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A small sob came from the woman beside me, but I turned my head away from her and the door where Guzman still stood. Several moments passed before Felicity sighed heavily, and I heard her footsteps as she crossed the room. “We all love you, sweet girl,” she said with a sniffle from the doorway. “You simply don’t want to see it right now.”
“Liar,” I whispered as the door closed behind them. “Everyone is a liar.”
Letting the tears fall silently down my face, I allowed the meds to take me away from all the pain my heart and body were in. The next time I opened my eyes, they felt swollen and gritty. A nurse was standing by the bed, her gaze on the machines I was hooked to, reading my vital signs before checking my IV and then changing the bag of fluids for a fresh one.
“Oh, you are awake,” the woman said with a small smile. “How are you feeling, dear?”
I sighed but took stock of my aching body. My throat hurt even worse than it had earlier, and the rest of my body… There was no way to describe the pain I was in. It surpassed the zero-to-ten levels medical professionals used to rate how badly someone felt.
The nurse watched my face as I considered the answer and grimaced. “That bad, huh?” I nodded, and she pulled a syringe from the cart she had beside her after scanning the code on my wristband. “Let’s get you more comfortable. Maybe tomorrow your little one will be ready for some company. Wouldn’t you like to hold that gorgeous baby girl?”
“Yes,” I murmured. “I want to hold her so badly.”
The syringe was placed into the IV line, and within seconds, I barely felt any pain. I blinked a few times, fighting the heaviness of my eyelids, but they fluttered closed once again while I dreamed of holding my sweet Justice…
“Justice!” When I sat upright in bed, my entire body protested the quick movement, but I ignored it. A voice in my head was screaming at me to get up, to get to my baby. She needed me. Throwing my legs over the side of the bed, I got unsteadily to my feet.
The first step was agonizing, as were the second and third. By the fourth, the IV line in the back of my hand tugged, reminding me I was attached to it and several machines. I ripped the IV out, not caring that blood dripped down my fingers as I undid the blood pressure cuff and then pulled off the stickers that had wires attached to them to monitor my heart.
Lifting my feet, I walked as quickly as I could, the pain from my midsection robbing me of breath, but by the time I got to the door, I was used to it. I put up a mental block so I could handle the pain and pulled the door open.
The guards standing outside the room jerked to attention when they saw me. “Miss Cali.” The one on my left tried to touch me, but I flinched away from him.
“Which way to the NICU?” I asked, pushing my hair back from my face, not realizing it was the hand that was bleeding from the IV, and I smeared blood across my cheek.
“Let me get a wheelchair,” the guard on the right offered. “I’ll take you up there myself.”
“No,” I gritted out, walking down the hall to where I knew the elevators were. A directory over the call button listed what was on each floor, and I pressed the up button. Behind me was the nurses station, and I heard them call my name, but I blocked them out, just as I blocked out the pain in my body. When someone tried to touch me again, I jerked away, cowering from them. I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone’s hands on me.
The doors opened, and I stepped inside, pressing the button for the NICU floor. Others entered the elevator with me, but I didn’t pay attention to who they were. Vaguely, I heard them speaking to me, but I was focused on one thing—and only one thing.
Getting to Justice.
The ride up to the NICU floor was over quickly, and I stepped off, still unsteady and bent in half, but walking, nonetheless. Moving toward the door that advised me I was in the right place, I tried to turn the handle, but it was locked.
“Justice!” I screamed her name, wanting her to know I was there. “Justice, Mommy is coming, sweet angel.”
The doors opened moments later, and someone stepped in front of me, blocking my entrance when I would have gone inside. “Ma’am, you’re not in any condition to be in the NICU,” she informed me. “This is a sterile environment.”
“I need to see my daughter,” I snapped at her. “I need to touch her. She needs me!”
Understanding filled her eyes, and she grasped my hand. Lifting it, she showed me the blood that was still dripping off my fingertips. “Let’s get you cleaned up, put on a fresh gown, and then you can see your little one. Okay?”
“She needs me,” I repeated, my voice quieter.
“Yes, she definitely does,” the nurse agreed in a gentle, yet firmly reassuring voice. “And as soon as you’re cleaned up and can safely see her, I will take you to her.”
A chamber separated the outside from the NICU ward itself. The nurse patched up my bleeding hand and washed away the blood I hadn’t realized I’d smeared on my face. She gave me a fresh gown to change into and then helped me with the protective covering. My hair was pulled into a low knot at the back of my head before a hair net was placed over it.
I’d been in some scary places, but there was nothing more terrifying than the NICU. It was mostly silent, the beeping of heart monitors wasn’t present, but there was a nurse at a station who did nothing but watch the vitals of the itty-bitty patients who were in her care. I heard no crying babies, and I realized as I passed one incubator after another, that most of the babies were too small and sick to have the energy to make a sound.
My heart lifted into my already aching throat, but I kept my tears at bay as the nurse finally stopped in front of the incubator that had the name “Baby Hannigan” on a card, identifying who the baby was.
I gasped when I got my first look at my little girl. She was by far the tiniest baby in the ward, perhaps the sickest as well. She could have easily fit in the palm of my hands with room to spare. The name tag had her birth weight—one pound, four ounces—but there was a note that said she’d already lost two ounces since she’d been brought to the NICU.
There was oxygen in her nose that was taped to her face to stay in place, as well as an NG tube. Her eyes were covered, and all she wore was a teeny-tiny diaper that would have been too small even to fit on my dolls when I was a little girl. Cords, tubes, wires, and what seemed like a hundred other things were connected to her, helping her to breathe, to nourish her—to keep her alive.
The IV in the top of her head was what finally broke me. The discomfort I’d felt at having one in the back of my hand… How much did it hurt Justice to have one in her scalp? My tears fell silently because I didn’t want my daughter to hear her mother weeping. I had to be brave, for her sake, if nothing else.
