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“I’m ready,” she said.
She wasn’t. I could see the pain on her face, the confusion. Also the determination.
“And so you shall,” I said.
I left the room and found a doctor.
“Take us to the nursery,” I ordered.
The man’s eyes widened, and then he nodded.
He looked down at the chart he held in his hand. “Pregnant woman with bleeding?” he asked, looking down at my bloody clothes.
“Yes. Take us to the nursery.”
“I will, but I was coming to see you. We should talk before you go. Is your wife awake?”
“Tell me,” I said, the dread I felt earlier almost minimal in the face of the anticipation of what the doctor planned to say.
His eyes clouded, and his face settled in a grim line.
“I’m sorry. Another week, ten days, then maybe she would be stronger… But her lungs just aren’t developed. We’re going to do everything we can to save her, but I’m going to be honest with you, this is a grave situation. You and your wife should prepare as best you can in case…”
I’d been waiting on those words, had expected the worst, but hearing them crushed me in a way I hadn’t thought possible. I hadn’t completely wrapped my head around the idea of a baby, and now she fought for her life. She had been mine to protect, and now there was nothing I could do for her but be there and wait. For the first time in as long as I could remember, probably since I was a very young boy, tears welled in my eyes. I bit them back, begging them not to fall, and when I finally had regained control of myself, I looked at the doctor.
“Take us to the nursery,” I said.
The doctor nodded.
TWENTY-FIVE
Vasile
“I think she smiled,” Fawn said.
Her voice was watery with tears, but I could hear the joy underneath.
It was afternoon now, the first hours of my daughter’s life. But instead of celebration, we were together, huddled behind closed hospital blinds. The NICU was mercifully empty, and that was where we were staying, Fawn holding the tiny baby as much as she could. It had been torture of the most profound kind to watch Fawn hold our baby and then give her to doctors and nurses who poked and prodded, all in attempts to make sure my daughter lived. I wished I could take every jab of a needle, every tube that was threaded into her, take every little cry that she exhaled, her tiny chest near caving before it expanded again.
But I couldn’t, could do nothing but stand there, weak, impotent, as helpless as my child. And my failure didn’t stop there.
It was shameful, weak, but I’d barely been able to look at my daughter, couldn’t bring myself to touch her. I’d created her, and I’d almost destroyed her before she’d had a chance to live.
Fawn would never forgive me for this.
I would never forgive myself.
“Vasile,” Fawn said softly, her voice pulling me out of my thoughts.
I walked over, kneeled beside her.
“We should name her.” Fawn smiled, the moment of happiness crushed under the weight of the despair that flickered across her face a second later. “Maria. I always liked that name.”
“It’s a good name,” I said, barely able to push the words out around the lump that clogged my throat.
“Hold her,” Fawn said, lifting her arms.
I paused, my mind racing with the thought that maybe me not touching her would protect her, keep her safe as I had been unable to do. I looked to Fawn, and she stared back, eyes bright with the sheen of tears that had not yet spilled.
