Page 69 of Forbidden Cowboy

“Wyatt, you really should go see them. Not just because you need to, but becauseIneed you to. It’s silly, but I’m not going to believe that they’re okay until I either hold them myself, or you tell me that you’ve held them and can confirm that they’re going to be alright.”

I wanted to be petulant and tell her that there was no way. I wanted to hold onto her hand like a small child, and I wanted to cry. It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t we just be happy? Why couldn’t we just have things go smoothly? I’d just got her back. We’d had a couple of great months, and now there was another thing happening.

“I’ll come back as soon as possible,” I said quietly.

She gave a wan smile, and nodded. I kissed her, and tried to put everything I was feeling into it. Every feeling of conflicting sorrow and joy.

Then I left to go meet our children.

I followed the directions the nurses gave me to the NICU, and washed my hands as requested on arrival.

The whole place was decorated in soft blues and pinks, and unlike the other areas of the hospital where there were beds in bays and lined up in wards, the NICU was a collection of large rooms with small, space-like incubator pods lining the walls.

Every single one of the pods had a baby laying inside, and as a nurse led me to my children, I realized just how bad some things go. There were babies with their eyes taped down, their bodies no bigger than my hand. There were babies attached to tubes that swamped them, and beeping heart monitors that alerted everyone to their wellbeing.

There wasn’t much crying, and there was something fundamentally wrong about that.

“Here they are,” the nurse said with a soft smile.

She led me to three of the incubators, all lined next to each other, and my heart stopped in my chest.

When I had met Anna, I hadn’t had the all-encompassing realization of love. As soon as I got to know her, of course she became my whole world, but she had already been a little person when Eliana introduced us. She’d already had a personality, and I was so blown away by the fact of her very existence that I hadn’t had some magical moment of meeting her.

It was very different with these babies. Maybe we hadn’t known about them for very long, and maybe we didn’t have names for them, but none of that mattered.

They were beautiful. I knew within half a second of meeting them that I would lay down my life for any one of them.

I pressed my hands to the plastic walls of one of the incubators, and like the baby inside could sense me, they moved.

I looked at the little note card attached. I was taken aback for a moment before remembering that of course they’d been given Sierra’s name straight out of the womb. No one could have read our minds and known they would be taking my name.

Carter, Baby Boy

My son. He had the most perfect little fingers and toes, and they grasped at a blanket bunched up to the side of him. There was a teeny-tiny nasal cannula taped to his nose, and while the medical equipment broke my heart, he also seemed to be very alive and well.

Eagerly, I moved to the next one.

Carter, Baby Girl

My second daughter. She was as stunning as Anna, and I couldn’t wait to introduce the two of them. She already had a lot of hair, despite being premature, and it looked like it erred on the rosier side. I wondered if she would look like her mother. I hoped so. I already thought I could see the same nose in her features, but might have been deluding myself. Baby Girl wriggled around, flailing her tiny fists, and it looked like she was waving at me.

Finally, I moved to the last incubator.

Carter, Baby Boy

I had known there would be two boys and a girl. Sierra had found out before even returning to Gunnison. But somehow, it felt much more real to see them all in front of me. This baby was sleeping soundly, his little chest rising and falling quicker than an adult’s.

I was glad the lights were dim in the NICU, because I had a feeling my eyes were shiny.

“Would you like to hold one of them?” The nurse that had led me in asked.

“Is that—can I do that?” I asked. “Won’t I hurt them?”

“It’s actually encouraged,” she explained patiently. “The skin-to-skin contact can help regulate heart rate, raise temperature, and even improve their breathing.”

I looked at all three of them with their tiny nasal cannulas, and the little heart rate monitors taped to them.

“How—how do I pick them up?”