Page 37 of Beside the Rolling Waves
“We’ve been holding the babies for more than an hour. Let’s set them down. We’ll tell the nurses that we’re leaving, and we’ll find somewhere quiet, okay?”
She didn’t want to go somewhere with him. She didn’t trust him. But she did want to go. As much as she loved holding the baby in her arms and feeling comforted by the feel of it, she needed to get up, needed to move, needed to process somehow, and she knew the movement would help her.
“All right.” She looked down at Marley’s little face. The baby would never know her real mother. Except, Becky would make sure she knew Rita, knew how beautiful she was. How strong and independent and sweet and kind and all of the good characteristics that made up her sister. Marley would know.
She wiggled to the edge of the rocking chair, feeling like she’d done this before, and each time, it got easier. She held the baby in her arm, pushing up and smiling when she made it to her feet without dropping or hurting her.
Moving to the bassinet, she set Marley down in the same spot where she picked her up.
Rodney had managed to get up too, and he moved over to the other side of the bassinet.
The nurse must have seen the moving, and she came over, smiling a bit. “You two are leaving?”
“Yes. We just found out their mother passed away. We…need to take a walk. But we want to come back.” Rodney looked at the nurse, and Becky prayed that she wasn’t going to tell them that no other time was open, and they couldn’t see the babies again until the next day.
“All right. They’ll be here when you get back. If you have trouble finding it, just ask for directions for the visitor entrance to the NICU. You need to scrub up every time you come in.”
The nurse smiled, and they nodded.
“We’re in the NICU,” Becky whispered as they walked out.
“I guess.”
“They didn’t seem like they had any problems.”
“Maybe that’s just where they take babies that they’re not sure about. I don’t know.”
“Or maybe they didn’t have room anywhere else, and they wanted them to have a good eye on them. But it seems like the nurses are busier with much sicker babies.”
“Yeah. I feel bad for those parents, and is it terrible to be grateful that it’s not us?”
“Or maybe, we just don’t realize that they’re looking for something?”
“I suppose it’s possible too.”
All sorts of terrible things came into Becky’s mind. Maybe they had the babies in there for observation because they were afraid the cancer had spread. Maybe they were going to take a look at the babies, except… They would need to get Rodney’sand her permission, since Rita wasn’t around to give it to them. They’d have to ask before they did anything, right?
She wasn’t sure how this new process worked, but it was obvious they were going to need to figure it out. Not for the first time, she was grateful that she had Rodney beside her.
Sixteen
“Ifeel like the hospital is really taking a chance on us,” Rodney said as he opened the door to Rita’s apartment and held it while Becky walked in, carrying Kevin in his car seat.
The babies were forty-eight hours old, and the hospital had declared them healthy and had released them.
He knew Becky felt overwhelmed, because she had also had an appointment set up to talk to the funeral director about Rita’s arrangements.
Plus, if she was feeling even half as nervous as he was with these babies, she had more than enough to deal with.
“I agree. They should come with an owner’s manual or something.”
He thought about the Bible, but he knew that wasn’t what she was talking about.
“I know that the nurse watched me when I gave her a bath, but I was more concerned about not dropping her and not having the nurse yell at me than I was about figuring it all out, you know?” He wished he would have paid better attention, but he was paying really good attention at the time. Just not to the things that bothered him now.
One of the babies started to fuss, and Becky looked down. “Is it feeding time again already?”
He checked his watch. “I think so. I’m pretty sure we fed them at six or seven this morning, and then by the time the doctors got in and the nurses did all the paperwork and we did all the signing…it’s ten. I think they should be hungry.”
