Mark’s face drained of color. His eyes darted from Eleanor’s cold, unblinking stare to Chloe, who was still huddled in Eleanor’s coat, shaking so hard her teeth were chattering. He thought better of fighting. He let the guards steer him down the hallway, yelling over his shoulder, “This isn’t over! I’ll take the house, I’ll take the kid, you’ll both regret this!”
Eleanor didn’t waste a breath yelling back. She knelt to wrap an arm around Chloe’s shoulders, pulling her daughter tight against her chest. Chloe’s hospital gown was thin enough that Eleanor could feel every one of her ribs through the fabric, her skin ice-cold even through two layers of coat. “C’mon, baby,” Eleanor said, brushing the matted blonde hair out of Chloe’s face. “Let’s go see your boy.”
The charge nurse, Maria, a silver-haired woman with 22 years of NICU experience under her belt, was already holding the NICU door open for them. She’d pulled a stack of patient forms from the desk while the guards escorted Mark out, her knuckles white with anger. “I tried to call social work an hour ago,” Maria said, her voice soft as she led them down the row of incubators. “He was standing by the desk yelling so loud no one dared pick up the phone. Said he’d sue the hospital if we let her within ten feet of the baby. I knew something was wrong. No husband acts like that unless he’s got something to hide.”
Eleanor’s throat tightened. She’d driven three hours through the pitch-black Oregon coastal highway because she couldn’t shake the bad feeling that had woken her up at 2 a.m. She’d called Chloe 17 times in three days, every call going straight to voicemail. Mark had answered once, two days prior, saying Chloe was “resting” and didn’t want to talk. Eleanor had known he was lying. A mother doesn’t go three days without calling her mom, not when she’s 7 months pregnant with her first baby.
She’d packed the car before she even fully woke up: the crockpot full of the chicken noodle soup Chloe had begged for every time she was sick as a kid, garbage bags full of hand-me-down baby clothes from her church group, the little forest-animal mobile she’d built with her own two hands, the stack of parenting books she’d marked up with sticky notes for Chloe. She’d planned to surprise her, to spend the weekend painting the nursery, to run the errands Chloe couldn’t run with her swollen ankles and her constant fatigue. She never expected this.
The incubator was tucked in the far corner of the NICU, dimly lit by a string of tiny fairy lights a nurse had taped to the top. Inside, the baby was so small Eleanor could have held him in the palm of one hand, his skin pink and translucent, crisscrossed with tiny wires connected to beeping monitors. He weighed four pounds even, the doctor had told Chloe earlier that morning, born 10 weeks early after the stress and hypothermia from sleeping in her car triggered labor. He’d stopped breathing for 45 seconds right after he was born. The doctors had to resuscitate him. “Hi, baby,” Chloe whispered, stepping up to the incubator. Her voice cracked, and she pressed her palm to the clear plastic, her fingers trembling. “I’m your mom. I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep you safe in there.”
