Chapter 22
Tilly
I’m so happy for them. This is exactly what it’s supposed to be.
And it’s so goddamn triggering, but I can’t tell them that.
I can’t tell them how robbed of this experience I feel.
I can’t complain that Blaise was the one who got those first critical bonding moments, not me.
I can’t voice my anger that Donovan, as much as I love him with every breath of my soul, never had that sweet chubby baby fat and is still in the bottom twenty-fifth percentile in weight and is perpetually a few weeks behind on his milestones.
I don’t know if anyone even realizes it.
And he’s miserable the entire time Joss is in labor.
I keep apologizing, but Joss brushes me off because she’s a goddamn saint.
She even tries to soothe him in the middle of a contraction.
I can tell he’s irritating the medical staff.
Several suggest that I leave, but Joss won’t have any of it.
By the time Gabe arrives, I’m at my wit’s end.
Donovan was in his car seat for over six hours yesterday, and his legs are red and swollen. This is my fault. There’s probably a warning right on that car seat saying this is how long a baby should be in a car seat. A chart listing it by age. He’s been miserable, and it’s my fault.
When Gabe arrives, I don’t want to be selfish, but I can’t help myself.
I ask if he could watch Donovan for a couple minutes while I use the restroom, and then I’ll take him so they can have their peace.
I give myself fifteen minutes in that restroom to cry so hard I can’t breathe before pulling myself back together.
It’s ridiculous, but when I walk out again, I’m hoping they think I’m just ridiculously constipated or something.
Instead, Gabe says, “I’m going to take this little guy for a walk, okay?”
He barely makes it back in time to do his coaching-while-holding-a-knee job, but he makes it. That’s important.
I pace around the waiting room until I get the news that Joss has had the most flawless birth ever, and then I take Donovan outside, finding relief only when he cries himself to sleep intermittently, just to wake up wailing until his voice begins to falter.
Oh, god. Oh, god. Oh, god.
I can’t do this. I can’t believe I messed up this badly in the single week Blaise has been gone, but I can’t do this.
It hurts me more than it should when I finally go back into the hospital, right back to the maternity ward, and up to the charge nurse — who quit offering assistance hours ago because I kept telling her he’s just having a bad day — and say, “I think he needs help.”
I see the flash of irritation in her eyes, but then my own eyes go damp and my lips start to wobble, and I try to hold it all in and can’t.
I need help.
Oh, god.
She takes him from me with skilled hands and a reassuring smile. “Okay,” she whispers and discreetly passes me a tissue. “Motherhood is hard, I know. We’re going to get him to the doctors over in the NICU, and they’ll get him all checked out, okay? But you’re doing the right thing.”
I sniffle and nod, but I’m terrified that they’re going to see those swollen legs — his hands are looking red, his fingers not flexing like they usually do, either — and they’re going to call Child Protective Services on me.
If Blaise were here, I could at least say he wasn’t with me when I put Donovan in that car seat for so long and Blaise can be the primary caregiver until I get classes or whatever, but he’s in Japan.
They’re going to take him away from me for neglect because I don’t know what I’m doing.
And he won’t stop crying.
The nurse leads me into the NICU, and now I’m scared I’m going to get into trouble for how underweight he is. He’s a little scrawny. He always has been. Are they going to think he’s malnourished when I tell them he’s not a newborn? But I have to.
“He’s . . . he’s fourteen weeks. He’s just small.”
“Some of the babies here are a good bit older than that and much smaller. They don’t usually get any returning patients in this ward, but they’ll be able to take a look at him and go from there. Maybe it’s nothing, and he’s just really having a tough time with himself right now, right?”
But when the doctor gets him out of his romper and sees his limbs, I see the look of concern.
“Oh god, this is all my fault,” I gasp, covering my mouth.
“Let’s start from the beginning,” the doctor says as he waves a light in circles over Donovan to check his sight, trading the light out with a rattle to distract him into hiccups before carefully rolling a swollen ankle to the side.
“I didn’t know he couldn’t be in a car seat that long,” I explain with a ragged breath, already wanting to scoop Donovan up to comfort him again, but I don’t want to interrupt the doctor.
Everyone loves Donovan. Even if he gets taken away from me and Blaise has issues getting custody because he either lives with me or he lives with a bunch of football players who travel for days at a time, one of our friends will surely foster him.
Better to have him taken away from me if it gets him the care he needs. He shouldn’t suffer because of me.
“How long did you leave him?” the doctor asks, but I hear the edge on his tone now. He’s doing that thing Blaise and I do when we’re arguing but Donovan’s listening. “Was he in a hot car?”
“Oh god, no! Never! Holy cow, no, I would never do that, I swear. I took him on a road trip yesterday, three hours both ways. And I took him out, of course, and stopped a couple times because it was just the two of us and we haven’t done any big trips yet.
And he was fine when we first got home, but then when I woke him up because my friend went into labor, he was swollen and fussy and–and I didn’t mean to hurt him, I swear. ”
The doctor relaxes noticeably and even hands me Donovan. This, if nothing else, calms him for a few seconds, like he was away from me long enough that just being in my arms helps, but then he starts whimpering, and it breaks my heart.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, okay? We don’t want them in their seats more than two hours at a time, and it sounds like you were right on the mark there.
If your trip caused this, there’s something else underlying that you probably didn’t know about.
So take a big breath, mama. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.
I would like to run some blood work on him, if you’re okay with that. ”
“Of course!”
“And I’m going to start him on some very mild ibuprofen, and that’s going to calm him right down, bring this swelling down, knock out this fever, and then we’ll go from there. I do want to have him admitted, though, just overnight for observation, but we’ll have to take him to pediatrics.”
Pediatrics. I’ve spent enough time in hospitals to know that there are a lot of support networks helping parents find places nearby to live and cover expenses when their children are in there long-term.
It’s really stressful on them. “Will I have to leave? He’s just a baby. He can’t . . . he needs me.”
“Of course he does. It should be just the night, and you are welcome to stay. I can’t guarantee a comfortable stay, but there will be at least a sofa.”
The night in the hospital is horrible. Having Joss and Gabe here means at least there is a distraction, a couple minutes here and there of visiting and being visited by others, but then it’s time to sleep, and it’s awful.
But Blaise is here. It’s a miracle — it’s my good luck forever chasing my bad luck — that Blaise came back early and doesn’t technically need to report back to camp for another day.
He says he’s not going back to camp, not until Donovan is okay, but Gabe and I both fight him on it.
He doesn’t have the life of a normal person. He can’t just take off like that.
We have a futon to sleep on. It’s lumpy and makes weird plastic sounds when we move, but Blaise holds me all night, and it helps.
When I can’t hold back my tears, he holds me even more tightly and whispers reassurances about how strong Donovan is and what a good mom I am, but neither of those things is true.
Donovan is doing the best he can, but I set him up to fail.
The medicine helps, but it’s just a stopgap. When rounds start in the morning, he’s fussing again, and this time, Blaise is here and ready to make a scene if they don’t help his baby.
They come as a cadre. An attending physician, two residents, and two nurses.
Blaise, having returned to his default, is shirtless with Donovan in just a diaper curled up on his chest, patting his butt far more vigorously than he usually does.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
And I guess since step one of taking care of an infant was skin-to-skin that very first day, it’s just where Blaise feels like he’s doing the most. Donovan isn’t fully screaming like he was yesterday, but he’s whimpering and sobbing in this exhausted way, like he’s the most frustrated out of all of us.
Blaise is 100% Blaise Sinclair. There’s no privacy in this wing.
He’s not doing anything to hide his identity.
The entire team of medical staff is exchanging quick glances, communicating with their eyes what’s plain as day because Donovan’s last name is Sinclair and this guy has not only the look but the hubris and insanity of Blaise Sinclair.
No one needs to say his name to confirm his identity.
“No, you don’t need to hold him!” he yells at the doctor, but he manages to do it in a way that has the staff smiling. Even Donovan looks up at him with eyes that maybe aren’t happy but seem relieved. “This is his safe spot. This is where he goes. These are the arms that hold him.”
“Mr. Sinclair,” the doctor says calmly. “I promise he is safe in my arms as well. I just need to examine him.”
“You can examine him in these arms.”