Chapter 2 - The Glass Wall of NICU
The tires of my Mercedes screeched as I pulled into the emergency drop-off zone at St. Catherine Medical Center. I didn't bother parking in a designated spot; I threw my keys to an astonished valet attendant and charged through the sliding glass doors into the sterile, white-lit lobby.
“Elise Rowan,” I demanded at the front desk, my hands gripping the edge of the marble counter so hard my knuckles turned white. “Where is she?”
The nurse looked up, flinched at my tone, and typed quickly into her computer. “Room 412 in the maternity wing. But sir, visiting hours—”
I didn't hear the rest of her sentence. I was already sprinting toward the elevators.
The fourth floor smelled of antiseptic, fresh linens, and an underlying tension that made my jaw ache. I found Room 412 down a long, quiet corridor.
I pushed the door open softly.
The room was dimly lit. Machines hummed quietly beside a high hospital bed. Lying there, looking impossibly small beneath a thick white blanket, was Elise.
Her dark hair was pulled back in a loose, messy braid. Her face was pale, translucent almost, with dark purple shadows beneath her eyes. Her lips were cracked, and an IV line ran into the back of her thin left hand.
My heart shattered right inside my ribs.
Six months ago, she had walked out of our home looking fierce, cold, and distant. Now, seeing her so frail, the wall of anger I had built around my heart over the past half-year crumbled into dust.
I took three slow, hesitant steps toward the bed. “Elise?” I whispered.
Her eyelashes fluttered. She turned her head slowly, her hazel eyes unfocusing before finally resting on my face. For a second, a flash of soft recognition crossed her features, quickly replaced by a wave of guard, pain, and exhaustion.
“Ethan?” her voice was barely a rasp. “What... what are you doing here?”
“Dr. Kline called me,” I said, sinking onto the small plastic chair beside her bed. I reached out, my trembling hand hovering an inch above hers before I dared to touch her cool fingers. “Elise... why didn't you tell me?”
She pulled her hand away, slowly pulling it beneath the blanket. The rejection cut deeper than any blade.
“I tried,” she murmured, staring up at the white ceiling tiles. “I tried six times, Ethan. I called your personal line. I called your office. I even left messages with your assistant.”
“I never got them,” I choked out, pulling my phone from my pocket and holding up the carrier log screen. “Look at this! My phone... something blocked your number! The calls were routed to spam! The voicemails were erased! I swear to God, Elise, I never saw them!”
Elise turned her head back to look at me, her eyes filling with bitter, hot tears.
“Do you really expect me to believe that?” she asked, her voice trembling with six months of bottled-up grief. “The great Ethan Redmond, master of technology and security systems, had his ex-wife’s number 'accidentally' blocked? You wanted me gone, Ethan. You signed those divorce papers in ten minutes without even looking me in the eye!”
“Because I thought you hated me!” I shouted softly, terrified of raising my voice in the quiet room. “You handed me those papers and said you were done! You said you wanted a clean break!”
“Because I thought you were having an affair with your vice president!” Elise cried out, a tear breaking over her eyelid and spilling across her cheek. “I found the hotel receipts in your briefcase! I saw the private text messages from Julian telling you that 'she was taken care of in Dallas'! I thought you were building a life with someone else!”
I froze, the room suddenly tilting around me.
“Hotel receipts?” I repeated, my brain racing through memories of seven months ago. “Private text messages from Julian?”
Before Elise could answer, the door to the room swung open. Dr. Naomi Kline walked in, wearing light blue scrubs, holding a digital tablet.
“Mr. Redmond,” Dr. Kline said, looking between the two of us with an empathetic smile. “I’m glad you made it. Your son’s vitals have stabilized, but he is awake. If you’d like to see him, now is the time.”
Elise’s eyes flicked to mine, guarded yet full of a mother's fierce vulnerability.
“Go see him,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “He’s small, Ethan. He’s so small.”
I stood up on unsteady legs, looking at Elise, then at the doctor. The questions about the hotel receipts and Julian burned in my throat, but my son was waiting.
“I’ll be right back,” I told Elise softly. “We are not finished talking.”
I followed Dr. Kline down the hallway to the double doors of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The room was cool, filled with the rhythmic beep-beep-beep of dozens of monitors.
Dr. Kline led me to an incubator near the corner window.
Inside, swaddled in a microscopic striped blanket, sat a baby boy. He weighed barely four pounds. He had tiny, perfect fingers, a light dusting of dark hair, and miniature medical sensors attached to his chest.
As I stepped up to the acrylic glass wall, the tiny boy opened his eyes—wide, dark hazel eyes that were an exact match for his mother's.
He reached out his left hand, his tiny fingers curling into a tight fist against the air.
May you like
Tears spilled over my eyes, dripping onto my collar.
“Hey there, little man,” I whispered, pressing my palm against the outside of the warm incubator glass. “I’m your dad. I’m sorry I was late. But I’m never, ever going away again.”
