no desire to have this kid, to make a decision when it comes to my son!”
“Not just your son,” Nathan said softly. “Both of ours. I had just as much of a part in making that child as you did. It may not have been the traditional way, but it definitely doesn’t matter any longer. My kid. Mine. Half of my DNA is in that kid, so you can bet your ass that I should get some say when it comes to my kid. Like it or not, if I think breast milk is a good idea, then it’s going to happen, even if I have to go to the judge and do it.”
“While you’re at it,” she said, “why don’t you go ahead and have a DNA test performed by someone that’s not fucking you. The kid isn’t yours, Nathan.”
That was a weak attempt at trying to get him to give up.
But she should’ve known Nathan better than that.
Nathan liked a challenge.
And, more than anything, Nathan valued family, which was likely why he’d backed out of wanting to help Eerie once he was able to think about it more clearly—and when she hadn’t manipulated him at a young age because she was sick.
He would’ve always wanted to be a part of his son’s life.
The really scary part was that had Dare not ended up in this particular NICU, would we have ever known that Nathan had a child running around outside our lives?
The answer was pretty scary—probably not.
A monitor started to go off on one of my babies, so I gave Nathan a ‘keep her in line’ check and started walking toward the far wall where little Miss Anna Gray had hopefully kicked off her pulse ox monitor and not anything too scary.
Luckily that was the case, and as I fixed the monitor, I gave a wan smile at the Grays.
“This girl is getting feisty,” I said to the mom and the dad. “Not much longer now for sure.”
“That’s our hope,” Mrs. Gray said, looking over at the scene behind me.
It wasn’t Eerie, who was still being loud, that they were looking at. It was the baby that had just passed away and his family, as well as Dr. D.
“My heart aches for them,” Mr. Gray whispered.
I touched his shoulder and he looked at me.
“Focus on what you have in front of you,” I suggested. “It’s scary when we lose one, but you can’t let that fear control you. Let Anna do the work and support her. Because she’s almost there, Mr. G. She’s almost there.”
Making my rounds through my other patients, I met up with Sierra in the middle of the room, followed shortly by Peyton.
Just as we met up, Nathan made
