Chapter 9: With My Face

Lucy's POV

On the fourth day they let me into the neonatal unit in a wheelchair, with a stitched belly and a plastic bracelet.

Margaret pushed me down the corridor and parked me beside the third incubator on the left.

"I'll be at the end of the hall," she said. "Shout if you need a cranky old woman."

My daughter lay under the blue light with a tube taped to her cheek.

She was the smallest living thing I had ever seen.

She had a frown, a full head of dark hair and one fist pressed against her mouth.

I put my hand through the port, and she found my finger at once.

"Hello," I said. "I'm your mother. I'm not going anywhere."

Behind me, someone cleared his throat.

Harrison stood in the doorway with two paper cups.

He wore yesterday's shirt, and his jaw had not seen a razor in three days.

"They said you were coming down," he said. "I got you tea. It's the awful kind from the machine."

"I like the awful kind."

"I remember."

He set the cup on the ledge and stayed where he was.

"I'll go if you want."

"Terms," I said. "Where's your phone?"

"At the nurses' desk. They're keeping it all day."

"All day?"

"Since Sunday," he said. "I checked once, at four in the morning. I haven't touched it since."

I looked at him for a long time.

"Sit," I said.

He took the stool on the other side of the incubator.

For a while neither of us said anything, and the machines beeped on, and the nurse changed a bag at the next station.

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