Chapter 2 - What Nurse Renee Saw
The nurse who'd been quietly charting my vitals in the corner set her pen down on the counter, and in a room that loud, I genuinely don't know how I heard it at all. She hadn't said a single word in twenty minutes.
She crossed the room in three steps. She didn't look at me, and she didn't look at Wyatt. She put one hand on the rail of my daughter's bassinet, moved Dahlia out of the way with her shoulder without so much as an apology, and rolled it back to my bedside, close enough that I could reach her without sitting up.
Then she bent over the bassinet, went completely still for one second, and shouted a word that changed the entire shape of that afternoon.
"Neonatal!"
She lifted my daughter so fast the blanket slid off onto the floor. "Call neonatal, now!"
Wyatt froze with our son still in his arms. Dahlia stepped back as Renee pressed two fingers against my daughter's chest.
"What is it?" I said, trying to sit up, pain tearing straight through my abdomen.
Renee tilted the baby's head, fit a tiny mask over her face, and shouted toward the hallway. "I need oxygen in here now!"
The room exploded into motion. Another nurse rushed in with a cart. A doctor followed seconds behind her. Someone pulled a curtain around the bassinet, but I could still see my daughter's feet.
They were blue.
"What's happening to her?" I said, and nobody answered right away.
Wyatt set our son in the nearest empty crib and moved toward the nurses. Renee pushed him back with one flat hand. "Give us room."
"Is she breathing?"
"Not enough."
The doctor listened to her chest. "Respiratory distress. Heart rate's dropping."
My vision narrowed at the edges. She'd cried, when they'd first laid her on my chest — I knew she had. But now there was nothing. Just the hiss of the oxygen line and the sound of my own pulse in my ears.
"We need to move her," the doctor said. Renee raised the bassinet rails.
"Wait," I begged. "Please, let me see her."
Renee brought her close enough that I could touch her hand. Her fingers were cold.
May you like
"Stay with me, Wren," I whispered. We'd chosen the name months earlier. Dahlia hated it — said it sounded weak, said it wasn't a name that belonged on anyone connected to their family.
Renee squeezed my shoulder. "We're taking her to the NICU." And then my daughter was gone through the door.
