CHAPTER 31
Merrick
Three years ago
“Mr. Crawford?”
I looked up from the rocking chair. I’d been sitting and staring down at my little girl for the last hour. She was five days old today, and it was the first time she’d been stable enough to come out of the incubator.
The NICU nurse who’d handed her to me was standing at the door with another woman I didn’t recognize. She wore a suit, rather than scrubs like everyone else. The nurse walked over. “We need to put Eloise back in now. It’s important she gets sufficient time under the lights for her jaundice.”
I nodded and leaned down to kiss my daughter’s forehead. She was tiny, so freaking tiny.
When I was ready, the nurse scooped the baby from my arms and set her back in the incubator. She smiled warmly at me as she pointed to the woman standing in the doorway. “Mrs. Walters would like to speak to you. She’s the hospital’s in-house attorney.”
My eyes jumped to the woman. I guessed they’d sent in the big guns since I’d refused to sign the DNR for Amelia so far. I nodded and stood. “Can I hold the baby again later?”
“Of course. We’ll just do it in short sessions.” She looked at her watch. “It’s three o’clock now. Maybe around seven?”
“Thank you.”
The attorney stepped outside the nursery and waited for me to join her. “Hi, Mr. Crawford. I’m Nina Walters from the hospital’s legal department. Would it be okay if we went somewhere to talk for a few minutes?”
I looked back at the incubator, at my daughter safely sleeping inside again. “Sure.”
We walked to the waiting room, which was empty, and sat down.
“Your fiancée’s medical team has filled me in on everything that’s transpired over the last few months. I’m very happy Eloise is doing so well.”
I nodded. “She failed her hearing test, but they said that was common and may work itself out.”
My little girl was tough. She had some fluid stuck in her middle ear, and they couldn’t guarantee there wouldn’t be developmental issues as time went on, but she was one hell of a fighter, born at only twenty-nine weeks.
Nina took a deep breath and exhaled. “You’ve been through so much already. I hate to even talk to you about this, but the hospital received a court order today.”
“Because I didn’t sign the DNR? From who? Amelia hasn’t spoken to her mother in years.”
The woman shook her head and held out some official-looking documents with a blue back. “This isn’t related to your medical decisions for Amelia. The court has ordered the hospital to collect DNA from Eloise for a paternity test. The petitioner is someone named Aaron Jensen.”
• • •
The following afternoon, I was sitting in Amelia’s room when the monitors suddenly started going off. I stood and watched the normally steady lines start to jump all over erratically. But Amelia hadn’t moved a muscle. A nurse ran into the room, took one look at the screen, and yelled back to the nurses’ station.
“Code blue! Grab the crash cart!”
A half-dozen people piled into the room in the next thirty seconds. The doctor listened to Amelia’s heart, while another nurse grabbed an arm and counted the heartbeats from the pulse on her wrist.
“Mr. Crawford, can you please step outside?”
I backed up to make room for them to work. “I’ll keep out of the way, but I’m staying right here.”
They were too busy to argue with me. The shit that happened after that played out like a scene from a TV show.
Her heart rate display on the monitor fell to a flat line.
The doctor fired up the defibrillator paddles and told everyone around the bed to clear their hands from the patient. Then he pressed them to her chest and shocked her.
Amelia’s body jumped, but it went right back to the limp state it had been in since the day she arrived here.