"Baby Girl Spencer, four days old, 3.5 pounds, preterm 32 weeks." Shawn looked out the window of the hospital room, flipping over on the stiff couch to block the bright light streaming in from the hallway. It was seven in the morning, which meant that the night shift was giving their report to the day shift, and the loud rumble of the day was already floating through the partially closed sliding glass door that chronically failed at keeping the outside world out.
"Still no name?" he heard the new nurse ask.
No, there's no name. Shawn wanted to scream at her, watching the nurse tilt her head forward in a whisper and the other nurse cup her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. Her mother got shot and is still unconscious at the hospital and the poor dad just hides in the back because he doesn't know what to do. And he's afraid to touch his tiny alien baby in the spaceship crib.
They had been there for four days. And he had watched seven nurses as the outgoing nurse told her about Juliet. And he had watched seven nurses put their hand over their mouth, shaking their head in shock. And he didn't know what to do. Or where to be. He was afraid to leave the baby but the thought of Juliet being alone in the ICU made him sick to his stomach.
So he would float between the two, running back and forth across the bridge connecting the two hospitals. He had become so familiar with the maze between the rooms that he had found himself dreaming of the run as he attempted to sleep in the back of the baby's room. Not that the sleep would come. Exhaustion aside, with the constant worry of the two pieces of his heart lying in hospital beds, hooked up to monitors, fighting to breathe, rest had become a thing of the past. Every time he would lay down, his fatigued mind would drift into a partially unconscious dream, littered with alarms from the baby's monitors and images of his intubated wife.
Gus had been spending most of his time at the hospital with Shawn, staying with the baby while Shawn was visiting Juliet. But no matter where Shawn was, he always wished he was with the other, afraid for what could go wrong when he wasn't at their side.
Juliet was still unconscious in the ICU, hooked up to a ventilator after the bullet had left her with a hemothorax, or collapsed lung filled with blood as one of the nurses had graciously re-explained to him when he went to visit her after surgery.
"So what does that mean?" Shawn asked, standing next to the bed, his fingers dancing around his wedding band, twisting the smooth metal between his thumb and pointer finger.
"The bullet did quite a bit of damage on the blood vessels in her chest, and when it punctured her lung, the damaged area bled into her chest cavity, causing her lung to collapse." The nurse explained, using her hands to gesture to the damage on her own chest.
Shawn looked down at his wife, her perfect pale skin still smudged with yellow streaks of cleaning solution and dried red blood. She had two thick rubber tubes snaking out from under her gown, collecting a bright red liquid forming in canisters on the floor.
"Is she…" but his voice trailed off. He was afraid to ask any questions. Afraid to know any answers.
"We repaired the damage done by the bullet, gave her a massive blood transfusion that helped counter the blood loss she experienced, and were able to restore pressure and repair her collapsed lung. We are hopeful that she will make a recovery."
But that was four days ago. And every time he went to visit her, she looked worse than the day before. Her normally cold fingertips felt like icicles in his palms as he held her hand, attempting to joke like every breath she took might not be her last.
And then there was this baby. His little pineapple. It was all he could call her. He couldn't name her without Juliet. He pulled himself off the couch and moved into the tall chair next to the spaceship bed that she was contained in. The sides and top were clear, with little doors on the sides that he could open and stick his hand through to touch the baby.
He carefully pulled the tab that opened one of the doors and stuck his hand through the little window, his fingertip just barely grazing the baby's foot. The slightest contact with her soft, transparent skin made her whole body jump and her little toes extend aggressively.
Jumping in response to the sudden movement, Shawn pulled his hand quickly out of the spaceship, closing the door before dropping his mouth into his hand, shaking his head and rubbing his cheeks.
"Hey Pineapple," he whispered to the little figure, laying on a pink blanket in only a diaper that could fit in the palm of his hand. Every inch of her red skin was covered with stickers connected to wires, her entire face covered in a scuba mask-looking contraption that the doctors had told him was helping her breathe, and the IV that they had placed when she got to the room still sticking out of her forehead like a unicorn horn.
"It's your Daddy." He still couldn't believe he was saying those words. When he was younger, especially with a father like Henry, he never pictured himself having a child, never imagined wanting someone else to take care of. It wasn't until he met Juliet that he started even imagining himself possibly wanting kids one day, wanting to raise a family with her, wanting more of her in this world. But he needed her. He couldn't do this alone.
"You're doing so good, breathing and everything." He watched her chest and belly move up and down with each breath. He could see the indents of her ribs flaring out, stretching to pull air into her tiny, underdeveloped lungs. "Your mommy's doing good breathing too. It's kind of hard for her right now, cause Lassie shot her…" it was a fact that he still couldn't wrap his head around. Lassiter- the one person in this world that Shawn trusted Juliet's life with, and he shot her. He hadn't talked to Lassiter, out of fear of what he might say, but Chief Vick had come to visit later that first day and explained to him what had happened.
"Well did you, like, take away his guns, or something?" Shawn asked, pacing around the little NICU room. His heart was beating out of his chest and he wrung his hands aggressively together in front of him, afraid if he let go he would punch a wall or push something over. But he was more afraid to touch anything in the room than he was of the anger and fear that was boiling in his blood.
"Yes, we did. Every one of them. He made sure of it. And he is getting a psych eval tomorrow morning and we are going to get him the help that he needs. The help that he should have gotten a long time ago."
"Clearly."
"Shawn, you do have the right to press charges if you would like to-"
"No." Shawn cut her off, falling into the couch and placing the first pillow he could find snuggly over his chest. He looked over at the spaceship bed covered in a flowery blanket. "It's Lassie. He wouldn't do this on purpose. We're all here now. He didn't mean to, right?"
Chief Vick came and sat next to him, placing a hand on his shoulder "Shawn, I am so sorry. If any of us had realized how bad it had gotten-" her voice trailed off as regret over all the hurt he had been feeling and everything they had all missed, and where it had gotten them floated between the pair. "It's going to be okay though. They're both going to be okay."
"He didn't mean to shoot her," Shawn said, focusing back on his little baby. "It was an accident, and your mommy saved him. And you saved her. So I guess you saved Lassie. We'll have to hold that over his head, Pineapple. Fist bump!" He whispered, lightly tapping his knuckles against the glass of the spaceship.
"Good morning!" the nurse from the window said, floating around the room, looking at monitors and checking the drawers. "How are you doing this morning?"
"Fantastic," Shawn said, shortly, his fatigued mind struggling to follow small talk.
"Great, well I think that we are going to have a fantastic day," she said, putting her hands on her hips. "I think today is a great day to hold a baby!"
Shawn's face dropped and he looked from the nurse's smiling face to his baby tangled in wires. "Are you serious?"
"She did well yesterday, so we're going to take the CPAP machine off this morning and then you can hold her. How does that sound?"
"Yeah," Shawn said, his chest filling with cautious hope. "I'd love that."
"Wonderful!" another woman walked into the room. "I've got the respiratory therapist here to help us. Let's see about getting this off her face."
Shawn moved against the wall to give the pair room to work. With a press of a button, the top of the spaceship rose up, giving them better access to his baby.
"Alright baby girl," the nurse said, nodding to the respiratory therapist who began tapping the screen of one of the monitors. "You can do this."
"Okay, we're off," the therapist said after a moment. They watched the baby, then watched the monitors, then watched the baby again. Shawn held his breath, his mind working in double time to trace any changes to the monitor that he could notice.
"Good job, baby," the nurse cooed, unhooking the scuba mask from around her head and pulling the tube off of her face. Shawn craned his neck and saw, for the first time in four days, his daughter's face. His heart beat quickly as he studied her tiny eyes that were still shut and her little nose and mouth that were scrunched up. He had never understood what people meant when they said the baby looked like their mom or dad. It was a baby. They all looked the same.
But now, he got it. He was looking at the miniature version of his wife's face. He could see Juliet's scrunched up features in this tiny human, and he couldn't take his eyes off her. She was beautiful.
"You want to hold her?" the nurse said after a minute, the whole room quiet as they watched the baby breathe on her own.
Shawn couldn't say anything, his eyes still glued to her little features. But he must have nodded because soon there was a big chair behind him and the nurse was adjusting the cords to make slack for the baby to move.
"You ready?" she asked, gingerly lifting the baby off of the spaceship bed. Shawn nodded again, instinctually holding his hands out. He watched in slow motion as the nurse lowered his baby into his hands, and he adjusted to pull her in closer to his chest. The nurse took a step back and smiled at the pair, readjusting some things again and pulling out a blanket.
"Are you okay?" the nurse asked, studying his face. It was until she said something that he realized the tears that were involuntarily falling down his cheek and the guilt that had wrapped a strong arm around his heart, refusing to let up. This wasn't supposed to be like this. He wasn't supposed to be holding their baby completely alone for the first time. She should be here. She should be holding their baby, telling him her name and to hold the head tighter and everything would be okay. He needed her, more than he needed air to breathe. Cause without her, air might as well not exist. He didn't feel like it would make it into his lungs anyways.
But he didn't know how to say any of that, so instead he just nodded, unable to take his eyes off of the little baby in his arms. This was his child. This was his daughter. He would move mountains for her, and he had only known her for four days.
"I'm okay," he said, finally feeling stable enough to inhale again, trying to ignore the sting of tears that threatened to fall.
"Do you want some space?" He must have nodded, because the nurse placed a remote control in his lap and walked out, carefully sliding the door behind her.
"Hi, Pineapple," he said, finding it difficult to hold back the anxious and joyous tears that were beginning to spill out of him. "It's so nice to finally meet you. And hold you."
He watched as the blanket moved with every breath she took. "You are the most beautiful baby I've ever seen."
"You're damn right she is." Shawn startled and looked up to see Gus standing in the doorway, his eyes scrunched as he tried not to cry while he steadied his hand to take a picture.
"Hey man, look!" Shawn said, nodding down to his arms. "I'm holding Pineapple!"
Gus rolled his eyes and pulled up a chair next to his best friend. Shawn was relieved he was there. He didn't feel so alone as long as Gus was there too.
"Helloooo little Pineapple," Gus cooed into Shawn's chest, his fingers wiggling against the baby's back. "I'm your godfather. And any boy you ever talk to is going to have to go through me first."
"Ah yes, your big scary Uncle Gus," Shawn chimed in, "who will then proceed to scare the boys off by going up on his toes and dancing them away."
"You know dat's right," Gus said, holding out his hand for a fist bump. Shawn took the baby's arm in between his fingers and gently tapped it against his best friend's, beaming as he did.
"Oh no!" Shawn exclaimed, suddenly, his face dropping.
"What?" Gus asked, leaning forward, ready to spring into action.
"Dude! I can't believe you got the first official fist bump!"
Gus was about to respond when they were interrupted by Shawn's phone ringing. Gus went to the couch and picked it up.
"Hello, Shawn's Spencer's phone." Shawn watched as Gus' eyes shifted to the phone, listening intensely to what they were saying on the other line.
"Of course, I will let him know."
"What?" Shawn asked before Gus could even hang up the phone.
"You need to get to Jules." Shawn felt anxiety fill up his lungs.
"I… can you…?" he carefully stood up, gripping the baby as tightly as he possibly could without squishing her delicate body. Gus replaced him in the recliner, wordlessly holding out his hands for Shawn to transfer her into. "Thank you."
Shawn took one last look at his daughter, safely in the arms of his best friend, before darting out the door and over the bridge.