Chapter 16: The Incubator

Lena's POV

My daughter was born at 11:42 that night, four pounds eleven ounces, and she screamed before the doctor finished lifting her.

I heard it from far away.

I was lying flat with my hair soaked and my legs shaking, and Ty was gripping my hand with both of his.

"She's loud," he said. "Lena, she's so loud."

"Is she breathing?"

"She's breathing. She's yelling at everyone."

The nurse held her up for two seconds, a red furious face under a striped cap.

Ty cut the cord with hands that wouldn't stay steady.

Then they wrapped her and carried her out the door.

"Where are they taking her?" I said.

"She's early, Mrs. Dolan," the doctor said. "She'll be in the NICU for a few days. Her lungs just need help."

"I want to hold her."

"In a few hours."

A few hours.

I had waited five years to be a mother.

I had been told twice that it was over.

Now they were taking my child down a hall and telling me to wait.

I turned my face into the pillow.

Ty smoothed my hair back with the edge of his hand, and he didn't say anything, which was the right thing.

At two in the morning they wheeled me into a quiet room on the third floor.

Ty fell asleep in the chair with his head against the wall.

He had been awake for thirty hours.

I lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling.

I had a daughter down the hall in a box with a tube taped to her nose.

I had a son in a rented apartment, if Shelby had gone home, who didn't know my name.

I had two children, and I could hold neither of them.

My phone buzzed on the tray.

It was a text from Shelby's number, and it was a photograph.

Eli lay asleep on a pillow with Gary the stegosaurus tucked under his chin.

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