Their Baby Miracle (Silhouette Special Edition)

by Lilian Darcy

  Chapter Twelve

  “Oh, Mom, Dad, it’s so good to see you!”

  Reba hugged her father, feeling his strong arms around her, then bent to hug her mother, too. Ground staff had met Mom’s flight with electric-powered transport at the arrival gate because her walking wasn’t so strong right now.

  She didn’t look as tired as Reba had feared, after the journey from Florida, but the gray roots of her hair were growing out behind the pretty light brown tint she liked to use, a sure sign that she hadn’t been feeling good lately.

  “How’s Maggie?” she asked at once.

  “Lucas is with her. Her temperature is down, and they think the infection is starting to respond to treatment. But she’s still de-satting and crashing at the slightest thing. She’s not out of the woods, yet. We can’t hold her, or even—”

  “Crashing? De-satting?”

  “NICU-speak. I guess I managed not to use it when I gave you all those updates on the phone. Her heart and her oxygen, I’m talking about. Oh, you wouldn’t believe!” She tried to laugh, but it hurt her throat as usual. “We have a whole new vocabulary, now. We’re incomprehensible to anyone in the outside world.”

  With Denver’s airport so far out of town, their transit to the hotel seemed long, and Mom did look fatigued by the time they arrived and checked into a room one floor down from Lucas and Reba’s suite. It was three in the afternoon, and Lucas was keeping Reba’s regular vigil at the hospital.

  “Maybe you should wait until tomorrow before you see her, Stella,” Reba’s father suggested.

  But Mom wasn’t having that.

  “Just give me half an hour,” she said firmly. “Maybe some hot tea. I’ll be fine. I’m not coming all this way to wait another day before I see my granddaughter.” She hugged Reba again. “I’m so glad we’re here, sweetheart.”

  “I shouldn’t have stopped you before. I— You know I just thought— But so much of what you think at a time like this is wrong. You don’t think. You can’t. You just— I’m so glad you’re here, too.”

  At the hospital, Lucas peeled himself out of the chair beside Maggie’s isolette, shook Dad’s hand and clapped him on the upper arm, as if greeting a business colleague he’d always liked. “Joe,” he said. “Nice to see you again.”

  They’d met a couple of times last fall, during the process of the Seven Mile sale.

  Mom kissed Lucas’s cheek, because he was her grandchild’s father. “Are you taking enough time out? You look tired.”

  “That’s all anyone ever seems to say to each other around here,” Reba joked.

  “And this is our little girl?”

  “This is her.”

  “Sit down, Stella.” Lucas angled the chair a little, and took Mom’s elbow, his movements smooth, courteous and unfussed. “She’s had a pretty good afternoon, considering.” He reeled off the usual figures, and an amount of weight gain that nobody but parents of preemies would be crazy enough to celebrate.

  Maggie was sleeping more peacefully than she had been able to for several days, but her little face looked so world-weary and old, and her skin was still almost transparent, betraying her less than optimal weight gain. She had to be exhausted by the effort of fighting the infection. Her immune system was too immature for a battle like this, even with all the weapons her staff had given her.

  Last week, Dr. Charleson had been hopeful that she would have started to take some of her nutrition through a feed tube by now, which would help develop her digestion, but with her infection, he’d delayed this step, which meant that Reba’s jars, so carefully labeled and dated and stored, still weren’t being used. She had to fight her feelings about the pump almost every time she used it.

  On the up side, if you really stretched the definition of up, no tube feeds yet meant one less piece of equipment taped to Maggie’s body, one less piece of plastic tube, one less liquid to calibrate and keep track of, in tiny amounts.

  She was still on one-to-one nursing care, and Helen kept her usual close eye on monitors and fluid flow rates, close by. Reba would introduce her to Mom and Dad in a minute.

  “And we can’t even touch her,” Mom whispered.

  “Not today,” Reba said. “At least she can stand having us close. Two days ago, she couldn’t even do that.”

  Two days.

  Just two days since they’d gotten back from the ranch.

  Lucas’s mother was flying in tomorrow and staying for two weeks. Her visit would out-run Reba’s parents’ stay, because they were heading back to Florida next Thursday. A longer trip would tire Mom out too much.

  Last night, Lucas’s father had called with a gruff announcement that he’d be here not this coming Friday, but the Friday two weeks away. Just a flying visit, over the weekend. If that was okay, of course. Lucas had to be sure to tell him if it wasn’t, and to update him if the situation changed.

  “I got the impression the whole thing was Mom’s idea,” Lucas had reported to Reba, relaying the whole conversation almost word for word, just before he headed back to the hospital for his overnight vigil with Maggie. “Didn’t think she still had the power to twist his arm like that. And I don’t think it’s any coincidence that he gets here the day after she leaves.”

  “They find it that difficult to deal with each other?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  I’m so lucky, Reba realized now, as she looked at her parents looking at Maggie.

  Mom sat in the chair, while Dad stood behind her, his silvered hair bleached by the NICU lights. He had his hand curved over her shoulder, and as Reba watched, her mother covered those worn rancher’s knuckles with her own much softer palm, then their fingers tangled together and squeezed.

  What would it be like to reach adulthood without having seen any evidence that love could last like this, even through hardship and tragedy and pain?

  Maybe it wasn’t surprising that Lucas put far more trust in facts and principles and structures and case studies than he put in emotions. And maybe it wouldn’t be possible for him ever to change.

  “Dr. Charleson’s hoping tomorrow for the naso-gastric feeds to start,” he said quietly to Reba’s parents, pacing away from Maggie’s isolette. The fabric of his shirt was creased and damp from the back of the uncomfortable chair, and the high heat setting used in a unit like this. “That’s not within the ideal window, from the reading I’ve done, but it’s still close.”

  And maybe it was crazy for the two of them to even try to connect, in bed or anywhere else, when they approached life in such different ways.

  If Lucas hadn’t been so strung out and scared about Maggie, Reba understood, he never would have let his control break down on Monday night. The two of them would still be keeping right out of each other’s body space, flinching and fighting the chemistry every time they touched.

  Did moms of preemies ever get their tear ducts back under control?

  Her eyes were stinging and blurring again.

  But for once she wasn’t crying for Maggie.

  She was crying for Maggie’s dad, and for the fact that she felt so much love for him, right now, at a point where she’d just seen more clearly than ever—and she hadn’t exactly been blind about it before this—how impossible it would be for them in the future to make their relationship work.

  “You and Lucas don’t get to spend a lot of time together,” Reba’s mother said, from beneath a thick swirl of wet, mousse-covered hair, “the way you’ve scheduled your hours with Maggie.”

  “If we don’t work it that way, then we both stretch ourselves too thin, and ultimately that doesn’t help her,” Reba answered. “I wasn’t sure about such a strict timetable, at first, but so far it’s working.”

  “Was it Lucas’s idea?”

  “Ohh, yeah! It was Lucas’s idea!” She smiled, to soften the statement.

  But Mom pushed a little more. “That’s what he’s like? So rigid? He doesn’t seem to be, in the interactions we’ve had. And his mother is a lovely woman
, too.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “I’d expected her to be harder to talk to.”

  “No, I wouldn’t say Lucas was rigid,” Reba answered slowly. “That’s such a negative word.” In a different tone, she added, “Okay, we’re ready to rinse, now.”

  Mom leaned her head back against the towels Reba had used to pad the edge of the bathroom sink, while Reba opened the faucets and tested the water temperature against her wrist. She was helping Mom to dye her hair, before she and Dad flew back to Florida tomorrow.

  They used to do this together at the ranch, and there was always something special about it. They would talk and laugh, or say some more serious things that weren’t always so easy to communicate face to face. Busy hands and running water helped get down to that level, for some reason.

  Reba filled a jug of water and poured it over Mom’s hair, stroking it carefully back from her forehead so that the mousse didn’t run in her eyes.

  “No, Lucas isn’t rigid,” she repeated. “He’s practical. He likes facts. He just wants to know where he stands.”

  “It’s not always possible. Hasn’t he discovered that, yet?”

  “He’s starting to. But he’s still fighting it. And maybe he’s right to. Sometimes, it helps to have guidelines. Mom, some of the things I feel about Maggie are so huge and unlivable, I might go crazy if Lucas didn’t pull in the other direction, sometimes.”

  The water ran in the sink like music, softening the momentary silence between them.

  “Do you love him, honey?” Mom said.

  Well, yes, Reba should have been expecting that one.

  In fact, she sort of had been expecting it.

  This didn’t mean she had an answer prepared.

  “You’re allowed to think about it, if you want,” Mom offered generously.

  “No…” You couldn’t rehearse a conversation like this, you just had to open your mouth and see what came out. “I could love him,” Reba continued slowly, “if I thought it would do either of us any good.”

  And didn’t that sound like one of Lucas’s own lines!

  “It would do Maggie good,” Mom said.

  “Would it? If we didn’t make the cut, after a while? Not everyone is as good at this as you and Dad. Not everyone is as right together. Wouldn’t it be harder on her? If we pushed, and it was artificial, unworkable, and there was a horrible period of noncommunication and anger before we finally called it quits?”

  “You think that’ll happen?”

  “We’re so different.”

  Her mother thought for a moment, then asked on a drawl, “So does Lucas have a timetable worked out for when you are calling it quits?”

  Reba had to laugh, even though it hurt. “He probably does. But he hasn’t shared it with me.”

  “When Maggie goes home,” Mom suggested.

  Yes.

  Of course.

  It would happen then.

  “Yes, because then he’ll go back to New York.”

  As with most successful business conglomerates, when the Halliday Corporation acquired a new company, Halliday executives kept a closer eye on its operation during their initial period of ownership. Once they were confident that it was running smoothly and efficiently, they stepped back, and loosened their control.

  When Maggie went home, her growing body running smoothly and efficiently, Lucas would let go in just the same way—not of his love, but of his need to watch every moment of her progress. He and Reba weren’t just different, they came from different worlds.

  And yet Maggie still linked them.

  She linked all of them.

  For Reba’s parents’ last night in Denver, everyone took a rare break from keeping watch over their little girl and went out to dinner. The restaurant they chose wasn’t fancy, because fancy places were slow and Mom found it too tiring to sit up in a hard-backed chair for that long. It was just a quiet establishment not too far from the hotel, that served modern American cuisine.

  “Dr. Charleson told us this morning that she’s tolerated the tube feeds better than they thought she would, in the days since she started them, so they’re going to increase those from tomorrow,” Lucas announced, after the five of them had ordered. “Make them a higher percentage of her total calorie intake.”

  “That’s wonderful news!” his mother Kate exclaimed, lifting her glass so that the moment turned into a toast to Maggie’s health and future.

  “Does he think the infection is fully resolved, then?” Reba’s father asked.

  “She’s still on some of the drugs, but she definitely looks stronger and happier. No more fever. I’m thinking if the tube feeds help her put on weight faster, she’ll have more energy, she can start weaning off the ventilator. She should start to make more rapid progress.”

  “They send them home earlier now than they used to, don’t they?” Kate said. A frown marred her still lovely face for a moment, and the corners of her wide mouth dropped. “I have a friend whose grandson came early and they discharged him when he only weighed around three pounds. He was on oxygen and tube feeds, and his parents had to manage all that at home. I can’t imagine it. In their position, I think I’d rather trust the hospital to handle everything, even if it meant my baby staying in longer.”

  Across the table, Lucas’s and Reba’s eyes met, instantly communicating the same instinctive reaction.

  No.

  They wanted Maggie out of the NICU as soon as her staff thought that she and they were ready, and not one day later.

  Reba felt a wave of warm reassurance at knowing the two of them shared the same feeling on this.

  But then her father asked, “Is there a clock ticking on your return to New York, Lucas?”

  “I’m working on it,” he answered, his mouth flat and his jaw square.

  And an answer like this could be interpreted in more than one way.

  Was he in as much of a hurry to get back to his normal life as they both were to have Maggie discharged?

  As per their timetable, he returned to the hospital after the meal, to sit with Maggie overnight. The next morning, Reba drove her parents to the airport for an emotional goodbye, then went straight to the NICU.

  Lucas had obviously been impatient to see her. With the drive out to the airport, she was a couple of hours later than usual for their private shift change. His head turned as soon as he heard her approach, and instead of staying by Maggie’s isolette, he stood and came quickly toward her.

  “I’m glad you’re here. I kept thinking, what if the flight gets delayed? Guess what?” he said. He put his arms around her and swung her off her feet.

  “Something good, I can tell.”

  “They’re going to let us hold her this morning. Can you believe it? At last!”

  “Oh, Lucas!” She dropped her forehead to his shoulder, so many emotions churning inside that they made her whole body vibrate.

  “Her infection has gone, all her stats are great. She’s really turned a corner, and she’s almost a month old.”

  “Where’s your mom? Will she be able to watch?”

  “She phoned from her room to say she had some shopping she needed to do. I’m not going to wait any longer. Angela says now is a good time, because Maggie is awake and alert and not fussy. Let’s not miss our chance.”

  “Our first chance,” Reba corrected.

  “Our first chance,” he agreed, then his expression changed. “Yours. Angela says we’ll have to take turns, and I’ve already told her it’s going to be you, today. Her mom.”

  “Lucas…”

  “Don’t argue, okay? You carried her inside you all that time. You’re the one whose heartbeat she wants to hear.”

  Reba could only nod. It made sense. Still, it was generous. He must want this milestone and this reward as much as she did. She put a hand on his arm and managed a husky, “Thanks.”

  They were standing very close. She brushed his cheek with her fingers, looked into his tired eyes then dropped he
r gaze. His mouth looked so beautiful and so familiar that she couldn’t drag her eyes away and they almost kissed.

  Almost.

  Not quite.

  Some unnamed caution held both of them back, the way the presence of their parents had held them back over the past week or more.

  Angela was grinning broadly at them when they arrived back at Maggie’s isolette. “Just a little bit happy about this?” she said.

  “Just a little bit,” Reba agreed.

  “And you have a front-buttoned top on this morning, which is perfect, so let’s get this show on the road before Maggie starts telling us she’s too tired.”

  A month ago, neither Reba nor Lucas would have understood what a delicate, complex procedure it could be, just to hold their own baby. Now, because they hadn’t been allowed to do it before, it seemed momentous and almost frightening. There was so much equipment to deal with, and Maggie was still so small.

  Reba sat in a low chair, its stiff arms padded with pillows, while Angela detached the end of Maggie’s feed tube, temporarily removed a sensor line and carefully positioned her IV and breathing equipment.

  “Okay, now we want her skin-to-skin on your chest, Reba, so we need that top unfastened.”

  She nodded. “Uh-huh.” Then she caught a wicked glint in Lucas’s eye which she couldn’t help reflecting right back at him.

  Okay, so Maggie’s not the only one who wants to get skin-to-skin with my chest…

  A few minutes later, they’d both forgotten the moment of awareness, because holding Maggie was just too precious and wonderful to leave room for thoughts about anything else.

  She was so warm and delicate and precious. And she was a baby. Their baby. And holding was what you did with babies. Babies and mothers were so totally meant for this. It had been so wrong and hard, not to be able to do it for so long.

  Maggie’s lips made little sucking sounds, and her breath smelled like honey and cream cheese. So did her hair, finer than silk, and her skin, sweeter than rose petals. She was softer than a kitten, warmer than new bread, more precious than the keys to a magic kingdom, so tiny and fragile and unique.