He Let Me Crash on Christmas Eve, So I Took Our Daughter novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Family Lounge

Nate corners Susannah in the NICU family lounge in front of other parents, and she tells him what she said on the phone and what he answered; Kendra arrives with a stuffed rabbit and tears, and Susannah reads Kendra's text on his phone.

The charge nurse drew the blind over the door, but I could still hear him.

I laid Joy back in her incubator and tucked the blanket around her feet.

"I'll go," I told the nurse. "He's not going to stop."

She squeezed my shoulder.

"Two of us will be at the window," she said.

The family lounge was a small room with a coffee machine and a rack of old magazines.

Three other parents sat in it, and none of them was pretending not to look.

Nate stood by the machine with his coat still on.

He had not shaved.

He still wore the same dress shirt from the Christmas dinner, and it was the twenty-eighth.

"Zanna." He took a step toward me. "They told me you put a hold on my badge. I'm her father."

"I know what you are."

"Let me see her. Five minutes."

"A judge signed that order at two o'clock," I said. "You can ask her about it at the hearing."

A man in scrubs at the next table put down his phone.

Nate lowered his voice.

"You're not being fair. I was in a bad spot that night. Kendra came in shaking, she was bleeding, and her whole family was standing there."

"I was bleeding," I said.

He opened his mouth.

"I called you from a car I couldn't get out of. I told you I was bleeding and I was eight months pregnant. You said Merry Christmas."

"I said I'd call you later."

"You said Merry Christmas, Nate."

A woman near the window covered her mouth with her hand.

Nate looked around the room and found four strangers looking back at him.

"I thought the ambulance had you," he said. "I didn't know it was that bad."

"I told you it was that bad."

"I didn't hear you right. It was loud in there."

"A paramedic heard me fine from the other side of the glass."

He had nothing for that.

He rubbed his face with both hands.

"Where is she?" he said, and his voice cracked on it. "Just tell me she's all right. Tell me her name."

I looked at him for a long time.

Her name was the one thing I had never texted him.

I had been afraid he would shorten it or joke about it.

"Joy," I said.

He said it back softly.

"Joy. That's pretty."

"She was four pounds two ounces. She breathed on a machine for three days. Her left hand is stronger than her right."

"I didn't know any of that."

"You didn't ask."

The door opened.

Kendra Pilkington came in with a soft gray stuffed rabbit pressed against her coat.

Her wrist was wrapped in white gauze, and her eyes were red.

"Susannah," she said. "Oh, Susannah."

She crossed the room with both hands out.

I didn't take them, and she didn't seem to mind.

She put the rabbit on the table between us instead.

"I'm so sorry," Kendra said. "I have been sick over this. I told Nate to go home that night, I swear I did. I was just so frightened, and I didn't know you were hurt."

Her voice shook in all the right places.

Every parent in the lounge turned to look at me.

"You brought a rabbit," I said.

"For the baby. I didn't know what else to do." She wiped her cheek with the heel of her hand. "Please let me help. I can bring you dinners. I can sit with Joy so you can sleep."

She had not been told Joy's name.

I noticed it and let it go, because Nate could have said it to her an hour ago in the car.

"Thank you," I said. "No."

"Susannah, please."

"Kendra. I don't want your dinners and I don't want you near my daughter."

Her face crumpled.

"I only wanted to say sorry," she whispered.

"Say it to someone else."

She nodded and pressed her fingers to her mouth.

"I'll wait in the hall," she said to Nate. "Take all the time you need."

She slipped out, and the man in scrubs shook his head at me.

Nate stepped closer.

"That was cruel, Zanna. She came here to apologize."

"For what?"

"For being there. For any of it."

"She wasn't the one I called."

"Kendra isn't the problem here," he said.

I picked up the rabbit and held it out to him.

"Then you can carry it," I said.

His phone lay on the table where he'd set it when he came in.

It buzzed and lit.

A message sat on the screen with Kendra's name over it.

"Did she sign yet? Don't let her scare you. I'm right outside."

Nate snatched the phone up and turned it face down.

He was too slow.

I had read the whole thing, and so had the woman by the window.

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