She nodded, then turned to Derek. “You ready to meet the baby?”
Derek looked at me, then at Sierra. “Can we both go in?”
Sierra grinned. “Yep. We just have to get you to wash your hands here, gown up, and then you’re free.”
Moments later, we were in, Derek and I both in a pink gown over our clothes, and we were standing in the middle of what felt like an advanced world.
Sierra ordered us to follow her right up to a clear box in the back.
There was another nurse standing next to the clear incubator and she was taking notes.
“What’s wrong with him?” Derek asked.
“Her,” the nurse standing at the side of the incubator corrected Derek. “And I’ll leave you here, Sierra. Temp is fluctuating. I think we need to get some warm blankets.”
Sierra nodded her head as the woman disappeared, leaving us alone staring at a tiny little baby that looked as if she’d fit into the palms of Derek’s hands.
“Ohh,” I whispered, pressing my hand against the clear plastic. “She’s so cute and small!”
“For thirty-four weeks, she’s actually pretty darn big. She’s right at five pounds,” Sierra said as she gestured for us to get closer. “Her lungs are good. Her APGAR is perfect. Honestly, the only thing we’re worried about right now is her temperature. She’s not maintaining it as well as we feel like she should be.”
I leaned closer and smiled down at the infant who was looking around her enclosure with a look of bewilderment.
Derek was standing back behind me, staring at the incubator as if it was housing a baby lion and not a child.
“Derek,” I said, snapping at him to get his attention. “What are you doing way back there?”
He swallowed hard. “Is she okay?”
That was when I realized that Sierra and I were blocking the way.
I backed more to the side, and his breath hitched at the little girl that was staring directly at him.
“I think she knows your voice,” Sierra said, surprising him. “Come closer, dumbass.”
Derek shot her a glare, causing me to giggle.
He shot the same glare at me.
“Hey, I wasn’t the one to say that to you!” I teased.
He rolled his eyes and scooted until he was wedged between the two of us, looking down into the bin as if he was staring at a living, breathing miracle. Which he was.
“She’s gorgeous,” he said. “I thought she’d be ugly. I’ve heard that all babies are ugly. But she’s pretty cute.”
I grinned.
“You’re right,” I found myself saying. “And all that dark hair. Who do you think she got that from?”
“Not our side of the family, that’s for sure,” Derek rumbled.
Sierra snorted and opened one of the little porthole thingies.
“Touch her.”
He reached inside as if he was sticking his hand into a piranha’s habitat and not a child’s.
“You’re being a big baby,” Sierra snickered.
“She’s so small,” Derek said. “I don’t want to hurt her.”
“You won’t,” Sierra answered. “She’s made of tougher stuff.”
Derek’s finger found the baby’s hand, and the baby wrapped her fist around it as far as she could.
“You know,” I said to Sierra as we looked down into the box where Katy and Logan’s baby was struggling to maintain her body temperature. “I watched a TV show not too long ago that the man did Kangaroo Care. Where they let the baby lay skin to skin?”
Sierra grinned widely.
Then she looked at me.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but I’m not wearing a bra under here. And this is a dress, man. There’s no skin to skin to be had.” I turned to survey Derek. “Derek, on the other hand, can.”
Derek scrunched his nose up.
“What? No,” he immediately denied. “I can’t do that. Babies don’t like me.”
“Actually,” Sierra said. “That baby was screaming her little head off before you got in here. She heard you and stopped.”
I pointed to the seat where the parents sat and grinned. “Sit.”
“Avery, no,” he tried again, backing away this time.
“Derek,” I said softly. “This is your niece. Your sister and brother-in-law love her. They love you. The baby settled down when you came in here because she knew the sound of your voice. You’re holding this baby.”
Derek sighed and started to jerk his suit jacket off.
I walked up to him and took off his tie.
When he looked down at me, there was fear in his eyes.
“I don’t know how to hold a baby,” he told me. “I stay away from them until they can sit up on their own. When they’re not breakable.”
“Riggs will just lie there,” I told him. “You don’t need to do anything but hold her.”
“Riggs?” he laughed.
“I can’t call her ‘the baby’ until we learn her name,” I pointed out. “And she reminds me of a little Martin Riggs off of Lethal Weapon. A fighter to her very core.”
He closed his eyes with a pained expression on his face, and I started to slowly undo the buttons of his black silk shirt.
I’d had visions of doing this again tonight, but this definitely wasn’t where I expected to be when I did it.
Derek’s eyes caught mine, and I knew he was thinking much the same thing.
He winked at me when I got to the last button, then shrugged that shirt off, too.
When it got caught on his hands, I rolled my eyes and unbuttoned his cuffs, too.
“Thanks,” he said as he got to his t-shirt and shrugged it off. “Now what?”
“Now you sit,” Sierra said. “Get comfy.”
Derek did, getting into the chair and propping his feet up on the ottoman.
All the while he got comfortable, Sierra worked diligently to get the tiny little baby out of the incubator.
I reached forward and helped with the detangling of cords, and Sierra pointed.
“You get the baby, I’ll get the cords,” she suggested.
So that was what I did. I picked up the cutest, tiniest little creature on the planet as Sierra got the cords, and together we moved as one to place the baby on Derek’s chest.
Right over the tattoo that covered his heart.
The tattoo that still brought tears to my eyes every time that I saw it.
On the middle of his pectoral, there was a tattered black and white flag with a thin blue line coloring one of the middle lines. Underneath it, in beautiful script, it said, ‘I was born for this. I will live for this. I will die for this.’
Sierra laid the baby right over his heart to the point where you couldn’t see the words of his tattoo, then grinned. “Perfect. Let me grab her blankets.”
I grinned widely at Derek, who looked uncomfortable as hell, then lifted his hand to place it over Riggs’ back.