Prologue
Twenty-four Years Earlier
She was bornwith a heart defect... several of them, Dr. Holland said.
The statistics that streamed all around us for the next twelve hours after our baby girl’s birth were more than my mind could handle. Grief and fear are blinding emotions. They tend to block a lot of life out entirely.
But I remember some of them.Seventy-five days. That’s how long it would take to get my baby a transplant. Her tiny heart had to hold on for seventy-five days. And along the way, her kidneys could shut down. Have you ever considered what a premature baby on dialysis might look like? Because the moment Dr. Holland said it, I thought it. And it’s all I’ve thought about all night.
“Get some sleep, Brenda,” Collin whispers to me from the other side of the hospital room. The faint sound of beeping monitors and nurses with endless responsibilities walking the halls just outside our small room are suddenly heard when I look up at him.
His emerald eyes are like hers. Except his are ringed with dark circles tonight.
We wondered for months what she would look like. Whose features our beautiful baby would take in. We never thought for a second one of us might have a tragical genetic trait to gift to her. A weak heart. She inherited that from my side, apparently.
“I’m just going to go check on her one more time.” I stand, and my entire body feels battered and worn. A tremor shakes through my frame from the weight my legs don’t want to hold.
Collin doesn’t respond. He stares, lost in the dark nothingness of the room as I slip by his chair.
The socks the hospital gave me scuff along the glossy white tile. At my side, my IV drip skirts around with a bad wheel twirling without care.
“Should get some rest, Mrs. Cuore.” The nurse behind the counter gives me a tense smile, but I know she won’t stop me.
New mothers are made entirely of worry. I expected to check on my sweet baby for cries, or shallow breathing, or wet diapers.
I didn’t expect this.
Down to the neonatal intensive care unit I shuffle. It’s farther away than the nursery. I still have to pass by the glass window of healthy babies sleeping soundly.
I don’t look at them.
A nurse with a clipboard is at the desk across from the NICU. Her brown eyes shine with a soft, knowing smile when she looks at me.
I wash my hands as she gathers up a blue gown in silence. It’s a strange, stilted process. Like my baby is on loan, and I’m just a recurring customer.
She ties the back of my sterile gown and opens the door for me. It slides closed without a sound, and she watches me for a moment through the glass of the door. I feel her watching me. I feel all of them watching me.
Waiting for me to break.
There’s only one carriage now. The other that was here this morning is gone. I now have privacy with my baby girl, and that only makes my emotions rise up with pain.
“Bellatrix,” I coo to her, my voice breaking against her name as I bend down low with tears dampening my lashes.
They try to make it feel normal. The frilly, pink cloth covers the hard metal of the cart they call a bassinet. It’s a nice touch, but it’s still just hiding the truth: my baby won’t make it seventy-five days. If by some miracle she does, a transplant heart only has a fifteen to twenty-five year life expectancy.
And then what?
Golden light shines down on her, warming her and providing the body heat her heart is too weak to give. At over two months early, her body is frail, skinny for an infant who should have lovely rolls and plump cheeks. The graying tone of her skin makes me want to pick her up and hold her close to my chest, apologize for giving her the worst feature I didn’t even know I possessed.
A weak heart.
Tears stream down my face as helplessness finally sinks into me. The nurse outside the door is turned to her desk, oblivious to me as I sink to my knees and pray. My hands hover over her little body, not wanting to disturb the tubes and wires haloing around her. All the years I went to Catholic school don’t seem sufficient for such a request. I need more than a prayer. I need more than help. I need...
“Please help her,” I sob into the pink, frilly cloth. “P—Please—”
I don’t know why I did it. I’ll never tell Collin. I’ll never tell anyone.
Because when a calm, dark voice beneath that bassinet asked to save my baby, I gave her to him.