Chapter Text
“I can’t hear her. I want to see her.”
Cathy groans at the movement, attempting to prop herself up higher on the hospital bed. She looks down and sees her baby, her daughter, being cleaned up by the doctors. She hears snippets of whispers, all of them carrying the notion that there was something wrong.
Her ears pick up a few words—barely breathing, ICU, lungs not yet developed—and her mind instantly expects the worse. Her hands ache to hold her close, her baby must feel cold after being inside her for so long.
Not long enough, apparently. She came a month early.
Cathy leans back against the bed, forcing herself to stay awake but the medication was strong, and she was so, so tired. She turned to the nurse beside her who was urging her to fall asleep.
“I want to hold her, please,” Cathy pleads in a hoarse whisper, and the nurse could only tuck her sweat matted hair behind her ear.
“Just a minute, love,” The nurse replies as warmly as she can, her eyes darting to the doctors trying their best to puff air into her daughters’ tiny lungs, and then she hears it—a faint, sputtering cry.
“Oh, thank God,” One of the doctors exhale loudly, carrying the impossibly tiny infant in her hands and quickly transferring her on Cathy’s chest. Her hands immediately come up to hold her, to shield her from the cold.
“Hi, baby, oh, look at you,” Cathy cries, tears streaming down her face as she leans down to kiss the crown of her head. “I’m so happy to see you.”
The doctors watch on vigilantly, monitoring the rise and fall of her breathing. They’d give her this, just a few more seconds, before they place her into intensive care. The nurse lets Cathy know, of course, and she gives her up almost immediately, not wanting to delay her daughter’s recovery.
“You can see her again later, go get some rest,” The nurse urges her, and Cathy nods blearily, the exhaustion settling in her bones faster than she had anticipated. “She’s quite beautiful.”
Cathy smiles before nodding off to sleep.
She wakes up to a warm weight by her thigh. She wakes up to her wife hunched over the hospital bed, her hand clutching hers. Cathy hums, catching her attention.
“You went into labor. You had our daughter and didn’t even mean to tell me.” Anne starts, understandably hurt. Cathy closes her eyes again.
“I also didn’t know. I went in for a check up, then when I got here, I thought they were just Braxton-Hicks,” Cathy admits. “It all happened so fast, I’m so sorry. I didn’t expect that she’d come so early.”
Anne traces circles on Cathy’s hand with her thumb. “I still missed it. I should’ve gone with you on your check up. I never missed a single one, and the one time I do, you give birth.”
Cathy laughs a bit, groaning slightly as her stomach pulls.
“Why isn’t she here?” Anne wonders—it was rather strange, being in a maternity room with an empty bassinet. Cathy’s smile fades.
“They brought her into intensive care. She came a month early, I didn’t hear her cry when she got out, I was so scared,” Cathy rambles, tears pricking at her eyes just remembering the fear that coursed through her. “She was so small, I held her for a few seconds and I barely felt any weight on my chest.”
“Do you think we can visit her there?” Anne asks, and Cathy regards her for a moment before pressing a button to call the nurse. One comes in after a minute, slightly panicked but relaxes after seeing the pair serenely looking back.
“Miss Parr, how are you feeling?” He asks, taking the clipboard by the foot of the hospital bed to write down updates.
“Better. Can we visit our daughter?” Cathy cuts to the chase, and he says he’s have to double check. He leaves the room for a moment before coming back in with a wheelchair.
“We’ll bring you both in, but you’ll have to wear scrubs. Safety precautions.” Anne and the nurse help Cathy out of the bed and into the wheelchair, and they skip the nursery, the long row of healthy babies, and going straight into the ICU.
Through the glass panel, they see an incubator with an impossibly tiny baby sleeping on her stomach with a million little wires attached to her body.
“Baby Parr,” The card read. Anne couldn’t stop staring.
“That’s her,” Cathy chokes up, absolutely hating the fact that she got to hold her before all of this and Anne’s first experience with their child had to be so sterile. “That’s our girl.”
“That’s our girl,” Anne breathes, leaning down to kiss Cathy’s head. The nurse hands Anne scrubs and a hairnet, and leads the both of them to the washing area to disinfect their hands.
“She’s got a breathing tube in, as well as a feeding tube, she’s rather small and her lungs aren’t fully developed yet, but she’s hanging on,” The nurse fills them in, and it stabs the both of them in the heart. “If you’re gentle, you can reach in and hold her hand.”
Cathy lets Anne go first. She holds her breath as she reaches in—she wasn’t known for being gentle but by hell would she try for her—but wetness immediately flows down her cheeks as she runs her finger over the expanse of her daughter’s back.
“Hello, darling, you just couldn’t wait for a little while longer, could you,” Anne laughs softly, moving her finger down to her arm now. “You were too excited to see your mamas.”
“You’re a gorgeous little thing, baby girl,” Anne whispers, stroking her daughter’s thin, downy hair. “I can’t wait to hold you.”
Cathy reaches out to hold Anne’s hand, squeezes it twice—a sorry, an I love you.
A few more days pass, Cathy was discharged two days after her emergency delivery but comes back every day with Anne to visit their daughter.
The doctors have told them that her lungs were failing her, that they were too weak to work on their own, that she might develop asthma in the long run.
They hold on to the slim chance of survival.
After two more weeks, the doctors take her out of the incubator. It’s the first time they catch their daughter awake on their visits and they can’t help but marvel.
“We’re removing the breathing tube in a bit, would you like to hold her while we do?” The doctor in charge asks, and they eagerly agree, obviously taking every chance to come in contact with their girl.
The doctor briefs them about the benefits of kangaroo care, how it’s important that they do it as much as possible when they bring her home, and then asks which parent would like to hold her first.
“I’ll go, if that’s alright,” Anne steps forward. Cathy doesn’t protest.
The doctor guides her to lean back against the seat, and asks her to unbutton her top and remove her bra, which she does without hesitation. In one quick motion, the doctor lays their diaper-clad daughter against the bare skin of her chest, and the world stops altogether. Her daughter feels almost weightless, but she grounds her in a way she couldn’t explain.
Anne’s hands reach up to hold her, and her mind reels at the fact that her two hands can cover her whole body. Cathy burns the image of the two of them in her mind, not wanting to forget any second.
The doctor walks over to them and gently shifts her so that she would be lying her back against her chest.
“Alright, mum, we’re just removing the tube then she can go back to snuggling with you,” The doctor smiles, and counts to three before extracting the thin tube that was down her throat. The infant sputters a bit before letting out a soft but piercing cry.
“Oh, I’ve been waiting to hear your voice, darling,” Anne coos, shifting her around to face her again. Their daughter wails against her skin, and Cathy reaches out to hold Anne’s hand over her back. “You’re okay, baby, you’re okay.”
Their daughter’s cries slowly fade into whimpers, and after a while, begins to root around. Anne chuckles slightly before looking up at Cathy.
“I think this is more your department,” Anne smiles, and Cathy nods–she’s prepared herself for this moment. Anne stands up and lets Cathy take her place on the seat, letting her remove what she needs to before placing her in her arms. Cathy guides her gently and allows her to latch on, and she hears their daughter coo as she nurses.
“You’ve been such a surprise, little one,” Cathy whispers, lightly tracing her finger from her forehead down to the tip of her nose. “But we wouldn’t change it for anything. We love you so, so much.”
Anne takes a quick photo of the two of them, wiping her tears away with the heel of her hand.
This was her family, and she feels like the luckiest woman in the world.