Then she pushed him away.
“I said don’t touch me.”
“You were falling.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
She stared at him.
Ethan seemed surprised by his own words.
The nurse quietly looked at the floor.
Hannah’s voice weakened.
“Please.”
That single word broke his resistance.
“I’ll arrange transport to the NICU as soon as it’s medically safe.”
“Now.”
“Hannah.”
“Please, Ethan.”
His name.
The first time she had spoken it.
Something flickered in his eyes.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Forty minutes later, Hannah sat in a wheelchair beside two incubators.
Her son was impossibly small.
Her daughter smaller still.
Tubes and wires covered bodies that should still have been protected inside her.
Hannah reached one hand through the incubator opening.
Her fingertip touched her son’s tiny palm.
He curled his fingers around it.
Hannah began crying.
