Somebody Like You (22 page)

The sound of a weak cry pulled Haley’s attention back across the room. “That’s her—that’s a good thing, right?”

“Yes—but she still needs extra help. Let me see if she’s ready to meet you.”

Within seconds, Nikki settled her daughter in Haley’s arms, wrapped within two layers of warm baby blankets, so that Haley could only see her face.

She touched the edge of the blankets. “Can I look at her?”

The NICU nurse, who’d introduced herself earlier, touched Haley’s hand. “We have to keep her wrapped up because she’ll have trouble keeping herself warm.”

Haley didn’t dare touch the thin, clear plastic tube that encircled both of her daughter’s cheeks and ended with small prongs that were inserted in her nostrils.

“That’s a nasal cannula. We’re giving her oxygen.”

“She’s so tiny . . . and I haven’t counted her fingers and toes yet.”

“Ten fingers. Ten toes.” The nurse pulled back a corner of the blanket, exposing a tiny hand for a too-brief second. “I counted for you.”

Haley pressed a kiss on the baby’s forehead, inhaling the warm newborn scent of her daughter. “You were supposed to be a boy. Clint Barton. I don’t have a name for you.”

“There’s time for that.” Stephen’s words didn’t pull Haley’s attention away from her daughter.

“We’ll be taking this little one to the NICU now. No need to worry. You can come check in on her once you’re recovered from delivery.” She nodded toward Stephen. “Dad, you can go with us, if you’d like.”

Stephen stilled beside her. Was this the time to go into the
“He’s not my husband” routine? There were more important things than correcting yet another person who was jumping to conclusions.

“Stephen.” Haley reached up and grabbed his forearm. “I need you to go and be with her. I don’t want her to be alone.”

“Of course I’ll go. You relax—well, do whatever the doctor and nurses tell you to do—and I’ll keep you posted.”

“Don’t leave her. I’ll get there as soon as I can. Just stay with her. Please.”

Stephen wanted to turn around, go back, and hold Haley’s hand. To assure her everything would be okay—that her daughter would be fine. But he also knew he had to keep walking to the NICU because Haley had asked him to stay with the baby. And that’s what he’d do.

He followed behind the nurse and the woman who identified herself as the neonatal nurse-practitioner, trying to discern their quiet murmurings, his eyes trained on the Isolette, which reminded him of a space capsule. The tiny form that was his niece lay on her back, bundled in blankets to keep warm, her face obscured by the oxygen tubing, a thin cord protruding down by her feet indicating the compact oxygen monitor attached to one of her toes.

When they came to a set of windowless double doors, the nurse used her ID card to gain access to the NICU. They rolled the Isolette down the carpeted hall lined with small rooms housing warmers with monitoring equipment mounted on the walls—most of which were occupied by small babies. The adults who weren’t wearing scrubs Stephen assumed were family members. Another nurse greeted them and led them to the “pod,”
where Haley’s baby would be cared for—a ten-by-ten-foot room with a window for observation from the nurse’s desk, a rocking chair, and the required monitors.

Stephen watched as they transferred his niece to a bed with bright lights above it. As one of the nurses came near, he saw his opportunity.

“So what do I do? Stay out of the way?”

The woman offered a gentle smile and motioned him forward. “No—if there’s a hand or a foot that we’re not using, go ahead and touch her. Talk to her. It will help calm her. We think it even decreases a baby’s perception of pain.”

He could touch this minutes-old miracle?

The nurse continued to talk. “We’re going to get some preliminary labs and eventually do a chest X-ray. Even though she may just have premature lungs, we always have to rule out infection or other potential causes of her breathing problems, especially since she was preterm.”

“Why would being preterm indicate a possible infection?” He’d just ask questions until he was brave enough to touch the baby.

“Well, premature labor happens for a reason—often some type of infection, even if the mom doesn’t show any symptoms like fever.” As she spoke, the baby was being weighed and measured. “We can treat infection, so until the cultures we draw are negative, she’ll be on IV antibiotics.”

Stephen eased himself closer to Haley’s daughter. Sam’s daughter. He was here because they couldn’t be . . . yet. He wanted her to know she wasn’t alone.

The nurse leaned close. “Don’t forget to wash your hands.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

After scrubbing his skin pink, Stephen stood beside the Isolette again. He held his breath as he rested his pinky on her
oh-so-tiny palm . . . exhaling as her fingers curled around his finger in a stronger grip than he’d imagined.

She was a fighter, like her mother.

Everything, everyone around him faded into the background as he bent over the Isolette, modulating his voice to a whisper. “Hey, sweetheart. Welcome to the world. You arrived a little sooner than we expected—but we sure are glad you’re here. Your mom’s getting cleaned up from a busy day and your daddy . . .” Stephen stopped. Swallowed. Waited until he could speak again. “Your daddy’s watching you from heaven. Just think of that—you’ve got someone watching over you all the time. I’m your uncle Stephen, and if it’s okay with you, I’m going to be hanging around a lot now that you’re here.”

He watched as her eyelids opened once, twice . . . his niece had his brother’s rich brown eyes. Haley would look at her daughter and see her husband.

S
he couldn’t put her daughter in the pale blue sleeper adorned with whimsical monkeys, no matter how adorable it was. She’d be swimming in it.

Haley sat in the hospital bed, the blanket drawn up around her, the newborn outfit spread out on her lap. She touched the soft material, shaking her head, a soft sigh disturbing the silence of her room.

“I have a daughter.” She folded the garment’s arms. “A daughter—and nothing for her to wear.”

She wasn’t even sure when they’d release the baby to go home. And even more important than clothes, her baby needed a name. She couldn’t keep saying and thinking “my daughter” and “the baby.”

At the sound of a soft knock on her door, Haley expected yet another visit from a medical tech to check her vitals. But Stephen stepped into the room. “You’re supposed to be with her.”

“I know.” He pulled a chair up beside the bed. “They’re doing
a chest X-ray, and I had to leave the room anyway, so I came see how you’re doing. And bring you this.”

Haley watched him pull the camera from his coat pocket, followed by an Almond Joy candy bar. “I forgot about the camera.”

“I figured as much. I also thought you might be hungry.”

“They brought me dinner—wait.” Haley accepted the chocolate, unwrapped it, and took a bite. Chocolate and coconut. Oh, this was the perfect after-labor treat. “Have you had anything to eat?”

“I made a quick run to the cafeteria before it closed.” He settled into the chair, running his fingers through his hair, disheveling the long ends. “And then I double-timed it back here.”

“Thank you for staying with her, Stephen.”

“No place on earth I’d rather be.”

Haley ignored how his words warmed her, focusing on the camera instead. She pressed the button so that images from earlier today flashed onto the screen: she saw herself sitting in bed, giving a thumbs-up; a view of the heart monitor strip; one of her holding Stephen’s hands, her face marred by a grimace.

“Oh, that’s lovely. Not one of my best moments.”

Echoes of his “You’re beautiful” whispered in her mind.

“We can delete it.”

“No, no. I can always use it later—show her the pain I went through to birth her when she’s giving me a rough time during the teen years.”

“Very wise. See, you’re getting the hang of this mothering business already.”

She didn’t respond to Stephen’s teasing, as her attention was centered on the next photo, of Dr. Campbell holding a newborn baby. Her baby. Her daughter.

“Wait—you were facing me and the wall the entire time. How’d you get this photo?”

“I didn’t take that. Nikki and I got pretty good at passing off the camera. You were too preoccupied to notice.”

There were several photos of the baby in the warmer and then one of her wrapped in a blanket, snuggled close against Haley’s chest.

“I barely got to hold her before they took her to the NICU.” She touched the photo with her forefinger, closed her eyes, and inhaled, as if she could recapture the warm scent of her daughter when she’d pressed her lips to her soft forehead. “She’s so tiny. I don’t even know how much she weighs.”

“A whopping four pounds, five ounces.”

“I’ve handled guns heavier than that.”

“She’ll gain weight.” Stephen paused. “She has Sam’s brown eyes.”

Haley looked up from the camera into eyes identical to Sam’s. “I wasn’t expecting that. I thought all babies had blue eyes.”

“Not this little girl.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Just for a moment, it was like looking into Sam’s eyes again. I think he’d like that—knowing his child looks like him.”

“He didn’t know.”

“Of course he couldn’t know the baby would look like him—”

“No—he didn’t know about the baby.”

Stephen’s one eyebrow rose, a crease forming between his eyes. “Why wouldn’t Sam know? I mean, he was still alive when you found out you were pregnant, right?”

Why hadn’t she kept looking at the photos of her daughter, Sam’s daughter? Why didn’t she talk about what to name her or how an hours-old baby girl already faced the “I have nothing to wear” dilemma?

“He deployed. We were talking about whether he was reenlisting or not.” Haley turned off the camera, setting it on the
bedside table, next to the infant sleeper. “I wanted Sam to finish his commitment and get out of the army so we could settle down somewhere.”

The words spilled out, tumbling over each other. If she kept talking, then Stephen couldn’t ask any more questions. “Right after he deployed, he called . . . told me that he reenlisted. Two more years. The bonus was too good to pass up. I was so angry . . . another two years of watching Sam leave. Another two years of putting our plans—our marriage—on hold . . . I thought I might be pregnant, but I didn’t tell him. He was all about convincing me that he’d made the right decision.”

“But why didn’t you tell him that you were pregnant the next time you talked?”

She had asked herself that same question thousands of times. “When he called the next time, I knew I was pregnant. I hadn’t seen a doctor—but a home pregnancy test was positive. I was still hurt, and I thought,
Wait until you Skype
. I mean, wouldn’t it be better to tell him face-to-face—or sort of face-to-face?”

“And then—”

“And then the team showed up at my door. Told me Sam was dead.” She stared at the wall, the clock still counting off seconds, minutes, hours. “I know they thought I didn’t cry because I was in shock. But I kept thinking,
I need to tell him about the baby
.”

The only sound in the room was the TV, which Haley had turned on low. Nothing as good as a John Wayne movie, but noise to fill the space. “I hate that Sam died without knowing about our baby. I didn’t mean for it to happen . . . You understand, don’t you?”

She waited for him to say something. Something to lift the burden from her heart.

But Stephen refused to even look at her.