Their Baby Miracle (Silhouette Special Edition)

by Lilian Darcy

  “I’m staying, Reba,” Lucas said. “I’m not leaving you alone to deal with this. And I’m not leaving our baby.”

  “Okay.” This one tiny word couldn’t begin to express the strength and mix of emotions she felt at what he’d said, but then a whole dictionary couldn’t have done that. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. I’m— It’s not about that.”

  “You said you’d already checked in. Oh, and yes, Carla has a key,” she interrupted herself, her mind darting so much she’d get dizzy in a minute. “Have you slept, yet?”

  “Later.” No wonder he looked tired, then. “Let’s get our priorities in place, first.”

  Seeing Maggie was priority one, as soon as Reba had eaten and made her first questionable attempt at producing something from her uncooperative and increasingly heavy breasts. She had another cry, and got dressed in yesterday’s clothes, while Lucas waited patiently in the corridor outside. It wasn’t until she’d put on her sneakers and socks that she realized everything was dry and clean and pressed and fresh.

  “Laundry service at the hotel,” Lucas said, when she asked.

  “Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”

  “You’re welcome. And you can cry again, if you want,” he offered—belatedly, because she already was.

  Maggie.

  Maggie.

  Maggie.

  Reba didn’t cry any more once they got to the Neonatal Unit, because this tiny, fragile baby girl of theirs was just too important for hormonal tears. “Is she doing better?”

  “As well as she knows how, honey.” This wasn’t Shirley, because her shift had ended. This was Angela, whose name and face needed to be learned by heart, too, because she would be just as important.

  Angela had flyaway mouse-blond hair, and fine wrinkles around her eyes, and wore plum-colored scrubs. She didn’t look as motherly as Shirley, but she darted around, as neat as a bird.

  “She’s lost weight,” Lucas said, studying a chart that was already several pages thick.

  Reba didn’t want to look at all that scribble from different doctors and nurses and infant respiratory therapists, when she hadn’t known that infant respiratory therapists existed twenty-four hours ago. Lucas, however, studied it like a Star Trek nut trying to learn Klingon.

  This bothered her, even angered her, but she didn’t know why so she tried to ignore it.

  “She weighed 940 grams at birth,” he went on, “but now she’s dipped down to below nine hundred.”

  “They all lose weight, even healthy babies born at term,” Angela said.

  “But she’s already so tiny.” He shook his head. “She can’t afford to lose any more. Can she? When does it stop? When does she start coming back up? What do you do if she doesn’t?”

  “That depends on a whole lot of things. Do you want to write down some of your questions, Lucas, so you can ask Maggie’s neonatologist? He’s going to want to talk to you this morning.”

  “Questions,” Lucas muttered. He asked for pen and paper and began to cover it with his confident scrawl.

  Reba didn’t contribute. She just sat, trying to ignore Lucas scribbling as if undertaking a major written exam.

  “Can I touch her?” she said softly to Angela, after a few moments.

  Lucas kept writing.

  “She’ll love that, if you do it right,” the nurse answered. “She needs to know that touching feels good, because we’ve done too much bad touching to her, since she was born.” She dropped her voice to a soothing coo, and spoke directly to the baby. “We hated it, didn’t we, Maggie-baby? We didn’t want to do any of it. But you needed it. We’re going to try our best not to do so much of that, now, if you’ll help us a little bit by staying strong.”

  “Oh, sweetheart!” Reba whispered. “Angela, you’ll have to tell me what to do, how to do it exactly right.”

  The older nurse coached her through the process of washing her hands up to her elbows, sliding one arm through the ports of the isolette and curving her hand around and beneath the baby’s tiny bottom and curled up legs. No stroking, no squeezing, just a firm steady hold that mimicked the reassuring pressure Maggie had experienced from Reba’s own uterine muscles, less than twenty-four hours ago.

  Her neck and shoulder soon grew stiff because she hadn’t gotten herself in quite the right position first, but it felt so good to be touching Maggie that she never wanted to move, and after a while, Angela said softly to her, “See what you’re doing? Look at the way her oxygen saturation has gone up on the monitor. And look at her color. It’s more even, now, and it’s that nice pink we love to see. She loves this.”

  “She does?”

  “You can see it. She’s not twitching the way she was.”

  “I haven’t heard her cry. Has she cried much?”

  “She can’t cry, honey. She has the breathing tube between her vocal cords.”

  “Doesn’t that hurt her?”

  “Well, it doesn’t feel great, no, but she needs it to help her breathe.”

  “I wish I could explain that to her.”

  “I know. You want to do so much more for her, don’t you?”

  “I just want her to be okay. And to hold her. When will we be able to hold her?”

  “We’re going to have to wait a while on that, I’m afraid. She’s just too small and frail, right now, with too many lines and monitors in place. The doctor will okay it when he thinks she’s ready. It might be two or three weeks. Just touching her is best.”

  “When can we see the doctor?” Lucas said, looking up from his page of questions. He frowned across at Reba and looked suspiciously at the curve of her hand around Maggie as if he didn’t trust its beneficial effect.

  “He’s just finishing a procedure on another baby at the other end of the unit,” Angela said. “He’ll come by in a minute, and then you can take some time with him in our conference room, if you want.”

  “Yep. Thanks.”

  A big part of Reba wished that she could stay with Maggie, just keep holding her and watching the pink color and the high oxygen saturation and the nice, relaxed look to her limbs, all of which she now knew to be important. But it was important to talk to the doctor, too.

  His name was Dr. Phil Charleson. He had a bushy head of dark hair and wire-framed glasses and he listened to their concerns with as much focus as even Lucas, with his page of demanding questions, could have wanted.

  He also told them, “There are several dangers we’ll be watching out for. Respiratory problems, heart problems, gut problems, bleeding, infection. We’ve got a whole lot better, in recent years, at ironing those things out and at preventing them in the first place, but this little girl is very small and fragile and I’m not going to make promises to you that we might not be able to keep.”

  “We understand that,” Lucas answered for them both.

  He hadn’t touched Reba since moving into this little conference room, and she felt very distant from him right now, very separate and at odds, way too wrapped up in her body and her fears to remember a connection with him that she’d never understood, even while it was happening.

  They barely knew each other.

  About the only thing they were doing for each other, right now, was loving the same fragile child, and coexisting in the same space.

  “I don’t understand it!” she wanted to yell, in contradiction to Lucas’s reasoned words. “I do want promises! How can I get through this without promises?”

  But she stayed silent and tried to accept that false promises might hurt even worse, down the track. Her body ached and stung following the jarring labor of giving birth, and her breasts tingled every time she thought a new thought about Maggie.

  “Can we visit whenever we want?” Lucas asked, and she pricked up her ears, because in the middle of his long interrogation about the monitors and the equipment and the medication and the treatment philosophy, this was one question she wanted an answer to as much as he did.

  “Yes, y
ou can,” Dr. Charleson said. “We try to maintain defined quiet periods in the unit, but you’ll get to know when those are, and you can still be with your baby, any hour of any day. You’re cleared for discharge today, Reba?”

  “I haven’t seen the obstetrician, yet, but the nurse seemed to think so, this morning.”

  “And we have your contact details?”

  She was about to shake her head, but Lucas said, “Yes, I’ve fixed all that up.” She was grateful for that.

  “In case we need to call you when you’re not around,” Dr. Charleson finished.

  Neither of them liked the sound of that. Lucas laced his fingers through hers and squeezed, and she squeezed back, flooded with a relief, once again, that he was here, that she wasn’t alone, as she so easily might have been.

  “Be good to each other,” Dr. Charleson said.

  He probably thought they were married, or at least seriously involved.

  They weren’t, but they had Maggie, joining them together in shared love and fear like two links in a steel chain. What sort of a bond would this turn out to be? Since she could hardly think beyond the next hour, Reba had no idea.

  The hotel Lucas had chosen was beautiful. Situated next to a golf course and surrounded by pampered gardens, it seemed like an oasis that existed in a different universe to the nearby hospital, with its aura of life-altering drama. The spacious lobby was quiet and cool and attractively lit. It led to two restaurants and a bar, as well as to the bank of elevators that traveled to the higher floors.

  Their suite was almost at the top of the building, and featured a huge marble bathroom, a powder room, a vast master bedroom, and a sitting room with a king-size pull-down Murphy bed, fresh flowers in vases and a fully stocked bar fridge.

  Reba had never stayed in a place like this in her life, and wasn’t exactly in the mood to take maximum advantage of its luxury, right now. She did appreciate the bar fridge and the twenty-four-hour room service, because she’d probably need snacks and meals at odd hours.

  And she appreciated the clean, smooth expanse of the bed, and the fact that there was a second bed in the sitting room, because she and Lucas might have created a child together but that said nothing about the state of their relationship now, six months later.

  The obstetrician had commented on her relatively easy delivery, in terms of its effect on her own body, and had issued what was clearly a standard prohibition on marital relations “for at least two weeks, and then only if you feel ready” and Reba had just nodded, keeping the state of her private life to herself.

  “The bedroom’s yours, obviously,” Lucas said, as if his thoughts had travelled in exactly the same direction. “And you should sleep for a couple of hours, before we head back to the hospital.”

  “So should you.”

  “I’m fine. I need to call the ranch and get Lon on the road with our gear.”

  “I’ll call Carla and ask if she can pack a couple of bags for me. Lon can meet her at my house.”

  “After you’ve napped, call your parents.”

  “Don’t tell me how to handle this, Lucas.”

  “They have a right to know. They’ll want to know. Even though it’s not a piece of news they’d ever have chosen to hear.”

  Reba remained stubbornly silent. She didn’t want to call Mom and Dad while she still felt so tearful, in case she sobbed down the phone and got them really alarmed. If they felt they had to jump on a plane, when she knew her mother had been feeling pretty bad these past few weeks…

  “Was lunch enough for you, at the hospital?” Lucas asked, after a minute.

  “It was fine. I don’t feel hungry.”

  “Take that nap, then we’ll order something from room service before we head back.”

  She began to bristle at the fact that he was giving her orders again, but he must have seen it, because suddenly he’d stepped closer—close enough to brush a strand of hair back from her face and curve a hand around her hip.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m not being a control freak, here.”

  “No?” She lifted her chin and glared at him, felt his usual onslaught on her senses. It charged through her like electricity, and threatened to knock her sideways.

  That’s right.

  I remember now.

  This.

  “Tell me this hasn’t been the hardest eighteen hours of your life, and I’ll back off,” he said softly. “Can you tell me that? I doubt it.”

  “Don’t make me cry again!”

  “I just want you to look after yourself, that’s all. Maggie needs you. And you and I are in this together, aren’t we? For her sake? Till she’s healthy and growing and ready to go home?”

  “The doctor wouldn’t make promises,” she reminded him, her voice shaky.

  “It’s not about promises, it’s about faith. We have to believe in her. We have to believe in ourselves. Believe that the way we feel about her can make a difference. Are we being fair to her if we fight about things like taking naps and calling people?”

  Okay, here come the tears again…

  “I’m just a mess today, that’s all. And of course it’s baby blues. And I hate that. Being a victim of my body and my hormones and—I should be stronger than that, shouldn’t I, for Maggie?”

  “Sometimes it’s strongest to let yourself cry, sweetheart,” he whispered.

  She felt his arms, heard him shushing her the way he would one day, please God, shush Maggie when she cried. He coaxed her head down to his shoulder and even though sobs still shook her body, she closed her eyes and drank in the nutty, fragrant smell of his neck, where the skin curved down from his hairline, fine and brown, to disappear inside the collar of his shirt.

  It helped.

  He helped, caring enough to hold her close like this.

  He helped more than she wanted to think about, and more than she wanted him to know.

  “I’ll take that nap, now,” she said finally, many minutes later.

  Lucas called his parents while Reba was asleep and, yeah, it was hard. Harder than he’d allowed, when he and Reba had had those…uh…heated discussions, you could call them…about the principles involved. If he hadn’t believed so strongly that it was the right thing to do, he might have put it off, himself, because how did you find the right words?

  Mom was the one blessed with his first attempt, after he’d keyed in the phone number of the high-end fashion boutique she owned in Beverly Hills.

  Guess what, Mom, I’m a father, when neither you nor I knew that the woman involved was even pregnant. And guess what, the baby’s seriously premature and might not make it, so the fatherhood thing may not last for long. Which would at least make the question of my future relationship with the baby’s mother a little less complicated.

  Somehow, he stumbled through those basic facts, and somehow his mother managed to cut to the heart of it and ask the right questions.

  “What’s her name? Does she look strong? Is she likely to have ongoing problems? And her mom? Reba, you said? Is she handling it? This is going to be a very tough time for her. Can you make sure that she knows how much I’ll be thinking of her?”

  His answers were sketchy, cutting off in midsentence and starting again, filled with pauses and struggles for the right word.

  “Do you want me on the next plane?” Mom asked finally.

  “I want you to do what you need to do, as Maggie’s grandmother.”

  “No,” his mother said decisively, in answer to this. “It’s not about me. It’s about the three of you, and from what you’ve said, I’m sure Reba, at least, would appreciate a little more time before she has to deal with a grandmother to her baby that she’s never met. And if my son needs a shoulder to cry on…”

  “Yes?”

  “It should be hers. Reba’s.”

  “Mom, we—”

  “For now, at least, even if you go your separate ways just a few months from now. For Maggie’s sake. No, you know I want to come, but I’m not going to u
ntil you tell me it’s okay for Reba.”

  He reached his father next, after getting routed through three secretaries in three different Halliday corporate offices. Dad was in Dallas this week, it turned out.

  “Sounds like a mess,” he said, even though Lucas’s announcement had been worded just a little less messily, this time around.

  “We’re hoping it doesn’t have to be,” he told his father.

  “I’d like to see her. My first grandchild. But not until her doctors are sure she’s going to make it. If I see her, I’ll get attached. I’m not making that investment.”

  “Your call, Dad.”

  He knew he sounded cool, and his father picked up on it, of course.

  “Well, I’m calling it as I see it,” Farrer Halliday said, without a hint of apology. “And don’t conclude that I’m being cold and unfeeling. The reverse. I’m a parent. I’ve been there. This stuff hurts. I’m not going to get hurt if I don’t have to. So you’ll let me know when I should come. When it’s…safe.”

  Scary word. It didn’t really succeed in skirting the dark possibility that his father didn’t want to refer to in direct language.

  “I’ll let you know,” Lucas answered. “Want progress reports, until then?”

  His father was silent. Then he sighed. And swore. “Of course I want progress reports. I’ll need them like I need a hole in the head. But I want them. Sometimes humans just don’t know what’s good for them, do they?”

  “No,” Lucas answered. “Sometimes they don’t.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Mom?” Reba said, when she heard the familiar voice at the far end of the line.

  “Hi, honey, how are you?”

  “First, how are you? You’re up and about, for a start, and that’s good.” Reba knew her mother only answered the phone when she felt comparatively well.

  “Feeling better, these past few days.”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t called this week. I have some news, Mom.”

  Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

  You shouldn’t still be crying this much. Maggie is three and a half days old, and she hasn’t had any setbacks, yet. Your milk has come in, and you’re managing to fill those little glass bottles the nurses keep giving you—sometimes. Maggie needs you to handle all of this, so get over yourself.