Amanda put out her hand to stop a family carrying fistfuls of balloons and armfuls of flowers from entering the elevator. “Sorry! Medical emergency, this one’s taken.”
Saoirse opened her mouth to protest, but in so doing lost her battle with the tears she’d been trying to hold at bay.
“Right!” Amanda tugged a tissue out of her never-ending stash and scrubbed at her friend’s face as if she were a toddler. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Saoirse mumble-sniffed.
I’m in love with Santiago and it’s never going to happen!
“It’s Santiago, isn’t it? Are you in love with him?”
“How—”
“It’s only been written all over your doe-eyed face for the past few weeks, Murphy.”
“You have permission to say my name now.” Saoirse tried to smile through her tears and ended up doing a weird hiccup thing instead.
“I’m not going to risk it.” Amanda nodded seriously, clearing a path through the crowd waiting outside the third-floor elevator bay. “There’s only so much damage control a girl can do. Take a right here.”
Saoirse nodded, even though she didn’t need directions. This was the first place she’d visited when choosing which hospital she wanted to work for. A visual reminder of where she didn’t want to find herself in another year’s time. But as the familiar sights and sounds of the department began to hit her she wondered if perhaps she hadn’t been a bit hasty.
The soft lighting, the hushed tones, deeply cushioned armchairs, monitors everywhere. The whirr and steady cadence of lifesaving equipment all wove together into the core ingredients of the department where she’d begun her medical career.
A complication of emotions started crisscrossing her heart as she pressed her face up against the window of the NICU’s main hub—a fan of incubators spread out before her in a room with all the equipment an infant fighting for survival could need. A few more tears rolled down her cheeks before she felt she was ready to turn the handle and enter.
The familiar scents hit her with unexpected strength. It shouldn’t have surprised her—scent being one of the most evocative of sensations—but she felt her body being infused with all that she had left behind. She took a deep breath and walked straight into the middle of the room before allowing herself to take it all in. Amanda waited at the doorway of the midsize room, knowing more than Saoirse did herself that alone time with all the tiny babies in NICU was going to be the healing elixir she needed right now.
The details of why each child was there came to her before she read their charts. It had always been a point of pride back in Ireland—the connection she’d instantly shared with the newborn souls fighting for the lives they were meant to lead. A daughter’s heart that needed a bit more time to grow. A transfusion for a son who needed a boost of red blood cells. Twins whose blood types were mysteriously incompatible with their mother’s, overwhelming their tiny little livers, giving their soft skin a jaundiced taint. All of them united in their efforts to survive.
This world was so familiar to her she probably could have gone through it blindfolded. But then you didn’t get the plus side of seeing all the tiny fingers and tiny toes...little rosebud mouths and noses just begging for a kiss to be popped onto them.
A sigh left her as she realized it had only been some nine months ago that she’d thought the last place on earth she’d find comfort was the NICU and yet...in the time it took a baby to gestate...
Was she really back where she’d begun this journey? Heartbroken and alone?
She ran her fingers along the incubator closest to her and had to smile. Another set of twins. Cheek to cheek and holding hands. They couldn’t have been more than a kilo each. Fragile and resilient. That’s what these little ones were. She could sense it in the connection they shared with each other as they slept, their bodies unconsciously doing everything they could to stay alive. The medical teams who cared for them—quietly, and with dogged determination—doing the same.
Tiny oxygen tubes were taped—pink for one, blue for the other—along their miniature upper lips. She scanned their charts.
RDS. Respiratory distress syndrome often afflicted preemies, landing them in the NICU for C-PAP treatment. The air they received from the thin oxygen tubes helped keep the small air sacs in their lungs from collapsing. It was a good sign that they had the nose tubes. Some of the sickest children needed mechanical ventilators to breathe for them while their lungs strengthened and recovered. Fighters. The lot of them.
Just like she needed to be.
“Happier now?”
Amanda wandered over. As Saoirse looked up, she realized she was mirroring the broad smile on her friend’s lips.
“Yes, thanks. I just...” She ran her fingers through her hair with a little “Urgh!” noise. “You’re right. About Santiago and the being-in-love thing.” She decided on the truth after running through the thousands of denials she could have given. Sure, the truth hurt. But it was better to take it all in one painful hit than prolong the inevitable.
Amanda clapped her hands together gleefully, eyebrows lifted with happy expectation, and just as suddenly furrowed her brow and knitted her fingers together underneath her chin with a snort.
“But that’s a good thing, right? Why aren’t those happy tears?” Amanda looked bewildered. “Are you saying he doesn’t feel the same way?”
“Yes. I mean no.” She tugged two tufts of hair between each set of fingers and began to twist. It was her new go-to thinking-while-doing gesture. “I mean, I love him but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t love me.”
“Pretty sure or absolutely sure?” Amanda pressed.
“Pretty absolutely?” Saoirse scanned the NICU, mercifully bereft of visiting parents. A couple of nurses were discussing some paperwork in a far corner. Not too many witnesses to her meltdown.
“Ever since Santi’s made up with his brothers he’s just been... I don’t know.” She looked up to the ceiling for inspiration and found none.
“Distant?” Amanda tried.
“Yeah.” Saoirse nodded. “Something like that. Distant and just not... We had a real connection, you know?” And as the words came out of her mouth the enormity of the loss she was suffering struck her again. Santi wasn’t just a hot man who took her to ecstatic heights in the bedroom. He was the real deal. He had depth. Compassion, follow-through... The number of patients they’d dropped off who he went to check up on afterward... She’d long ago lost count. Not everyone was like that. And not everyone was man enough to own up to decisions they’d made and had gone back to change them as he had with his brothers.
“Have you ever thought of coming back?”
“What, to Miami? You mean, once I get deported when this whole marriage sham doesn’t work out?”
“No.” Amanda pressed her palm down, signaling Saoirse to keep it quiet. And she was right. Of course. Being the center of hospital gossip was the last thing she needed. “I meant, Murph, have you ever considered coming back to
