Chapter 3 - The Woman at the Front DeskThat night Derek tried to get me to sleep. "You had surgery three days ago," he reminded me.
"I'm not leaving her."
"You don't have to leave the hospital."
"I'm not leaving this room."
Harper sat up under her blanket. "I'm staying too."
The charge nurse had already gone over the rules twice, but Harper looked so frightened at the idea of leaving that Derek made a quiet call from the hallway. After a few more reminders and a promise we'd keep things calm, someone brought her a second blanket and let her curl back into the recliner, angled so she could still see the incubator.
At 11:06 p.m., our night nurse, Denise, came in to check Everly's chart. She moved the way people move when they know parents in this room read every flicker on their face before they hear a single word.
She checked the monitor, checked the tubing, wrote down the numbers. Then she looked up.
"Her numbers are a little better," she said quietly. "If this keeps up, the doctor might talk about weaning her off the vent in a few days."
Hope rushed in so fast it scared me. I just nodded — talking felt dangerous. Derek's hand landed on my shoulder. Harper smiled at the incubator.
"Did you hear that, Everly?"
Denise's expression softened. At the door, she paused.
"Front desk says an older woman with silver hair's been asking about the baby. Says she's the grandmother."
Every muscle in my body locked up.
She'd found a way around the blocked number.
"She's not on the visitor list," I said. "Don't let her in."
Denise looked at my face and didn't ask for the backstory. "I'll update the desk and the log."
"Please make sure everyone knows."
"I will."
The door shut behind her, and I stared at it, waiting for my mother's voice to rise up in the hallway, waiting for her to tell some stranger at the desk that I was cruel, dramatic, ungrateful, confused on painkillers — anything to turn my one boundary into another wound I'd supposedly given her.
The hallway stayed quiet.
Ten minutes. Twenty. Derek checked the corridor and came back shaking his head. "No sign of her."
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That should have relieved me. Instead the quiet felt wrong. My mother didn't take no and walk away. She argued. She recruited people. She found another door.
She didn't just leave.
