Page 119 of Pregnant in Plaid
"Love isn't enough to?—"
"It's not enough alone," he interrupts. "But it's the foundation. Everything else we can figure out."
I look up at him. "I'm so scared," I admit.
"I know." He presses a kiss to my forehead. "Me too."
We stand there, holding each other in the middle of the NICU, while Brooklyn sleeps and monitors beep and nurses move quietly through their rounds.
Seven days.
Ready or not.
That evening, Dr. Martinez stops by during our visit with one more update.
"I talked to the team," she says. "If Brooklyn continues improving at this rate, we're looking at discharge in exactly one week. Next Monday."
"Next Monday," I repeat. "That's... specific."
"It gives you time to prepare. Get the cabin ready, finish your certifications, practice all the care tasks."She checks Brooklyn's chart. "You're both doing great. You'll be fine."
After she leaves, Trace and I just look at each other.
"One week," he says.
"One week," I whisper.
Brooklyn chooses that moment to open her eyes and stare directly at us with that unfocused newborn gaze that somehow feels incredibly judgmental.
"She knows we're panicking," I say.
"Of course she does. She's our daughter." Trace reaches into the incubator to touch her tiny hand. "What do you say, raspberry? Ready to come home with the two people who have absolutely no idea what they're doing?"
Brooklyn's response is to yawn, which I'm choosing to interpret as confidence in our abilities rather than boredom with our existential crisis.
"One week," I say again, trying to make it feel real.
Brooklyn yawns again, completely unbothered by the fact that her parents are having a collective meltdown about her discharge date.
Ready or not, she's coming home.
And we'd better figure out what the hell we're doing before then.
Chapter 19
Trace
"We need to get the cabin ready," I announce to Gage over coffee at the hospital cafeteria.
It's another day of Brooklyn's NICU stay, and Patrice just spent twenty minutes explaining that our daughter needs approximately four thousand items to survive outside a medical facility. The list she gave me is three pages long. Single-spaced.
Gage looks at the list, then at me. "This can't be right. A Boppy? What the hell is a Boppy?"
"No idea. But apparently we need one."
"And why does a four-pound human need seventeen different types of bottles?" He flips to page two. "Onesies, bodysuits, sleepers, gowns—aren't those all the same thing?"
"According to Patrice, no. They're very different and we need multiples of each." I drainmy coffee. "How hard can this be? It's shopping. We've done harder things."
