Chapter 22: Two Cribs

Willa's POV

The call from the neonatal unit sounded like good news, and the nurse who made it was crying.

She was crying so hard that she hung up before she had said so.

Stuart ran the whole way from the courthouse in his dark suit, and he reached the fourth floor before the lift I was in.

A porter wheeled me down the corridor with my stitches pulling.

Through the glass wall I saw Stuart standing over the clear box with both hands on the edge.

The tubes were gone from my son's face.

His mouth was open, and his tiny red fists were shaking, and a thin hoarse noise was coming out of him.

It was the loudest sound I had ever heard.

"He's been doing it for four minutes," the neonatal doctor said, grinning. "Nobody can stop him."

"Jack," I said.

I got out of the chair, and nobody told me to sit down.

I put my hand through the round hole and touched his foot.

His cry rose, offended.

Stuart knocked once on the plastic with his knuckle and said, "Goodnight, son."

Jack stopped.

He blinked up at the light with enormous grey-blue eyes, and then he yawned.

"He only does it for you," the doctor said.

"For both of us," Stuart said, and his voice cracked.

We took them home on the twenty-sixth day.

Stuart had put two cribs beside the bed in the big room, and they were already full of stuffed toys.

"Half of those are from the board," he said.

"The same board?"

"They've sent forty-one gifts. I am told this is a bribe."

"I'll write them a thank-you note," I said. "A short one."

"Please."

At three in the morning I was awake in the rocking chair with Flora at my breast.

She fed hard and fast and glared at me while she did it.

Stuart came out of the bathroom in his shirtsleeves with Jack tucked in the crook of one arm.

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