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“I swear it, baby.” Clenching my eyes closed, I prayed that I hadn’t just lied to her.
For both our sakes.
Cali
I thought…hoped—fucking prayed, even though I’d given up on God hearing my pleas long ago—that after Justice had her heart repaired, that would be the end of it. Everything else would begin to resolve itself because there wasn’t so much pressure on her poor little heart.
Instead, it led to a weeklong battle of her blood pressure skyrocketing to stroke level one minute, only to crash the next. It was a hundred times more stressful than when I was pregnant with her or the weeks before her surgery took place. Her entire itty-bitty body swelled to more than twice its size because of fluid retention. According to the cardiologist and the nurses, it was normal following heart surgery.
With medication, the edema began to ease, but we were told that Justice would likely be on the drug for a while. I hated when they gave me timelines like that. What the fuck did “for a while” even mean? I needed it broken down for me in days, weeks, months—I would even accept years, damn it. But her recovery was a wait-and-see process, not one that could be measured by a calendar.
As the days passed, Justice thankfully started showing signs of improvement. She was taking more milk, acting like she was starving more often than not, and no longer seemed to be in the excruciating pain she had been in. Every time I saw her wiggle around without her vitals setting off alarms that would make my heart stop, I was able to relax a little more.
Maybe it would be a slow process, but I could accept that. Slow was better than not at all, or her getting worse.
Having Garret at my side, day and night, as we urged our daughter to fight—cheering her on through even the smallest of victories—made it easier. Without realizing it, I began to appreciate that he was there for the long haul this time around. If he could help me through the most terrifying moments a parent had to live through, then I figured he wasn’t ever going to go anywhere.
Did I still want to slap the stupid out of him for shutting down on me the night I confessed everything to him all those months before? Hell yeah. But I didn’t. Having to go through the same fear of losing Justice was more than enough punishment for him to experience without me adding physical violence to the torture.
“I need to make a phone call,” Garret murmured quietly in my ear after the cardiologist had given us the latest update on Justice.
I leaned into him for a moment before nodding and turning my attention back to the day nurse. She had her own report to give us, and with Nova beside me, we listened intently for the next twenty minutes.
“She’s healing really well, Mommy,” the nurse said with a smile as she finished. “And by this time next week, it is likely that we can start the skin-to-skin again. That also means that we can start training her to bottle-feed as well.”
“Really!” I whisper-shouted, bouncing from one foot to the other. “I can possibly start feeding her myself soon?”
She laughed quietly. “It’s on our goal chart.”
I turned to Nova, and we grabbed each other’s hands at the same time, the two of us doing a little happy dance that had the nurse laughing even harder.
“Now comes the part I know you’re not going to want to hear, but it needs to be said,” the nurse said, growing serious once again.
I stopped dancing and frowned at her. “What?” I mumbled, sounding petulant even to my own ears.
“With Miss Justice doing so well, we all think that you and Daddy need to go home and get a full night’s sleep.” I opened my mouth to argue, but she lifted a hand to stop me. None of us had gone back to the mansion since Justice’s surgery. Not even Felicity or Nova. As for Guzman, he spent more time in the chapel than anywhere else.
The first time I’d seen him coming out of the small room, I’d been on my way back from the bathroom. He hadn’t spotted me, and I’d watched him scrub away a stray tear before he’d released a pent-up sigh and then walked back to the waiting room. The moment had left me speechless.
And with questions I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to.
That faded memory kept haunting me, whether I was awake or asleep. I relived it at least once a day, and I disliked where it took my mind, along with the possibilities I kept coming up with.
Shaking those thoughts away, I blinked at the nurse. “Thanks for the suggestion, but—”
“No buts,” she tutted. “If you don’t get enough sleep, you’re going to end up in a hospital room of your own. Then you won’t get to visit with Justice at all. Go home, shower, eat, sleep for more than a few hours at a time, and then come back first thing in the morning.”
“She’s right, Cali,” Nova said. “Consider it an early birthday present to me. It’s the day after tomorrow, and I think all of us getting a full eight hours of sleep would be the best gift I’ve gotten all year.”
I bit my lip, torn between wanting to stay near my baby and knowing that what the nurse said was true. Then there was Nova, who had been my saving grace—my own personal guardian angel—and I’d completely forgotten that she was turning eighteen in just a couple of days.
“Okay.” I gave in after a moment. “But if anything changes, someone better call me.”
“We will, Miss Ramirez,” the nurse assured me with a kind smile. “And you can be right back here first thing in the morning. I’ll even call you with an update on Justice before the end of my shift this evening.”
“O-okay,” I choked out. Unable to stop myself, I reached into the incubator, and Justice grasped my finger as always. Her grip got stronger by the day. Smiling, I whispered, “Love you, sweet angel. Mommy and Daddy will be back tomorrow. I promise.”
As I pulled back, Nova threaded her arm through mine, and we left the NICU together. “She’s getting so big,” my friend exclaimed as soon as we were outside the ward. “And not in the bad, scary way with all that fluid buildup. I mean, she’s doubled in size since her birth. And there’s all that peach fuzz on her head! I wonder what color her eyes will be?”
