He Let Me Crash on Christmas Eve, So I Took Our Daughter novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Night Shift

They took her from his arms in the same second.

Three nurses and a doctor surrounded the incubator, and someone pulled a curtain across it.

Nate and I stood on the other side with our hands hanging.

"What did I do?" he said. "Susannah, did I hurt her?"

"No."

"I held her wrong. Her head."

"You did not hold her wrong."

The social worker took us both by the elbow and walked us into the hall.

For twenty minutes nobody told us anything.

I stood with my back against the wall and counted ceiling tiles.

Nate stood across from me with his hands in his hair, and for once I didn't mind that he was there.

The doctor came out at last.

She was a tall woman with a gray braid, and she pulled her mask down to speak.

"She's stable," she said. "The drop wasn't about being held. Her blood work shows an infection, a common one in babies this early. We caught it quickly."

"Is she going to be okay?" I asked.

"We've started antibiotics. The next twelve hours tell us a lot. Only one of you can stay in the unit overnight."

"I'll stay," I said.

"I'll go sit in the lounge," Nate said.

"No," said the doctor. "Mr. Ardrey, she's responding to something."

She looked at both of us.

"When you held her, her numbers were the steadiest they've been all week. They only fell when we moved her."

I turned and looked at Nate.

His hand was shaking again.

"You can both come back," the doctor said. "Wash up."

We sat on opposite sides of the incubator for the first hour without speaking.

The nurse brought two clean T-shirts and told us to hold them against our skin for a few minutes.

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