My hands fall limp as I take a silent step back.
As the initial adrenaline of panic and terror is overtaken by the heaviness of them. The weight of fear.
The gravity that we’re here. In this stark white waiting room with doctors and nurses and patients bustling around, something that I’d blocked up until now.
But it’s rushing back, along with the vivid realization that my Fae fell down the stairs at school and now she’s in surgery with Halo.
And they both might not… be okay.
“We’ve been trying to reach you all morning,” Conrad says. “Where were you? Why couldn’t you drop her off this morning?”
I texted him early this morning that I wouldn’t be able to drop her off at school today because I had something to take care of. Something that I know he doesn’t care about and I never wanted him to.
Because it was my responsibility, my father.
So I tell him, my chest burning, every bone in my body hurting. “It’s over. With my father.”
Even though his gaze is dipped in the same gravity and fear as mine, I can see a tiny bit of approval in his eyes as well. “Good.”
And then, I can’t help but say, “I love her.”
“I know. I could see. It’s good that you can see it now too.”
“I’ve been an asshole.”
“Yes. But I was wrong about you. I don’t like to be wrong but I’m glad I was.” Then the look in his eyes get shuttered. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t there. To save her when she…”
Fell.
***
Halo Jackson comes into the world at exactly 3:27 PM on a Monday.
She shouldn’t have though.
She’s approximately six weeks early. All the books say that a normal pregnancy lasts up to forty weeks. Any babies born between thirty-seven and forty-two weeks are considered full term. Any born before are premature.
Halo is premature at thirty-one weeks.
She weighs 4.6 pounds and she has a ninety-five chance of survival with no ill effects.
But we need to keep her in the NICU. In an incubator because premature babies don’t know how to regulate their body temperature. They might have excessive weight loss. Their vital signs may be unstable.
Not that these things might happen to Halo because she comes under the mild category of premature, as the doctor who performed the surgery told me. Which went smoothly. They were afraid that the fall might have caused some internal bleeding of sorts but it didn’t.
My Fae and Halo were lucky.
But they’re not taking any chances. Hence the incubator.
I know all this because they told me.
But I know some other things too.
I know that she has dark hair like me. And blue eyes like her.
And I know that she’s small. She’s so very, very, dangerously small. I don’t know how I’ll keep her safe. I don’t know how anyone can keep a baby safe when they’re so small and fragile.
So breakable.
And it looks like Halo might break if I touched her even with a finger.
Good thing I haven’t.
Not yet, seeing as they took her straight to the NICU after surgery and stuck her with all these tubes. So I haven’t gotten to hold my daughter yet.
My daughter.
She’s my daughter. I have a daughter.
Over the past months, I thought I was preparing myself. I had questions. I asked them. I had a list of things to buy for her. The list of things she’ll need when she arrives.
And yes, I’ve been afraid.
Of course I have been. Of what kind of a father I’ll be. Given I always had a shitty one.
But I never thought I’d feel so incompetent. So blind as to what to do next.
What am I supposed to do now? With her.
How am I supposed to contain all this love? All this rush of love that I’ve never felt before.
Not this kind of love.
It’s like I’ll burst. My skin will fall apart with the kind of love I feel for my baby.
So yeah, I don’t know.
Except the only thing, the only person in this whole world, that has the power to calm me down, to give me peace, is sleeping. Doctors say that she’s doing great.
Except the normal post-op pain and recovery and the weakness that she’ll feel.
Oh, and her ankle’s sprained from the fall.
And I know she’s going to be fine but with her eyes closed and her blonde hair fanned over the white pillow, she looks just as fragile as Halo.
Just as beautiful and small and mine.
But then those eyes flutter and open, pure and shining blue, and my heart skips a beat.
“Hey,” I whisper, leaning over from my chair by her bed and squeezing her hand that I’ve been holding for the better part of the last two hours.
She smiles, those fairy-like eyes roving over my face. “Hey.” Then she frowns slightly. “You look completely destroyed.”
A tired chuckle escapes me. “And you look like a fairy.” She chuckles slightly too and I swallow. “How do you… how do you feel?”
“Good. I had a dream.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. About the championship game. I’m at the stadium, watching your game,” she whispers, squeezing my hand back, making something prickle in my throat. “And I’m all dressed up in my tutu and my wings and I’m smiling because I know you’re gonna score the goal. But then, you look up from the field. You look directly at me and you smile too and I want to tell you that you need to keep your eye on the ball or you’ll lose but I’m so happy. So happy that you looked at me, that you didn’t care about the game and the world and you just looked at me in the crowd. And then, I felt Halo in my belly and…” Her breaths hasten, her eyes filling with realization and her free hand flies over to her belly. “Halo. What… where’s…”
“Hey, hey.” I squeeze her hand, trying to get her attention. “She’s fine. She’s here. She’s —”
“But she wasn’t supposed to be… I fell, Roman.” She looks at me with teary, panicked eyes. “I fell at school and there was so much pain. And I was waiting for you but you never came and Halo… where’s Halo?”
“Hey, look at me, Fae. Look at me. I’m here, okay? I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving.” I squeeze her hand again. I keep squeezing it as if trying to pump her heart back to life, as if to tell her lungs to breathe, just breathe. “And Halo’s fine. She’s fine. A little premature but she’s doing great, okay? There’s nothing to worry about. I promise. I promise, Fae.”
Tears are falling from her eyes, disappearing into her hair. “You promise?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. She’s fine. You’re fine too.”
Finally her breaths calm down. “Okay, I trust you. I need…” But with her ease comes exhaustion and her eyes are fluttering closed. “I need to see her. Take me… take me to her… she must be alone and… afraid. She must be…”