The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 188

Chapter 170: NICU Days-1

Caleb POV

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She weighed four pounds, two ounces. I asked three times, as if the number might change if I heard it enough. It didn’t. Four pounds, two ounces. My daughter-smaller than anything I had ever been responsible for, tucked into an incubator with wires monitoring the things her body was still learning to do.

The NICU nurses were extraordinary. I saw it immediately-the steady competence of people who care for the most fragile humans without panic. They called her Grace, not Baby Black. They talked to her while checking monitors, assuming she was listening.

I started doing the same. I felt foolish at first, then stopped caring.

“You’re doing well,” I told her on the first day, repeating the nurse’s words. “The numbers are good. I’ve been watching the monitors; I’ve learned what they all mean because I have a lot of time and I retain information under pressure.”

The monitors beeped in time with her breathing.

“Your brother wants to meet you,” I said. “He’s been-well, ‘patient’ isn’t the word. He’s been controlled, which for Tom is the same thing. He has a list of things to teach you. Dinosaurs are at the top. He considers Triceratops friendly, so manage your expectations.”

I watched her face-the small, unconscious flickers of expression that meant nothing and everything all at

once.

“I didn’t know,” I said, shifting in the chair. “I didn’t know it was possible to be this frightened and this grateful at the same time. Your mother could have told me-she’s been carrying both for months.” I looked at her tiny fist around my finger. “I’m going to make sure neither of you ever has to carry anything alone. I don’t say things I don’t mean.”

Grace gripped my finger. I chose to interpret the silence as acknowledgement.

“Your mother wants you home,” I told her on the second day. My hand was through the incubator porthole, my finger in her reflex-tight grip. “She’s working from her hospital bed, which means she’s recovering faster than expected. That’s on brand for her. You’ll understand soon.”

Grace’s face remained still. Her chest rose and fell to the steady rhythm of the monitors. She held my finger with the authority of someone four pounds and very serious.

Bella was discharged on day four while Grace stayed behind.

No one had prepared me for this-watching Bella leave without our baby she’d carried for months. She held it together through the paperwork and the walk to the car, but once in the passenger seat, she pressed her hands flat against her stomach. The absence was written across her face.

“Say it,” I said.

She looked at her lap. “It feels wrong, I know she’s where she needs to be, but my body doesn’t know that. It just knows she’s not here.”

I took her hand. “We can go back in right now. We stay until they make us leave.”

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Chapter 120-EU Days-1

She looked at me. “You don’t have to

*Bella, where else would I be?”

She nodded once, reaching for the door. “Don’t tell anyone I cried in a car park.”

“What car park?” I asked. “I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

Clam

A ghost of a smile touched her mouth, and we went back in. We built our lives around the NICU schedule, navigating it the way we did all hard things:

Tom’s first visit was on day five. He had been patient asking every day and accepting not yet with a restraint that clearly annoyed him.

When Diana brought him in, he walked to the incubator with uncharacteristic slowness. He stood on his tiptoes to peer through the panel.

He was quiet for a long time. “She’s really small,” he said finally.

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