CHAPTER 2 — The Child Behind the Glass
I woke beneath white hospital lights.
For several seconds, I did not understand why my stomach felt empty.
Then I remembered the elevator.
Alex running past me.
The ring leaving my finger.
The fading rhythm inside the ambulance.
I tried to sit up.
Pain pulled sharply across my abdomen.
A nurse hurried to my side.
“Lucy, please stay still.”
“My baby.”
My voice barely existed.
“Where is she?”
The nurse looked toward the door.
That hesitation nearly destroyed me.
“Is she alive?”
“Yes.”
The word left the nurse quickly.
“She’s alive.”
My entire body collapsed into the pillow.
Tears slid into my hair.
“She was delivered by emergency cesarean,” the nurse explained. “She’s extremely premature, but she’s breathing with support. She’s in the neonatal intensive care unit.”
“Can I see her?”
“As soon as your doctor clears you.”
I closed my eyes.
Alive.
My daughter was alive.
A few minutes later, my mother entered the room.
She had driven three hours from Milwaukee after receiving the hospital’s call. Her coat was buttoned incorrectly, and her gray hair looked as though she had run her hands through it the entire way.
She crossed the room and wrapped both arms around me.
Neither of us spoke for a long time.
Then I asked the question I already feared.
“Where is Alex?”
My mother’s face hardened.
“Outside.”
“He’s here?”
“He has been demanding to see you.”
I looked toward the closed door.
“Don’t let him in.”
“You don’t have to worry.”
Her voice became colder.
“I told security that your husband was not to enter this room.”
I should have felt relieved.
Instead, I remembered Alex sitting beside me at our kitchen table, his palm over my stomach, smiling when our daughter kicked.
For one dangerous second, grief made me want him.
Not the man outside.
The man I thought I had married.
That man no longer existed.
Several hours later, the nurse rolled me into the NICU.
My daughter lay inside a clear incubator.
She was impossibly small.
Her skin looked fragile beneath the wires and medical tape. A tiny breathing mask covered most of her face.
I pressed my fingertips against the glass.
“Hi, sweetheart.”
Her hand moved.
Barely.
But it moved.
“I’m here,” I whispered. “I didn’t leave you.”
A nurse approached from behind me.
“Have you chosen a name?”
I stared at my daughter.
“Grace.”
The name came without thought.
Because she had survived what should have taken her from me.
The nurse smiled.
“Grace Miller-Davis.”
I shook my head.
“Grace Miller.”
Before the nurse could respond, a security officer appeared at the NICU entrance.
He looked uncomfortable.
“Mrs. Miller?”
“Yes?”
“Your husband isn’t the only person asking to see the baby.”
A woman stood behind him.
Long blonde hair.
Cream blouse.
May you like
A thin scratch across her forehead.
Valerie smiled at me through the glass.
