I nod, but don't say anything. I've got enough of a working understanding of medicine to understand what he's saying and know how lucky I am to be alive. If not for Duncan, I very well might have died out there on the street.
“How is my baby?” I finally ask.
“She's fine,” he replies. “Or, she will be. The doctors want to keep her in the neonatal ICU for a few more days just for observation, but they don't foresee any problems and think she'll be good to go home with you soon.”
His entire demeanor is so clinical and cold. So detached. It's the polar opposite of what his usual demeanor with me is and it's leaving me confused.
“If you have any questions, I'm sure your regular doctor – Doctor Larson, I believe – will be able to answer them for you,” he says. “I just wanted to stop by to check up on you.”
I give him a tight smile but before I can open my mouth to say anything, he turns and walks out of my room, his strides quickly efficient, carrying him down the hallway. I'm left there wondering what in the hell just happened and not having the first clue.
I sit there puzzling it over for a few minutes when Sabrina walks into the room, a wide, warm smile on her face. She runs to the side of the bed and is careful when she leans down to hug me, making sure to not squeeze me to tight, or move me too suddenly.
“Hey girl,” she says. “How are you feeling?”
“Like garbage,” I grumble. “Everything on me hurts.”
“Well, that's not shocking, given what you've been through,” she says. “I'm just glad you're okay.”
“To be honest, I don't recall most of it,” I confide. “Bits and flashes, but it's almost like it wasn't real. More like a really vivid, bad dream more than anything.”
“Well, you've got a beautiful baby girl that proves it wasn't just a dream.”
A baby girl. I have a baby girl. The thought still doesn't feel real to me. And yet, at the same time, the thought fills me with an array of profound emotions I can't really describe – all of them good.
It's strange. When I found out I was pregnant, I was terrified. I didn't know what I was going to do and even gave serious thought to putting the baby up for adoption when it was born. But now, everything's changed, and I can't picture my life without my baby girl. The mere thought of her makes my heart swell with a fierce sense of love and pride I would have never predicted I'd feel – and I haven’t even met her properly yet.
“It's a good thing Duncan happened to be there,” she says. “I really don't know what would have happened if he wasn't.”
“Neither do I,” I say softly.
My stomach churns as I think about Duncan. Specifically, about how cold and aloof he was just minutes ago. I don't know what I did or what changed. Something obviously had, though. It was like he didn't even want to be in the room with me all of a sudden.
I try to push the thoughts out of my head for the moment. The last thing I want to do is break down and have a crying fit right now. Right now, I just want to celebrate the fact that I'm still alive – that my baby and I are both going to be okay.
“Can you take me to see her?” I ask.
Sabrina gives me a smile. “I thought you'd never ask.”
I take her hand and give it a tight squeeze. I honestly couldn't have asked for a better person in my life than Sabrina. She's there for me without question and without fail whenever I need her. She's my rock and my strength, and I can't ever truly express just how grateful I am for her.
I'm sitting in a wheelchair in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that make up the front wall of the nursery in the neonatal ICU. I'd wanted to walk down just to stretch my legs and give my muscles some work, but Bri had insisted that it's proper procedure for her to push me around in a chair until I'm formally discharged.
It's embarrassing. I'm a healthy young woman. There's no reason for me to be riding around in a wheelchair.
I scan the rows of baskets, smiling at all of the wiggling, pink newborns. They're all utterly adorable. I never considered myself a baby person before – honestly, I really hadn't given much thought to having children. At least, not until I'd gotten pregnant. As I look at the babies all tucked into their bassinets, I realize for the first time that yeah, I do want to be a mom.
“Which one is she?” I ask. “Which one's my baby girl?”
Sabrina points to an incubator set off to the side and I feel my heart fall. Far from being a pink, wriggling little bundle of flesh, my baby is lying still. She looks too pale and too gaunt.
“What's wrong with her, Bri?” I ask. “What –”
“She's fine, hon,” she soothes me. “It's a precaution. I promise you.”
Seeing my baby in that machine, looking so weak and frail, sends a deep, searing pain through my heart. I find myself desperate to hold her, to feel her warm, delicate body pressed to mine. I want to breathe her in, listen to her cries, and pour my love out all over her.
“Is she in pain?” I ask.
Bri shakes her head. “Not at all,” she replies. “She might be slightly underweight, but once she gets out of the incubator and starts nursing regularly, she's going to put on the pounds quickly. I promise you that.”
That sends a calming wave of relief rushing through me. I want nothing more than for my baby girl to be healthy and live a long, normal, active life.
“Have you thought of a name yet?” Bri asks.
It's a good question and one I've been kicking around for a while. I must have tried on a thousand different names but found that a lot of them just didn't roll off my tongue all that easily. And as I sit there looking at my girl, I run through those names in my head and realize they don't really fit her anyway. She's not a Robin or a Rachel. She's definitely not a Holly or a Brianna.
No, she's unique, and she deserves to have a unique, beautiful name.
“I was thinking about calling her Aurora,” I smile.
A wide smile crosses Bri's face. “Aurora,” she replies. “It's beautiful. It's perfect.”
“Just like her,” I say, my eyes riveted to my daughter.
We watch her in silence for a few moments as I continue to absorb the enormity of the fact that I have a baby. I have a daughter. It's a thought that fills me with the brightest joy I've ever known. And also, if I'm being honest, the darkest, deepest fear as well. The emotions swirling around inside of me are as powerful as they are complex, and I don't know how to go about making heads or tails of any of them right now.
Eventually, Sabrina wheels me back to my room and helps me climb back into bed. Once I'm situated, she sits down on the edge of the bed and takes my hand in hers, giving it a gentle squeeze. I look up at her and can tell by the gleam in her eye and the set of her jaw that she's got something to say.
“Out with it,” I chide her.
“You're going to have to tell Duncan,” she says. “He should know.”
The thought of telling him that he's the father of my child at all fills me with a powerful sense of dread. And given how cold he was to me when he came in to check up on me, it scares me even more.
“I don't know, Bri,” I say. “Something's going on with him. He's pissed at me for something.”
“What do you mean?” she asks. “I saw him and believe me when I say, he was frantic and damn near out of his mind when you were in surgery.”
“Yeah, well, something's changed since then,” I insist. “He was in my room just before you came in and I've felt more warmth from a glacier.”
She looks at me, her head cocked. “Really?” she asks. “I mean, he always keeps a bit of a professional distance when he's on the job, but I never would have called him cold or anything.”
“Trust me, I almost asked you to treat me for frostbite,” I say with a rueful laugh.
“That bad, huh?”
“You don't even know the half of it.”
She lets out a long breath. “That still doesn't mean he doesn't deserve to know that the baby is his.”
“I'm scared to tell him, Bri.”
She cocks her head again. “Why would you be scared?” she asks. “I mean, worst case scenario is that he's not into being a dad. Okay, I get that. At least, I know him well enough to know that he's a stand-up guy and will make sure you and his baby are well taken care of.”
“Or, it could go completely the other way,” I mumble.
“What do you mean?”
An icy fist of dread squeezes my heart as I consider the fear that's been plaguing me. What scares me the most about it is that I don't think it's a fear that's even all that irrational.
“With his money and resources – and I'm sure he's got a very expensive lawyer on retainer – Duncan can take Aurora from me without breaking a sweat,” I say. “I have nothing, and he won't have a hard time proving to a judge that he's the better option to be a parent. He could take her from me, Bri. He could take her and never let me see her again.”
She pulls me into a gentle hug and strokes my hair, doing her best to soothe me.
“That's not going to happen,” she soothes quietly. “He's not that kind of man, Lexi. He's a good guy. He would never deny you your rights as Aurora's mother. Never. That much I know about him with absolute certainty.”
I shrug. “I wish I could believe that,” I sigh. “All I know is that I carried his child without telling him and when he finds out, he's going to be pissed. Who wouldn't be? I'm afraid that'll make him vindictive.”
She shakes her head. “I really don't think you have to worry about that, Lexi,” she tells me. “I'm telling you, he's not like that.”
“People change,” I say – my first thought, of course, being Brad. “They're not always who they say or pretend to be. And when it comes to the rich, they always win. Always. The rich have all of the rights and we poor have none.”