Cotton Candy Bingo: Early
Heinz smiled down at his wife as she lay back, catching her breath. "It's done," he said. "They took her to neonatal ICU. They say she'll be fine." She squeezed his hand, giving him a wan smile in return.
It had been an ordinary day...was it really just four hours ago? It felt like an eternity, or maybe two. They'd been out shopping, buying things for the nursery for their baby girl, due in just two months. And then Charlene's water had broken, right in the middle of the baby store, and they'd come to the hospital to find that, really, they were having a baby today or...they weren't having one at all. A frantic labor later, and their daughter had been born.
"Mr. Doofenshmirtz?" one of the nurses asked. A gaggle of them were making sure his wife was okay, but this one was a new one, near the door.
"Yes?"
"Your wife needs to stay here for a bit longer, but if you'd like to go see your daughter, she's stabilized in NICU now."
He looked back at his wife, who nodded. "Go. Then come back and tell me how she's doing."
He kissed his wife on the forehead, then followed the nurse over to the nearby intensive care unit. A glass wall with an intercom speaker separated him from a large room with several warming units. Only one was occupied at the moment, with a tiny creature who looked...well, he had to be honest here, she looked more like a plucked chicken than a baby.
"I'm sorry," he whispered to her. "I'd hoped you'd take after your mother more than...me."
The nurse laughed as she headed off. "They all look like that at this point."
"Oh, okay."
He stared at his daughter, wrapped in a blanket in her warming unit, a breathing mask strapped to her face. I would do anything for you, my child. I would give you anything. I swore off evil when I started seeing your mother. I'll stay off of it for you.
The nurse inside the unit saw him, and pointed toward the child with an inquisitive look. He nodded, and she rolled the warmer over closer to the window, giving him a better view. The nurse reached over, and her voice came over the intercom. "What's her name?"
"Vanessa," he replied.
"It's a lovely name. We gave her a dose of surfactant, and put a pressure mask on her, and she's stable now, but we need to keep her in here to keep her warm."
"How long?"
The nurse shrugged. "I'd guess three weeks. Maybe a month." She looked down at the child and gave her a smile.
"Thank you. I've been told to report back to my wife."
The nurse laughed. "Go tell her, then. We'll be here."
He found his wife's room after only getting lost twice. Charlene was sitting up now, and the nurses had stopped fussing around her. "How is she?" she asked.
He sat in the chair next to her and took her hand. "Stable. She looks..."
"Like a preemie. She's still got some growing to do."
"Looks like she might take after her father," he said embarrassedly. "Because..."
"That'd be fine."
"But..."
"We'll be fine, Heinz. She'll be fine."
He took a deep breath, feeling the tension ease out of him for the first time in hours. "You know, we will."