Chapter 20: Holding On

Maxim's POV

The nurse unbuttoned my shirt for me, because my hands would not do it.

"Skin to chest," she said, in an everyday voice. "He'll do most of the work. You just sit."

She pulled a recliner up beside the incubator and lowered me into it.

Then she reached into the box and lifted my son out with both hands, wires and all.

She laid him on my bare chest.

He weighed almost nothing.

I felt every ounce of him.

His skin was warm and a little damp, and his whole back fit under my one hand.

I did not breathe.

"Breathe, Dad," the nurse said. "He needs to feel you do it."

I breathed.

His head turned on my sternum, and a soft, fast flutter began against my ribs.

It took me a moment to understand that it was his heart, and that I was not hearing it.

I was feeling it.

All these weeks I had been afraid of the sound.

I had never thought it could be a thing I held.

"Is he all right?" I said.

"He's perfect."

"He isn't making any noise."

"That's what asleep looks like."

Elena was kneeling next to the chair.

I did not know when she had come around the incubator.

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