Page 116 of Pregnant in Plaid
"Only a little." She pats his shoulder. "But seriously, you'll get faster at it. And she'll probably only pee on you a few more times."
"Probably?"
"No guarantees with babies."
Tessa's still filming. "This is definitely going in the baby book. Actually, I'm making it your contact photo."
"You're the worst best friend Patrice has ever had," Trace informs her.
"I'm the only best friend she's ever had," Tessa counters. "And that was beautiful. You handled baby excrement like a champ. I'm so proud."
Gage wipes his eyes, still grinning. "You survived your first combat diaper. There's hope for you yet."
"I hate all of you," Trace says, but he's smiling. He looks down at Brooklyn, who's now clean and dry and looking vaguely smug about the whole thing. "You're lucky you're cute, raspberry."
The nickname hits me right in the chest. He's been calling her that since yesterday—using my nicknamefor her, the one I used when she was still just a flutter in my belly. The one that meant she was mine.
Now she's ours.
"Next time I'm supervising from a safe distance," I announce.
"Coward," Trace says.
"Strategist," I correct. "I learn from other people's mistakes."
"Your turn tomorrow," Jennifer says cheerfully. "Both of you need to be comfortable with diaper changes before discharge."
Tomorrow. Right. Because in one week, this will be our life. Diapers and pee and mysterious amounts of poop and the overwhelming terror that we'll break something.
I reach through the incubator portal to touch Brooklyn's tiny hand. Her fingers curl around my pinky, and that familiar wave of fierce love and absolute panic washes over me.
One week.
We can do this.
Probably.
That afternoon, after Tessa and Gage leave and we've both recovered from the Great Diaper Disaster, we feed Brooklyn together.
Well, technically the nurses do most of the worksince she still has a feeding tube. But we get to hold her bottle—actually a tiny syringe attached to her tube—and watch as she slowly takes in the breast milk I've been frantically pumping around the clock.
"Two ounces," I murmur, watching the measurement marks on the syringe. "That's all she needs right now. Two ounces every three hours."
"We can handle two ounces," Trace says.
We're both sitting in the cramped NICU chairs, positioned so we can both see Brooklyn's incubator clearly. His knee presses against mine. It's the closest thing to intimacy we've had in days that didn't involve breast pumps or sleep deprivation.
"Can we, though?" I voice the fear that's been building since Jennifer said one week. "Can we really handle this? Alone?"
Trace looks at me, and his expression is so earnest it makes my throat tight. "We're not alone. We have Tessa and Gage. We have Marnie and Dr. Martinez and half the town who keep bringing casseroles to the cabin."
"They're bringing casseroles?"
"So many casseroles. I think we have seven in the freezer. Marnie labeled them all with reheating instructions." He shakes his head. "The point is, we have help. We have people."
"But at three AM when she's screaming and we don't know why?—"
"Then we'll figure it out. Together." His hand finds mine in the space between our chairs. "I'm scaredtoo. But we're both smart, capable people who've handled worse things than a four-pound human."
