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)
“Hold this right here.” She gestured with her head to the tube cylinder she was holding. “It’s the milk that he’s eating for this hour.”
Reed took the tube from her and gestured me forward.
I didn’t want to leave the baby I was staring at, but I couldn’t not do it.
I wanted to do it.
I moved to the other incubator.
The tube was nothing more than a syringe with the plunger part taken off. It was bigger than I’d seen, but not by much. It was also filled to the brim with milk.
“Do I just hold it?”
She nodded, as did Reed.
The moment my hand touched down on the plastic, I started to cry.
Reed’s hand wrapped around me. After placing a kiss to my forehead, he gestured with his head to the other incubator. “I’m gonna go check out Bruiser over there.”
I giggled, but was unable to take my eyes off of the baby boy on the white bed in front of me.
“Do you have to burp him?” I suddenly asked.
She shook her head, but it was Reed who answered me. “No. Since he’s on a feeding tube, he’s not sucking back air like a healthy baby would when they were eating. This one has your eyes. All slanted and angry.”
I snorted and licked my lips.
I practically itched to press my lips to the little boy’s tiny little nose.
This one…he looked like his daddy.
He had a head full of black hair, wide open grayish/blue eyes, and a nose that he’d have to one day grow into like his father had.
His hands were tiny…much smaller than anything I’d ever seen in my life. The entire little fist was about the size of a quarter.
His foot was about the size of a piece of Hershey’s chocolate—the fun sized.
“Hey, baby,” I whispered, my hand going to the glass just like I’d done with his brother.
“Do you have names for them yet?”
My eyes flicked up to Temperance.
“Uhh,” I hesitated. “Kind of.”
“Kind of?” she asked teasingly.
I nodded and looked over my shoulder at Reed.
“You tell her.”
Reed chuckled.
This name thing had been hard as hell.
It’d taken us almost a month to name Pepé, and he was a puppy.
Naming a child was a huge commitment.
It’d taken us nearly two weeks of going back and forth over names before we found two that we adored.
“Do you want the D, or the B?”
I looked down at the baby that I was feeding.
“B.”
“Baby A is Dash. Baby B is Bax.”
Baxter and Dashiell. Both completely random names that we’d found in a baby book but had both liked.
“Love it,” the nurse said. “I’ll write that down in their charts. I’m only assuming this, but the last name is Hail, correct?”
She knew a little about us, I saw.
Momma Hail didn’t completely hate me if she talked about me…right?
“Yes,” I confirmed before Reed could. “We’re getting married once the babies are out of here.”
My absent-minded comment caused the man, who’d been talking quietly to his son, to stop speaking almost instantly.
I looked over my shoulder at him and saw he was watching me with excitement.
“You’re saying yes?”
I laughed. “We’ll see.”
He growled. “I’ll ask you right now.”
I laughed. “I’m wearing your ring already, Reed. Asking me is only a formality at this point. I wanted to make you sweat.”
“Well, you accomplished that,” he muttered. “You done?”
I looked down at the syringe and saw that it was almost empty.
“Maybe?”
He left the baby he was standing near, and came to me, deftly removing the syringe and doing doctor things as I stared at our baby’s face.
“You like this,” I murmured.
He nodded. “The babies are my favorite part of my job.” He paused. “I don’t often interact with ones this small. I did do a few rotations in the NICU during my residency, though. If I ever had to pick a new specialty, this would be the place I’d go.”
As I studied my baby, I suddenly blinked when I saw that he didn’t have any eyebrows.
“He doesn’t have any eyebrows!” I murmured.
“Or nails or eyelashes,” Reed agreed. “Completely normal.”
I looked, and indeed, he didn’t have any fingernails or eyelashes, either.
“Holy shit,” I murmured. “You’re right.”
He snorted. “I know.”
A pitiful whine from behind me had me moving to the other bed, and I smiled when I saw Dash’s head moving side to side.
“God, I want to hold you so bad,” I murmured.
“You can touch him,” the nurse, who I hadn’t been aware was still there, said. “Just don’t hold onto him.”
I looked at my fingers, suddenly seeing weapons in my fingernails where before I would’ve seen just nails.
Carefully, I lifted one finger and ran it over the top of Dash’s head.
“So soft,” I murmured. “Like a little peach.”
The nurse giggled. “Exactly like one,” she agreed.
And so, it went.
Reed and I bounced between both kids until I was too exhausted to stand. When that happened, they found me a chair and I sat at Dash’s bedside. Then moved ten minutes later to Baxter’s.