"Where is she?" she asks immediately.
"NICU, fifth floor. They're getting her settled. We can go up as soon as you're stable."
"I want to go now."
"You just gave birth, you need..."
"I don't care what I need. I want to see my daughter."
The delivery nurse exchanges a look with me. "Give us twenty minutes to finish up here, then we'll take you up in a wheelchair."
Those twenty minutes feel like hours. Emma's crying, Chase is pacing, and Jackson's standing at the window, staring at nothing.
I pull him aside. "You okay?"
"She's so small. I've never seen anything that small."
"She'll be okay."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure."
He looks at me, really looks at me, and there's something in his eyes that makes my breath catch. Gratitude and awe and something deeper, something that makes me want to close the distance between us and forget we're in a hospital with his sister ten feet away.
"You were incredible," he says quietly. "The way you just... You went into nurse mode. Like you'd been doing it your whole life."
"I have been doing it my whole life, I just forgot for a while."
Something shifts in his expression. "You saved them. Emma and Chase would've fallen apart without you."
"I didn't save anyone, the medical team..."
"You kept them calm, kept them informed. That matters." He touches my face, just briefly, his thumb brushing my cheekbone. "I'm in awe of you."
The moment stretches between us, charged and fragile, and I want to lean into his touch, want to tell him that watching him support his sister through this has only made me love him more. But the nurse appears with a wheelchair, and the moment breaks.
"Ready?"
We head up to the NICU in a small caravan. Emma in the wheelchair, Chase pushing her, Jackson and I following. The fifth floor is a lot quieter. The entrance to the NICU has strict rules: wash your hands, no jewelry, and limited visitors.
Dr. Stone meets us at the doors. "Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell? I'm Dr. Stone. Your daughter is stable and responding well to treatment."
"Can we see her?" Emma asks.
"Of course. But I need to prepare you, she's very small, she has a lot of wires and tubes. It can be overwhelming."
"I don't care. I need to see her."
He leads us through the NICU, a large room divided into sections. Isolettes line the walls, each containing a tiny baby fighting for their life. Monitors beep, ventilators hiss, and nurses move quietly between stations.
In the far corner is Emma's daughter.
She's in a clear plastic isolette, naked except for a diaper the size of a playing card. Wires cover her body, the CPAP mask makes her look even smaller, and an IV runs from her umbilical stump to a bag of fluids.
Emma starts crying again. "She's so little."
"Four pounds, two ounces," Dr. Stone says. "She's a good size. Her lungs need support, but she's breathing well with the CPAP, heart rate is stable, no signs of infection or bleeding in the brain. We'll do an ultrasound tomorrow to confirm. Right now, she's doing everything we'd hope for."
