Chapter 4: Visitor List

On the third day, Maddy came off the oxygen tube.

She breathed on her own for six hours, and the neonatologist wrote it on her chart with a smile.

I sat beside her with a pump humming in my lap and a flat pillow behind my stitches.

Zelda sat on the other side, grading first grade drawings of snowmen with a red pen.

At ten past noon, the NICU doors opened.

Dean walked in first, in a good wool coat, carrying a stuffed giraffe nearly as big as the incubator.

Brandy came in behind him.

She wore a soft cream sweater and no makeup, and she held a gift bag in front of her with both hands.

The charge nurse stood up from the desk.

"Sir, you need to wash your hands at the sink before you come in."

"I'm her father," Dean said. "I know the rules."

"Then you know where the sink is."

He glanced at me, and I held his eyes.

"Hello, Claire," he said. "I came to see my daughter."

"Her name is Maddy."

"Maddy." He tried it out. "Fine. Maddy. Brandy and I wanted to say hello."

"Brandy isn't coming in."

Brandy's face went soft and wounded, and she took a small step back.

"Claire, I understand if you're angry," she said. "I know it looked awful. I just wanted to see the baby for one minute. I won't touch anything."

"You can see her on the photo wall by the elevators."

"That's cruel," Dean said. "She's been crying since Christmas."

"I'm sure she has."

Zelda put down her red pen.

"Stay calm," she said to me, very low. "You are in a room full of other people's babies."

I turned my head to the charge nurse.

"Ma'am, I'd like to take Brandy Lorimer off my daughter's visitor list. She was never on it."

"You're her mother, so that's your right." The nurse already had a pen in her hand. "Do you want security to walk her out?"

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