She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 171

(Natasha)

Lily is sleeping.

The monitors are calmer than they were three hours ago.

The numbers I've been staring at on the screen above her cot have stopped lurching and started behaving.

Her color came back somewhere around five o'clock.

Her cheek under my thumb feels warm again.

She was so cold earlier that it terrified me.

I haven't moved from this chair.

Chase has been right in here with me.

He left twice.

Once to bring me a sandwich I couldn’t eat.

Once to get us more of the terrible coffee that I choked down despite how much it sucks.

He hasn’t made any attempt to fill the time with meaningless chatter, which I appreciate.

I don’t want to hear empty promises about how Lily is going to be okay, and I definitely don’t want to discuss the woman who provided the plasma that’s stabilizing our daughter.

Later.

I can’t think about it right now, and I’m very grateful that Chase isn’t pushing for details.

Not that I have any to give, beyond the fact that Nathanial is my brother and Chase was cheating on me with my baby sister.

The thought makes me cringe and I push it away immediately.

My mom arrives at quarter past eight.

Not the person who abandoned me. The one who took me in when I was all alone.

I hear her before I see her.

The click of her practical shoes on the linoleum, the small puff of breath she does when she's trying not to cry in public.

They must have taken the first available flight after I let them know about Lily.

She comes straight to the cot and presses both hands flat on the rail while she looks at Lily for half a minute without saying anything.

Then she turns to me.

"Sweetheart."

Her hand is on my hair and I'm sixteen again at the kitchen table being told it's going to be alright.

They’ll take care of me.

I let my head rest sideways against her hip.

The fabric of her cardigan smells like the lavender sachets she puts in the drawer she keeps it in.

Dad rolls a wheely-bag in behind her, full of god knows what.

Probably soup.

He looks at Lily, blinks hard, kisses the top of my head, and goes off to find a nurse to interrogate.

Liam is third through the door, carrying a paper bag and wearing the wrong jacket for the weather as usual.

"I brought chocolate croissants," he says, like that's a sentence anyone needs in a pediatric ICU at eight-thirty at night.

"Thanks, Liam."

"Don't eat all of them at once."

"I'll pace myself."

He sets the bag on the chair and comes over.

His face goes serious in a way it rarely does.

He kisses two fingers and touches them to Lily's cheek.

That nearly undoes me.

I force it not to.

Chase gets up from his chair so there’s room for everyone.

“I’m going to stretch my legs.”

The three of us sit.

The room is the size of a postage stamp and somehow holds us all.

Dad comes back from extracting everything there is to extract from a tired nurse and reports it in order of importance.

Hemoglobin up.

Platelets up.

Kidneys behaving.

Another twenty-four hours minimum.

He delivers it the way another father might read out a football score.

Then he looks at me.

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