Page 145 of Delirium
“I love you so much, darling.” My voice broke while she blinked, her tiny eyelashes pressing down on her cheeks before she opened her eyes again, the cerulean blue staring back at me with so much patience, and I hoped I wouldn’t screw this up. “And your mommy loves you as well,” I hummed. “So freaking much.”
“She is definitely the louder one.” The nurse laughed, pulling my attention to her. “When they brought them in, I thought she would scream the hospital down.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle at that.
“She’s like her mom then,” I added, unable to keep my eyes away from her. “Extremely loud.”
“Oh that’s an understatement.” The nurse laughed with me. “He kept quiet,” she said, looking at the incubator where my son slept. “Observing everything, looking at us. When he realized that he wasn’t in any danger, he just fell asleep.”
Yeah, that sounded like me.
“How long are they going to be here?” I asked, looking at her. I held onto hope, no matter how small it was, that Ophelia would be okay, that all four of us would be able to get out of here together.
“Their vitals are relatively good, but the doctor wants to keep them here for at least a few weeks, for observation and to make sure they’re all good before we move them to a regular ward. I reckon they should be okay. There was no jaundice, nothing to indicate any possible infections. I’m sure they’ll be out in no time.”
In no time, she said, and that hope I held onto just beamed brighter, expanding in my chest at the mere thought that we would be okay. We would be fine, all of us.
I slowly moved backward, pulling my hands out of Malia’s incubator, but she didn’t like it. Not even a little bit.
The moment I started turning away from her, to go to her brother, a wail louder than should be possible from such a tiny body, rocked through the room, her tiny eyes squeezed shut as she cried, complaining.
“Oh-oh,” the nurse murmured. “Someone isn’t happy she isn’t getting all the attention.”
“Is she okay?” I asked, going closer to her again, my heart beating frantically in my chest. “Is she in pain?”
“No.” The nurse shook her head. “She just probably liked having you with her and now she wants it back.” The nurse chuckled. “Look.” She moved both incubators closer to me. “Now you can be with both of them.”
I looked toward my boy’s incubator, seeing him wide awake now, listening to Malia’s cries. As I pushed my left hand through his incubator and my right through Malia’s, cupping her head and holding his tiny leg, she quieted down, content once again.
“Malakai,” I murmured, looking at him. “I love you, son,” I whispered, tracing patterns over his leg, then to his arm, until he grabbed my finger with his tiny hand, holding me tighter than I knew could be possible.
I looked back at Malia, my vision blurring from the tears, and saw her looking at me, no doubt trying to understand who I was.
“I love you both,” I whispered. “And your mom does too.”
I sat there until my eyes started closing, until the nurse nudged me before I could fall off of the chair. As I looked at the two of them, both of them sleeping, I knew I had to go back down to my Sunshine.
“What time is it?”
“You nodded off for maybe fifteen minutes,” the nurse whispered. “But they told me that the surgery is almost over if you’d like to go back down. The doctor will be out soon.”
I wanted to. God, I needed to go down, to hear what he had to say, but I didn’t want to leave Malia and Malakai alone. I didn’t want them to think that we were abandoning them.
Whatever she saw on my face, the nurse understood. With slow steps, she came to me, placing her hand on my shoulder, bringing my attention back to her.
“They’re going to be okay for an hour or so,” she said. “I’ll be here to keep an eye on them and you can come back later on. Okay?”
“Okay.” I nodded. “You promise to keep an eye on them?”
“I do.” She smiled. “Now go back down. Do you know the way?”
“Yeah,” I murmured. “Thank you.” I smiled at her. “I… I don’t know how to repay this.”
“Nah, just doing my job. Now go.” She ushered me out of the room. “There’s another person here that needs you.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I removed the gown they gave me before I entered NICU, removed the gloves I had on my hands, and all but sprinted toward the elevators, and down to the floor where Cillian and Indigo still sat, waiting for the news. Just as I came to the waiting room and the doors leading to the operating rooms, the doctor came out with a grim look on his face.
“No,” I murmured, closing the distance between him and me. His gown was covered in blood—Ophelia’s blood—and I fucking hated the defeated look on his face. “Please, no,” I murmured, feeling my voice waver with each passing second. “She isn’t—” my voice broke, unable to even utter the words.
