"Thirty-three weeks and three days," Morrison says after six hours of fighting. "We've stopped them for now, but Lena... next time we might not be able to."
"How long?"
"Could be days. Could be weeks. Your body is done being patient."
Zane sleeps in the chair beside my hospital bed, his hand wrapped around mine like if he holds tight enough, he can keep us both from falling apart. His face is bruised from the fight with Ghost, his knuckles raw, and I wonder if this is what love looks like—two people destroying themselves trying to protect each other.
"Thirty-seven weeks," I tell him when he wakes. "That's the goal. Four more weeks."
"We'll make it."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because you're the strongest person I know." He brings my hand to his lips, kissing each knuckle like a prayer. "And because Santiago is half you. He'll wait."
But we both know strength has nothing to do with it. Sometimes bodies betray you. Sometimes love isn't enough. Sometimes babies come when they want to come, ready or not.
That night, I dream of Santiago—not as a baby but as a boy, maybe five years old, with Zane's eyes and my stubbornness. He's standing between us, trying to hold our hands, but we're too far apart, the distance growing with each breath.
"Choose," he says in the dream.
"I choose you," I tell him. "Always you."
But when I wake, Zane is gone, and the monitors are beeping, and my body is contracting again, and I realize the choice might not be mine to make.
Dr. Morrison rushes in, checking monitors, checking me, checking everything except the one thing that matters—whether love is enough to keep a baby inside when everything else is falling apart.
"Thirty-seven weeks," she says, and for a moment I think I've time-traveled, but then she continues. "That's our minimum goal. If we can get you there, his lungs will be developed. His brain will be ready. He'll have a fighting chance without the NICU."
"Four weeks." It feels like a lifetime. Like a prayer. Like an impossible ask from a body that's already given everything.
"Four weeks," she confirms. "Complete bed rest. No stress. No excitement. No more fights in your vicinity."
I laugh, bitter and exhausted. "Have you met my life?"
"Then change it." Her voice is stern, doctorly. "For him. Whatever it takes."
Whatever it takes.
I look at my belly where Santiago has finally calmed, where my son waits in his watery world, dependent on my body's cooperation.
"Four weeks," I promise him. "I'll give you four more weeks if it kills me."
And given how things are going, it just might.
Thirty-three weeks down. Four to go until he's full-term. Four weeks of keeping my body from evicting its most important tenant.
Chapter forty-four
The Waiting
Zane
Thirty-seven weeks. We made it to thirty-seven fucking weeks through sheer will and enough medical intervention to stock a pharmacy. Lena looks like she's swallowed a beach ball, moves like she's navigating through quicksand, and hasn't slept more than two hours straight in days. But we made it.
"He can come anytime now," Dr. Morrison announced this morning. "Lungs are developed. Brain is ready. He's just choosing his moment."
Choosing his moment. Like his mother—strategic even in the womb.
