Incubator

TYLER

Panic has me in its grip as I stand across the room, our son cradled in my arms. He’s quiet, his big gray eyes gazing up at me, and I yearn to focus on him, to shower him with the attention he deserves. But my eyes are glued to his twin brother, lying still in the newborn cot.

He hasn’t let out a cry since Violet brought him into the world. He’s moved, his limbs thrashing as they pumped oxygen into him, but he hasn’t made a peep. Then they whisk him away, placing him in an incubator and wheeling him out of the room, just like they did with Ivee years ago. She too was silent, intubated before she even left the delivery room.

The nurse left behind assists Violet with delivering the afterbirth, even as she’s in the midst of a panic attack. “Why didn’t he cry? Where are they taking him? Will Atticus stay with him?” Violet’s questions spill out in a rush.

“Dr. Fellows will stay with him, darling. I don’t know which room, and I don’t know why he didn’t cry, but Dr. Fellows will come back with an update as soon as he can. Right now, we need to focus on delivering your afterbirth and making sure you’re not bleeding heavily,” the nurse attempts to reassure her.

“No, my priority is my baby, the one they just wheeled away,” Violet nearly shouts at the nurse.

“There’s nothing you can do except wait, darling. He’s in the best hands he can be.”

“She’s right, baby. We knew this could be a possibility,” Zach tries to comfort Violet but earns a slap for his efforts.

I wince for him. He stands there, taken aback by her reaction.

“Go, move, find, and stay with him,” Violet commands him.

“Vi…”

“Zachary, get your ass moving and go find our son. Don’t come back until you know he’s okay.”

Zach swallows hard, nodding at Violet, his fists clenched at his sides.

I’ve never seen him so subdued, so compliant, as he is in this moment with Violet.

“Okay, baby, I’ll go to the unit. I love you.” He waits for a response, but she doesn’t give him one. Instead, she collapses into Callum’s arms, sobbing.

“Go,” Callum mouths, and I watch in silence as Zach leaves to find our son, doing as he was told.

It’s not long before Violet has delivered the placenta. The nurse distracts her by showing her the intricacies of a twin placenta. They shared one sac and one placenta, each with their own cord. Their pregnancy was difficult, but it could have been worse. They could have shared nutrients unevenly and been very sick.

But they didn’t, and that’s the only positive news we get in the aftermath of their birth.

Violet’s mood swings wildly as we wait for news. She clings to the son we have with us as if her life depends on it, keeping him close and on her breast as we wait in suspense to find out how our other little boy is.

I find myself staring at the clock, watching the seconds tick by in silence. Too many memories resurface.

Ivee’s little face floats in my memory as if this was her birth. And her being wheeled away.

She was born just shy of twenty-four weeks, and they did everything they could. She was born less than one pound, her skin wrinkly and almost translucent.

She never opened her eyes and was hooked up to more machines than one small, tiny human should have been.

None of us got to hold her. Not until she had already passed.

Her body went through too much to survive. Brain bleeds, followed by strokes, a small heart attack and internal bleeding inside her tummy. She was frail and silent, sedated to keep her comfortable.

She died a little under a month after her birth weighing only a few ounces more than her birth weight.

The whole experience was soul-crushing.

To see your child so small and vulnerable, to not be able to hold and comfort them. Having to rely upon those doctors and nurses to feed, bathe and change her little body. To administer medication after medication and to take ultrasound and MRI scans.

The three of us. Rose, Zach and I were useless. Outsiders, looking in on our child’s uphill battle to live.

It took a long time to recover from the trauma. I still don’t think I’m quite over it if I’m honest.

“I can’t, I can’t do this anymore,” Violet announces.

Callum jumps up from the sofa. Walking up to her, patting her hair out of her face. He looks exhausted, which is exactly how I feel.

“He will be okay. They just needed to help him.”

“Take him, help me out of bed?” she demands, pushing the covers back off her legs.

She removes the drip as if she were already medically trained to recap the cannula access tube in her hand.

“Violet, that might not be the best idea.”

“Don’t, Tyler, don’t. I need to see my baby.”

I swallow the words that sit on my tongue and nod.

She’s right.

We do need to see him.

It’s been over two hours since he was born, and we’ve had no word, nothing. No reassurance and Zach had left his phone, so he hasn’t even been in touch.

I help Violet pull on some special disposable underwear and one of her night dresses as Callum bundles our little boy up in a blanket, and we make our way out of her birthing room and down the corridor to leave the ward.

The neonatal unit is just next door, and we walk nearly all the way there before one of the nurses recognizes that we’ve escaped the room and are just outside the unit doors.

“Violet, what are you doing? You’ve just given birth. You shouldn’t be walking around.”

“Bullshit, Mary, I was walking around minutes after having Ella. I want to see my baby.”

“They’ve had to intubate him. He’s undergoing tests as we speak.”

“Then why the fuck wasn’t I told this?” Violet shouts over her shoulder, storming toward the unit doors.

She buzzes the button four times, too impatient to wait for the first ring to be over before pressing the button again.

“You shouldn’t be walking around with him like that. Let me get you a cot to push him around in,” Mary flutters beside us in a flurry of anxiety as a nurse from the unit comes to open the unit doors.

“Hello, whose baby are you coming to see?”

“Baby Henderson,” Violet murmurs, looking around the nurse into the neonatal unit.

“Oh, let me see if Dr. Fellows is happy for you to visit,” she says, stepping back.

“Like fuck, you’ve had him for over an hour without giving me any information. I want to see my son.”

“Let her in, Candice,” Dr. Fellows pokes his head out of one of the side rooms with a grin. Violet pushes past the poor nurse, walking briskly toward the room, her hands wringing in anxiety.

I share a look with Callum. I don’t know what we are going to find in that room, but my memories surface, and I’d hate to not warn them, to not…prepare them.

“Wait, he might be tubed and covered in wires,” I say.

“Okay, he’s still our baby, Tyler,” Violet answers.

“I just wanted to warn you two,” I reply.

“Let her handle this, Ty,” Callum adds, walking behind her.

My heart beats frantically as we near the side room that Violet is already inside while Callum and I stand just outside.

Zach, as he was told, is sitting in the chair next to the small incubator. His hand is inside the little hole touching our son, who is covered in a multitude of wires. But he isn’t intubated, and his eyes are wide open and identical to his brother’s.

“How is he?” Violet murmurs, walking up to the incubator to stare in.

“We had to intubate him when he first came over, and I’ve done every test under the sun. He still hasn’t cried, but he’s fine and breathing on his own. I think he was in shock and has a mild infection that we’ve given him antibiotics for, but he’s been breathing without the CPAP machine for around twenty minutes and seems to be coping just fine,” Dr. Fellows walks around to give a side hug to Violet, and she lets him.

Which I find weird and unprofessional, but I keep my mouth shut as I walk into the room to peer inside the little baby bed that haunted my dreams for more years than I’d like to admit.

Sure enough, our son, though covered in wires and sticky pads, is staring straight out at Zach and Violet. His eyes are wide and gray, and his head is covered in so much brown hair that it seems impossible.

“Congratulations, mama bear, you did great,” Dr. Fellows praises her, moving some of the wires aside for Violet to place her hand on our baby’s tummy. “I’ll be needing some of that milk. He needs his strength.”

“Guess I’ll pump then,” Violet says, her smile noticeably more at ease.

“Callum, want to lay his brother with him?” he suggests, fingers moving to unclip the incubator’s top.

“Sure.” Callum responds, undoing the swaddle for some skin-to-skin contact.