So many thoughts flashed through his mind. What if the doctors had to choose between mother and child? What if he lost one of them? Or both? It didn’t bear thinking about. God knew, he would give all his money, every single penny to know that they were both all right.
And if this was what love meant, then he loved them, Godammit. He loved Erin DeSouza and he loved his baby and he was making no apologies for it. He just prayed they’d both make it through so that he could show them how much he loved them.
He was at the point when he felt he would go mad with worry when he saw the doctor in his green scrubs heading down the hallway toward him. He didn’t wait for him to get to him. He met him halfway, his eyes searching the doctor’s face, trying to read the news that was to come.
“They’re…okay?” His voice sounded strained even to his own ears. He could hardly speak. The anxiety was killing him.
The doctor sighed.
Dare almost had a heart attack. Jesus, a doctor sighing. That was not a good sign.
“They’re both resting,” he said with a small smile.
Dare let his breath out in a whoosh. They were alive. Both of them. That was a start. “Are they okay?” he asked again.
“Mommy is doing well,” the doctor said, “but it was a difficult surgery. Baby was in a lot of distress."
Dare glared at the doctor. He was just inches from strangling the man. “What the hell does that mean? Is my baby okay or not?”
“Mr. DeSouza, please,” the doctor said, putting up a hand. “There are other people-”
“I don’t give a flying fig who else is here. Tell me what’s going on with my baby.”
“She’s been taken to the intensive care unit to be placed in an incubator. She’s only two pounds and needs to be placed in a protected environment.”
She? Hadn’t he heard ‘he’ somewhere? But it didn’t matter either way. He just wanted his baby to be alright.
“Will she survive, doctor?” He kept his voice low, guilty at his previous outburst but still too concerned to worry about an apology.
The doctor pursed his lips. “Her chances are better than fifty percent but I don’t want you to get your hopes up, just in case.”
Better than fifty percent. It wasn’t enough. He wanted to hear that she was perfectly fine, she’d be alright, she’d grow up and graduate from high school and give him all the grief that teenage girls gave their middle aged dads. That was what he wanted to hear.
But the doctor was giving him no such assurances so he clung to the only positive word he’d been given. Better. Better than fifty percent. He would hold on to ‘better’ and make it real.
“Can I see them now?” he asked.
The doctor nodded. “I’ll take you to your wife. She’s conscious but a bit groggy. You can see the baby afterwards.”
Dare nodded and followed him down the hallway. He was taken to a private room where Erin lay in the bed, pale and quiet, her eyes closed. He pulled up a chair beside her and gently touched her arm. Her eyes opened and he could see her trying to focus. “Dare,” she said, her voice weak and scratchy, “where’s my baby? Is he alright?”
“It’s a she, Erin,” he said. “We have a daughter. She's in the ICU right now and they’re taking good care of her."
“Is she going to be alright?” Erin’s eyes searched his face, looking for the same assurance he’d just sought from the doctor.
He took her hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze. “She’s very tiny, Erin. Only two pounds but if she’s anything like her mother she’ll pull through alright.”
“How?” Erin whispered. She looked up at him, her eyes full of distress. “How can she make it?”
“She will,” Dare said, his voice firm with conviction. In his heart he knew that his daughter would be alright. They both would. Leaning over he kissed Erin on the forehead. “Just rest for a while. I’m going to check on her.” Then he gave her a reassuring smile. “Start thinking of girl names till I get back.”
With that Dare left her and headed to the intensive care unit. The nurses there were welcoming but they refused to let him go into the nursery.
“The babies in this section are very delicate,” they told him. “Their immune systems aren’t developed yet. We have to make it as sterile an environment as possible.”
They took him to a wide glass window and it was from there that he got his first view of his daughter, so tiny and pink in her incubator, with a shock of dark brown hair that made him think of her mother. There were strings and tubes leading from her mouth, her nose and her arm and his heart ached at the little one’s cold and sterile introduction to the world. He should be able to hold his daughter close right now. She should be lying on the comfort of her mother’s breast. But she was all alone and so tiny. How would they even care for her?
But as he stared at her, so small but yet so beautiful in her cocoon of glass, he knew they’d find a way. The baby had done her part by bravely making her way into the world. Now it was time for him and for Erin to play their part.
“You’re a fighter, little one,” he whispered through the glass, “and we won’t let you down.”
***
Nearly eight weeks passed before Erin and Dare were allowed to take Soleil Denise DeSouza home from the hospital. By that time she weighed four pounds and had grown another inch. The nurses warned them she was a feisty one, kicking up a windstorm when she was ready to be fed and demanding to be held when it was naptime.
“You have to put your foot down,” one of the nurses warned Erin, “or else she’ll walk all over you. You need to show her who’s in charge.”
Erin smiled and thanked the nurse for her advice but when she looked into her daughter’s big brown eyes how could she refuse her? She’d already been through so much in her little life that Erin could be excused for spoiling her a little bit, couldn’t she?