Released (Caged 3)

“She’s just fine,” the nurse said again.

After a little convincing, I went with the baby, and Chelsea stayed with Tria while Mom went to call the world. As soon as Tria was ready, they were going to move her back to the birthing room where we had started.

I went with the baby to the nursery, where they did a couple more tests and decided she was just as I had already told them—absolutely perfect. I wouldn’t put her down while they checked her out. I just held her to me. She was so tiny at barely over six pounds, and I just wanted to keep her as safe as possible.

“You’re going to spoil her,” a matronly nurse scolded me.

I managed to withhold actually speaking the words fuck you but tried to at least say them with my eyes. She squared her shoulders and stomped off.

“Do you have a name picked out?” the younger nurse asked. She touched my daughter’s cheek, which made her squirm.

“Katie,” I responded.

“Wonderful choice!” I was still quite sure she said the same shit to all the new parents, but she really was damn convincing, so I smiled. Actually, that made me realize that I hadn’t stopped smiling in so long, my face was starting to hurt.

That made me smile some more.

“We’ll need to put her in here before we take her to the recovery room.” The nurse indicated a rolling version of a bassinet. It looked ok, I guess, but I wasn’t about to put my daughter down.

“I got her,” I said.

“We need to have her in the bassinet when we move her—”

“I said, I got her,” I repeated.

She continued to try to argue with me, so I just ignored her and started looking around until I figured out which direction Tria’s room was. I headed off down the hall, and the nurse chased me with a raised, plastic baby bed on wheels.

Both of my parents were right by the door, which made it easy to find.

It was about four in the morning, and Michael had gone home to get a few hours’ sleep and prepare for an executive meeting or something. Dad stayed, as did Mom and Chelsea. They came into the room when I got there with Baby Katie, and I let them all have a minute with her while I made sure Tria was all good. She looked like she had been in a fight with me in the cage, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.

I liked my balls attached.

Tria assured me that she was fine, and she just wanted her baby, so I took her away from Grandma and brought her to the side of the bed. The little plastic bassinet had been delivered by the nurse, but I bypassed it again and held her close to Tria.

“See?” I said to her. “I told you—she’s perfect.”

With the help of another nurse, we got a pillow and placed it across Tria’s stomach to protect the incision, and then lay Baby Katie on top of it so Tria could hold her. She stared into her face for a long, long time before she spoke quietly enough that only I could hear.

“Liam?”

“Yeah?”

“I need to make something absolutely clear to you.”

I tensed a little.

“What’s that?”

“I am not going to do that again. This is it. Only child. You got that?”

I tucked my forehead into her neck to hide my smile as I relaxed again.

“Got it.”

“You realize what that means, right?”

“Um…I don’t know.” The tension came back.