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Garret’s throat worked, making it obvious he was having difficulty swallowing, but before my heart could soften or he could come up with some lame excuse, the nurse walked into my room with the promised wheelchair. Scrubbing away my tears with the backs of my hands, I took the offered seat and didn’t give the father of my child another glance as the woman wheeled me away.
I didn’t need to look over my shoulder to know that he followed behind. The two guards fell in behind him from the sound of the number of heavy footfalls. I pushed my damp hair back from my face. My body felt cleaner, but my mind wasn’t the least bit refreshed. If anything, it was more clouded and confused than ever.
On the elevator ride up to the NICU, I replayed the night I’d made my confessions to Garret. He’d sat on my couch with this blank look on his face, which made his story that he’d blocked everything I’d said out of his mind plausible, but that wasn’t a good enough excuse for not coming for me when I’d needed him the most. Whatever he’d been feeling at the time, he’d still abandoned me at my lowest.
And not just me, but our baby as well.
We’d been through hell, and he’d been doing what, exactly?
Living it up in New York, forgetting all about my existence? Like I’d once told Nova—out of sight, out of mind. He was the same as every other man on the planet. Predictably unreliable.
Not just the male population, it seemed, I reminded myself as the elevator doors opened and I saw Felicity standing near the ward’s doors with Guzman. From the time she’d arrived after Nova had gone to California to bring her to Colombia, she’d felt like a mother figure to me. The first one I’d had since before my own mother had passed away.
But she’d only been playing the long game, waiting until her granddaughter was born before she showed her hand. While I was incapacitated, she’d forced Nova to fetch Garret, knowing that her son was the last person I wanted near me. She couldn’t even give me time to recover from having my entire life turned upside down—yet again—before she was demanding someone bring the one person I didn’t want in my life crashing back into it.
She and Guzman could talk about how they only wanted Justice to have her father in her life, because they were so worried that my baby wouldn’t be around long enough to see him later on. But even if, God forbid, she didn’t make it through the obstacles that were being thrown into her path, she didn’t need someone like Garret Hannigan in her life.
My daughter was strong and brave. She didn’t need any man to hold her hand to make it in this world. All she needed was me—and Nova, although I was still upset with her for giving in to the pressure her mother had put on her to bring her brother down from New York.
Everyone else could take their good intentions and ulterior motives and get the hell away from my child. It was obvious neither Justice nor I could depend on any of them. Even Guzman, whom I’d put in charge of security, had betrayed me by allowing Garret to be brought back into my life. But I only had myself to blame for that. I’d been shown over and over again that no man could be trusted.
Not just men, but everyone. Even Nova had betrayed me, although I knew it was because of her mother pressuring her, but she’d still given in. Proving to me that, like always, I was at the bottom of the totem pole when it came to anyone’s loyalty.
But I wasn’t ever going to let Justice feel like she wasn’t good enough, like there wasn’t anyone who would make her their most important priority.
The nurse started to pause when Felicity and Guzman approached, but I made a noise that must have alerted her to the fact that I wanted nothing to do with either of them. Even if she had stopped, I would have gotten to my feet and walked into the NICU under my own steam. Thankfully, I didn’t have to put myself through the extra pain of getting out of the wheelchair.
Before he could follow us, I turned my head and glared up at Garret. “No,” I told him in my coldest voice. “Stay here with the other traitors.”
“Lis, don’t do this to me,” he begged. “I need my eyes on you.”
“And I need mine on my baby.”
“She’s mine too,” he argued, making me laugh.
“You walked away from her once already. I think she’ll be just fine without you standing around doing nothing. You’re good at it, after all.”
“Lis—”
“Let’s go,” I directed the nurse, and the double doors opened.
In the chamber that separated the outside from the ward itself, I washed my hands and pulled on the protective covering before letting the nurse pull my hair into the surgical-style cap that was more net than cloth. Once I was covered up so that I wouldn’t carry any outside germs in to the babies within the ward, she pushed me inside, where another nurse took over and wheeled me over to where Nova was standing with the doctor I remembered from my last visit.
Their conversation paused when I reached them. Nova grasped my hand and gave it a squeeze. Glancing down, I noticed she had a splint on her foot, but there wasn’t time to ask about it as the two of them turned to face me and the doctor gave me a full report on Justice.
“As long as she’s gained enough weight, we feel like next week will be a good time to do the surgery to repair the opening in her heart,” he finished. “What we’re hoping is that you can take a few days to let the pain medication leave your system before we start feeding her your breast milk. Once she starts getting those nutrients, and we see that she is gaining weight, we will begin prepping her.”
My hand turned over in Nova’s, clutching her fingers hard. “What are her chances?” I croaked out in a tight voice.
He glanced over at the baby in the incubator for a long moment before gazing down at me. “Her chances without it are a hell of a lot smaller. Her lung issues are already putting more pressure on her heart, and her blood pressure isn’t where it needs to be. The sooner we can get her to a more stable weight, the better.”
“And my breast milk is the key?”
“We’re giving her formula now, but her stomach isn’t handling it as we would like. There are several options for someone in her condition, but so far, Justice hasn’t tolerated any of them, which means she’s losing more weight. Her digestive system simply can’t endure the proteins in the formulas. Hopefully, your breast milk will be easier for her to digest.”
“How soon can I start giving her my milk?” I asked, already calculating the last time I’d had a dose of pain medication.
“We’re going to have you start pumping now if you are on board with stopping the opioid painkillers,” the doctor told me. “If you are, then once the milk tests negative for the medication, we will start putting it in her NG tube instead of experimenting with the different formulas.”
