A nurse placed her baby, wrapped in a pink hospital blanket, into the cradle of her arms, and she gazed down at her beautiful girl with her precious, unmarked face. Her tiny lips, which were tinged blue, were slightly open, and her eyes were closed. She looked like she was sleeping.
“Wake up,” she pleaded as she shook the precious bundle. Her head, covered in soft, light brown fuzz, lolled to the side. Violent sobs raked through Lauren’s body as she wept for her lost child.
She placed kisses on her cheeks, eyes, mouth, and the top of her little head. Then she counted every perfect finger and kissed each one. Lauren’s fingers caressed her soft face and the velvety folds of skin around her neck. Carefully placing her silent baby on the bed, she unwrapped her and counted her toes and touched her chubby little legs. Her skin felt smooth, soft, and cold. Lauren quickly wrapped her back up and rubbed her tiny hands in her own. When she couldn’t warm them she asked Jess for another wrap.
“I don’t think it’s necessary,” Jess answered with care.
“She’s cold, get her another wrap,” Lauren snapped.
Jess nodded and rushed off to retrieve one.
When she came back, she handed Lauren a blanket, and she wrapped her baby in it. “There you go, sweetheart. Mummy will warm you up,” she crooned as she rocked her baby gently in her arms.
She held her baby for hours, burning her face into her memory. When it was time to let her go, tears poured down Lauren’s face like warm rivers and fell into her baby’s closed eyes, looking like her own tears, tears she should have shed a hundred times in her life.
She kissed her one last time with all the love she had and all the love she would always have, and whispered, “I’ll love you forever, Abby.”
Emma’s loud cries pulled her from the past and back to the present. Pain that had become less stabbing over the years roared fierce and strong through her, and Lauren found it difficult to discern reality. This was not Abby, it was Emma.
Emma put an angry fist in her mouth and sucked, quietening down for a moment, but then spat it out and the wailing began again. Lauren spotted a yellow dummy in the pram so she got up to get it then put it into Emma’s mouth. Emma suckled the dummy and looked up at
Lauren with big, blue, watery eyes, and Lauren, not for the first time, wondered what color Abby’s eyes would have been.
Lauren gently rocked her in her arms as Emma rhythmically sucked on the dummy. Emma’s wide eyes soon grew heavy and drooped closed. The sucking stopped, her mouth grew slack, and the dummy slipped from her lips. Lauren felt the blood drain from her body and her knees turn to water. Horror gripped at her heart.
Emma had stopped breathing.
Chapter Thirteen
Jack entered his office with Leah and found Lauren looking panicked and as white as a sheet.
Racing over to them, Lauren cried, “She’s not breathing!”
“What?” Leah’s eyes grew wide, and she grabbed Emma from Lauren’s arms.
Wrapping her arms around her stomach, Lauren bent at the waist. Jack thought it wouldn’t be long before she crumbled in a heap on the floor, so he placed soothing hands on her shoulders and straightened her up. She uncontrollably shook in his arms.
“What happened?” he asked, ducking his head to search her face.
“When you left, she started to cry so I picked her up, and she stopped breathing.”
Emma got jostled awake when passed between Lauren and Leah. Howling her displeasure at being woken. Jack glanced over his shoulder at Emma. “Lauren, she’s fine.” “She’s breathing?” Lauren didn’t sound convinced.
This time Leah answered. “I think she’s making enough noise to prove it.” She gave Lauren a soothing smile.
“Oh, thank God.” Lauren’s shoulders sagged as Jack led her to the chair. He sat her down and she dropped her head in her hands.
Catching Jack’s attention, Leah raised a questioning eyebrow. Shrugging, he nodded toward the door. Leah took it as her cue to leave.
“Lauren, look at me.” Jack placed a hand on her back and squatted down beside her.
“What happened?”
She took a deep breath, and Jack felt it shudder through her. “I thought she stopped breathing.”
“She fell asleep.”
“I didn’t know that.” Lifting her head, she looked at him with panicked eyes, her face still drained of all color.
