Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 74379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
I couldn’t fuckin’ wait.
There was practically a skip to my step as I made my way down one flight of stairs. Each day it came more and more easily until one day I was no longer getting winded. My body didn’t feel any different than it had before I’d donated my kidney and half of my liver to Krisney, and I was grateful.
That pain was a constant reminder of what had almost happened to her, and it fuckin’ hurt to think about. Hurt to breathe. Hurt so bad sometimes that I woke up in the middle of the night with sweat drenching my body.
“Heard you had a big one!”
I looked up to find another labor and delivery nurse headed my way from upstairs.
I grinned. “Sure did. Eleven and a half pounds.”
“Yikes!” She giggled as she passed. “Not the biggest, though.”
No, it hadn’t been. The biggest this hospital had ever seen had been a thirteen-pound baby.
I’d just delivered a baby who was two weeks late and looked like the fuckin’ Michelin Man compared to my own, but he was absolutely adorable.
I wondered if our kids would one day have rolls like that. Sure, they were finally starting to get some fat in their cheeks at an adjusted age of thirty-eight weeks, but they were nothin’ compared to this baby who had just been delivered—naturally.
Grinning, I stopped at the scrub station and washed up before putting on a gown and a pair booties which were stored there.
Once I was covered from shoulder to mid-calf, I headed inside and grinned at my mom.
“How are they doing?” I asked as I looked around for Krisney.
“She’s getting lunch,” Mom said, then sighed. “Reed, I’d like to talk to you while she’s not here.”
I frowned.
My mother and I hadn’t had the best of relationships lately.
She felt bad for how she’d acted. I could tell. Yet, I couldn’t quite forgive her. I couldn’t get over the fact that she tried to guilt me into choosing myself over the woman that everyone knew I loved.
It’d been six weeks, and she was avoiding the issue. She was going on with life like she hadn’t said such hurtful things.
“What about?” I asked, moving to the closest baby which happened to be Baxter—who was now in an open-top radiant warmer bed that made handling the babies so much easier while still helping to maintain their body temperatures.
It was a big step.
Dash, though, was still in his incubator, but they expected him to move to a convertible warmer any day now.
“Heya, Bax,” I spoke to my son. “Whatcha doin’?”
He turned his head toward me, and I swear I saw a tiny smile grace his features before he craned his neck and squirmed the other way.
Grinning, I moved back to Dash and reached my hand into the opening.
Running my finger down the length of his arm, I smiled at his sleeping form.
“You want to hold them now?”
I nodded, excitement tearing through me, making me bounce in excitement once again.
“It’s about feeding time, too,” my mother said. “Take a seat, and we’ll get Dash for you. When Krisney gets back, we’ll get them started on their bottles.”
I stripped off my gown and shirt, knowing that they’d allow me to hold him skin-to-skin—what we called kangaroo care—since Dash still wasn’t able to maintain his own body temperature completely.
Dash was just under five pounds, and Baxter was an even five pounds.
Both boys were still tiny as hell, but they were getting cuter by the day.
Once I was situated, my mother lowered the sides of the incubator and moved the baby out with practiced ease.
My mother had been doing this for a very, very long time. She’d been in the NICU for as long as I could remember, but there was something about these children being her grandkids that changed her demeanor slightly.
She was confident, sure, but she wasn’t as sure of herself as she would normally be.
And I felt that it had a lot to do with me and Krisney rather than them being her grandchildren.
She laid Dash on my chest and then immediately covered me up with a warm blanket, pinning Dash in between my chest and the blanket as she did.
Once she situated his nasal cannula, she reached for Baxter.
The two boys of mine loved being together.
It was like they knew when the other was near, and this time was no different.
Once I flipped the blanket back for my mother to place my other boy on my chest next to Dash, I looked down and grinned.
“Damn, it’s nice not to have that big thing weighing your face down,” I told the two boys. “I can actually see your cute, little noses.”
They felt like tiny weights on my chest, and I wondered if I’d ever get tired of this feeling.
Probably not.
My mother stopped at the side of my chair, and then ran her finger down the length of Baxter’s cheek.