The main entrance to the hospital offered complimentary valet parking, something that made Yarne nervous to take advantage of, but when faced with choosing that or needing to waste time parking for himself, he was urged to just go through with the valet. Between Kjelle reminding him that she really did not want to be doing too much walking, and Ribbon hysterically crying in fear of whatever was wrong with their mother, he knew in his heart that trusting someone else to park his car was the right choice. It didn't make passing off the keys to a stranger any easier for him, but after begging the valet driver to lock his car several times after parking it, he was able to make the exchange and get himself and his two passengers into the building.
Ricken was waiting just inside the doors, his face as white as a sheet and his hands visibly trembling even as he waved them down. "It came on so suddenly that there wasn't any time to tell you what was going on," he started, holding out his arms so that Ribbon could run into them and cry into her father's chest instead of her brother's side. "And you, Ribbon, I didn't think to tell you anything more than that your mother needed to come in to be monitored, I just didn't know what else I would have told you."
"Is Mom okay?" Yarne asked, feeling a bit breathless as he got the words out. "We stopped by to see her, since we would've been having dinner at our house tonight if things were better, but all I found at the house was Ribbon, and now we're here." He was holding tightly onto Kjelle's hand, the one that he'd placed the ring on not even an hour before that, having gone from the highest of highs to one of the lowest feelings he'd ever experienced. The adrenaline rush he'd gotten from getting to be his sister's hero was starting to fade, and he knew it was only a matter of minutes before he was crying harder than she was. "Dad, I just need a straight answer from you: is Mom okay?"
His lips forming a straight line, Ricken glanced down to make sure that Ribbon wasn't watching before he shook his head, a damning answer to receive. "Stubborn woman, she knew that she should have been here days ago but refused to come until tonight because she always said that she'd felt worse before and would feel worse in the future."
"I'm going to guess that we can't see her, huh?" This time, Ricken answered Yarne's question with a small, yet noticeable nod. "Right, makes sense. Is there somewhere we can sit and wait for updates, or should we just go?"
"There's a waiting room on the floor she's on, that's where they had me waiting before you called me, but with there being four of us I don't know if they'll let us sit there still or if we'll need to move somewhere more general." Looking around, Ricken motioned toward the front desk and started taking small steps over toward it, Ribbon refusing to dislodge herself from around him even as he was moving.
They could hear her crying even while they were across the lobby from where Yarne and Kjelle still stood, hand in hand, unsure of what to do until Ricken was back in front of them. He had been right on his uncertainty about being allowed in the waiting room on the specific floor, and now he was armed with the location of the general area they could sit in and wait for updates. As he took the lead on getting them there, still with Ribbon firmly attached to him, the other two lagged behind him even with that impediment. "We really need to stop showing up here when it's around dinnertime," Kjelle lamented, her free arm wrapped around her stomach as she walked. "I'm not sitting here all night without eating, I can tell you that much."
"We'll come up with something to get you food," Yarne assured her, looking around to see if there was anywhere there at the hospital that would suffice as dinner; there were little café stands but they seemed to be primarily drinks, and the one shop that had food in its window was already closed for the day, with early hours on weekends. "I bet we could order something and have it delivered here, if we need to."
"It's either that or us going and getting it ourselves, and something tells me that's not really an option at this point." Sighing as she kept moving forward, Kjelle was silent for a moment until she remarked, "Hey, if we're following the signs, we're heading to the waiting room for the labor and delivery department. Do you think your dad realizes that?"
Yarne looked ahead at his father, who was doing his best to follow arrows on every sign they passed. "I think he might realize it, but if that's the case…"
"They think she's having that baby tonight. It's the only explanation." A sense of worry cropped up in Kjelle's voice, overtaking her irritation at how hungry she felt. "That's not good, she's only a handful of weeks further along than I am, that poor baby's definitely not ready to be born."
Based on the loud wail coming from in front of them, it seemed that she'd spoken a bit too loudly and that Ribbon had overheard her. "This is probably just a placeholder location for us for now, there's just no way they're going to make her have the baby before she's ready to join us." Yarne knew that listening to Kjelle, who must have been part of so many conversations involving babies and birthdays at that point, was the logical and reasonable answer, but he didn't want to believe her. There was no way that his mother, who'd been fighting so hard to keep her baby safe and sound, would have lost that battle. "Mom's probably up in her room raising hell, wherever she is."
"Will the two of you please not have this conversation right now?" Ricken asked them, over the sound of Ribbon's continued crying. "You're scaring Ribbon more than we need, this is already stressful to us and hearing what could be wrong is making it worse."
They both apologized and went back to discussing how they'd get food as they finished the trek into the waiting room, which was indeed the one meant for visitors to the labor and delivery unit. The walls were decorated in storks and pinks and blues, and all of the furniture was colored in pastels that were meant to be soothing to look at. "I feel like we just walked into one of those kids' clothing stores after an explosion," Yarne whispered down to Kjelle, who gave a soft snort of laughter at the comment. "Promise me you're not planning to do anything this vibrant for Tjana."
"Consider that promise made," she replied, watching as Ribbon finally unlatched herself from her father and went to go sit in front of a TV playing cartoons to the formerly empty room. "Hey, your sister's occupied, do you want to ask your dad about what we were discussing or leave it alone?"
"I'll leave the baby thing alone for now, but I'm asking him about food." Letting go of Kjelle's hand so that she could sit down in one of the many chairs the room had to offer instead of following him, Yarne walked to stand next to his father, whose eyes were glued to the set of doors leading out of the waiting room that they hadn't walked in through. "Hey, Dad, have you had dinner yet tonight? Me and Kjelle are hungry and I'm going to order food for us to eat, but it'd be rude if I didn't offer to you and Ribbon too."
"Oh, uh, thanks for the offer, Yarne, but I don't think I could bring myself to eat anything right now. Your sister could use a meal, so you can ask her what she wants, and I'll pay you back for what you get her." While it was a kind gesture, Yarne turned it down by pointing out that he'd made the offer and wouldn't have done it if he'd expected to be paid for it. "R-right, of course, but if you feel like you'd like to be repaid I can do it."
"Dad, stop, I'm trying to help out right now. I'll order you something and hopefully it's still good when you want to eat it." Yarne was gritting his teeth together as he walked away, not wanting to get lost in the pain he was beginning to feel, as an extension of what his father was actively going through. He approached Ribbon and watched her intently focusing on the TV until the show that was on went to a commercial break, at which point he reached out and tapped her shoulder, her dramatically screaming as she looked to see who it was. "What do you want to eat?" he asked her, as she calmed herself down by pressing her hands together on her chest. "Come on, it wasn't that scary."
"Can't a girl have fun?" she snapped back, before looking at him as his question hit her. "Oh! You're buying me dinner? I don't know what I want, but you know me, I'm open to anything as long as it's good." The fake grin that she gave Yarne was all he needed to know that he wasn't going to be getting much of a real answer from her.
Rather than make her face the consequences of those words, Yarne decided to have a bit more fun with it. "Well, if you're fine with me getting you whatever I think is good, I hope you're looking forward to splitting a big salad with us. I know a place that delivers giant ones, big enough for all four of us to share."
Ribbon's nose crinkled at the mere mention of something leafy and healthy. "What are you, Mom trying to make me eat things that are good for me? Salads aren't even good, Yarne!"
"I happen to think they're pretty great myself." Taking a deep breath to keep himself calm despite having just been compared to their mother, Yarne stepped away from his sister with his phone fished out of his pocket and unlocked in his hand. "No, but I'll order you something that I know you like, hopefully it doesn't take forever to get here."
"You're the best big brother I could ask for, buying me dinner." Batting her eyelashes at him, the moment the show came back on Ribbon's attention was back on the TV screen, and Yarne headed back over to where Kjelle was sitting to place their order. Since he'd mentioned it, he was already thinking about the restaurant with the giant salads, but they were out of a reasonable delivery range for them to get it, and he wasn't about to try getting his car to go pick it up himself.
After much debate, they settled on ordering from the second location of their favorite restaurant, as it was right down the road from the hospital and they knew the quality of food would be worth the price. However, when it came time to put in the address for delivery, the best Yarne was able to do was give the address for the hospital itself and put to deliver it to the front desk. "I guess that means one of us is walking down there to pick it up," Kjelle said with a completely flat tone, looking at Yarne as she spoke. "And by 'one of us,' we both know that means you."
"I'm fine with that," he replied, finishing the order and submitting it. "If nothing else, going down there to get the food means I don't have to be in here for a little bit. This place is…really giving me a bad feeling."
"It's so over-decorated to try and be welcoming for people who are here to get to meet babies that it wraps around to being unnerving, I get it." As she looked around at the pictures adorning the walls, Kjelle was shaking her head slightly, her mouth moving with words meant to be silent. Yarne watched her carefully, especially as she began fidgeting with her fingers as she continued to look around, and when he felt like she was getting too overwhelmed with something he placed his hand on her shoulder and pinched it gently, reminding her that he was there for her.
By the time the food delivery was just about to the hospital, absolutely nothing had happened in that waiting room outside of what had been happening the whole time. Ricken was pacing around, looking at the big doors as if he was expecting something to happen through them, Ribbon was watching the shows on the TV with her full attention, and Yarne and Kjelle had stayed in the chairs, occasionally talking quietly to each other but always going back to silent. When his phone dinged to let him know that the delivery was approaching, Yarne stood up and stretched his legs and arms, before walking toward the door they'd come in through. "Food's almost here, I'll be right back," he explained, so that his father would know where he was going.
There was no response, but none was expected, and so he pushed through the door and retraced their original steps to get back out to the lobby. The delivery driver had just come in the front entrance and so they were able to make the food exchange without needing to get the desk involved, the driver wishing him good luck with whatever had him there that night. No sooner had those words hit Yarne's ears was he finally breaking down from everything that was going on, and he had to hustle back to the waiting room with his arms filled with food and his tears blinding his eyes. When he pushed back through the doors, he could barely see that it was the same as it had been when he left, and the gasping breath he took upon entry was what told the others that he had finally been caught by his anxieties and worries.
Between the crying, the door-watching, and the awkwardness of trying to eat without tables, dinner was quite the adventure, something that none of them particularly wanted to have to experience again. Even though he'd rejected the offer to have food bought for him, the moment Ricken saw the others eating he came over and snagged something off of the plate that Ribbon had, her not minding too much that her father was eating her dinner. Everyone was silent (outside of crying or asking if something could be shared), and the mood was so solemn and tense that it could have easily been cut by the plastic knives that had come with the meal.
It was right as everyone had finished up eating what they could that the entry door was opened and a family filed inside, looking bright-eyed and excited about whatever had them gathered there; the stark contrast between their enthusiasm and the dour mood of the family already waiting in there made things even more awkward for a while. There was a young girl with that family that looked to be about Ribbon's age, and she was the only one who made an effort to communicate with who had already been in there, her approaching Ribbon with her dark hair and shining eyes and asking if they could watch TV together. "Dad, can I?" Ribbon asked, looking at Ricken to see what he would say, but when he didn't say anything at all she shrugged and took it as a positive answer.
With those girls off by the TV watching whatever program was on at that point, the family of newcomers chose to sit down on that end of the waiting room, giving the space to the others who were already in there. Nothing was ever said between the two groups, other than whatever the young girls talked about, but in contrast with the tears and the silence that had already been going on, the new family was chattering excitedly with each other about how excited they were to get to see their newest member in just a matter of hours.
They were so eager to get going that when a doctor in full scrubs came to the big doors and poked his head inside, one of the people in that group noticed and started getting the whole group to stand and prepare to go. But the doctor was there to wave Ricken down, getting his attention wordlessly and walking him out of the waiting room without any explanation happening there in front of everyone. Yarne, who'd admittedly been half-awake at that point, realized that his father was gone and shot upright in an instant, looking over at where Ribbon and the other girl were still watching TV, before gently shaking Kjelle's arm, her having fallen completely asleep. "Dad's gone," he whispered once he knew Kjelle was listening to him. "He's gone and I don't know why."
"They probably came to get him for your mom's sake," Kjelle mumbled in reply, her eyes still closed as she tried to hold onto what sleep she could right then. "This is going a lot later than I'd thought it would, sorry."
"No need to be sorry, I didn't know how long this would take either." Guilt wracked Yarne's mind in that moment, feeling bad for making Kjelle sleep somewhere that wasn't comfortable and set up with all of her pillows and blankets and space. "I don't want to leave until I know Mom's okay, but if you want to go…"
"I'm not leaving without you."
"Yeah, I thought you'd say that." He grimaced, watching as she cracked one eye open to give him a very unamused look. "But really, if you want to go, you can get the car and head home. I bet Dad would understand if you took Ribbon with you too, she doesn't need to sit here all night waiting."
Her eye closing back up, Kjelle snorted very softly. "While you're right about that, I'm too tired to drive right now, and I bet your dad would be very upset if something happened to your sister in a car. Again."
"I didn't think of that." Yarne had been more focused on suggesting something that would allow for someone who needed sleep to get it, that he'd looked past the dangers of making it happen. "I guess we'll just stay here until we get told what's going on. Dad can't be gone for that long, he'll have to come back…"
He was right, Ricken did have to come back eventually, but it was hours later when he came in through the doors he'd left through, finding the waiting room filled once more with just the people he'd been waiting with the whole time, the other family having gotten called back long beforehand. They were all asleep, Ribbon curled up in a chair like a cat while Kjelle was sleeping with her head on Yarne's arm, and Yarne had his head leaning over onto hers as best as he could. It looked peaceful enough, especially in that middle-of-the-night hour, but Ricken hadn't come back down just to watch everyone sleep, he was there for a specific reason, and it involved waking at least one of them up.
Approaching Yarne, he thought about all of the ways he could get his attention gently, as to not wake the person laying on him, but none of them seemed realistic, given Yarne's habit of getting startled easily. It ended up being a nonissue, though, as before Ricken could do anything, he saw Kjelle's head shake slightly, her seemingly waking up at that exact moment anyway. When her eyes came open and she was staring right at her future father-in-law, she jumped a little in the chair, but didn't say anything immediately, trying to figure out where she was and what was going on. "I'm here to get him," Ricken explained in a hushed voice, pointing toward Yarne as he still slept unaware of what was going on. "Do you think he'll handle being woken up very well?"
"Probably not, I'm surprised he's not awake already since I moved," Kjelle answered, before motioning for Ricken to take a step back so that she could get up from the chair, him looking at her hand curiously as he heeded her request. "I'll be right back, if you wake him up and he's worried about where I am…just let him worry, he does this every night."
"You sure have to tolerate a lot because of him." With a soft laugh, more breath than anything else, Ricken let Kjelle get out of the way before he came closer to his son once more, watching as he slept completely unaware of what was going on in the room. After whispering an apology under his breath, Ricken reached out and gently shook Yarne's shoulder, hoping it would be enough to get him awake.
It most certainly was enough, except it had the added effect of making Yarne immediately worried about where he was and why he was there alone. "Shush, you're still in the waiting room at the hospital, Kjelle had to step away for a moment but she'll be back. You've been requested upstairs and I…don't think it'd be best to keep your mother waiting on this one, she's been through a lot in the past few hours."
His heart sinking, Yarne shook his head to try and knock off the sleep that was rooted in his mind, before he jumped out of his chair and nearly took out his father in the process. "Why's she requesting me and not everyone?" he asked, hoping he'd get an answer that made sense, but Ricken didn't have any answers to give on the matter. "Ugh, okay, but Mom better have a good reason for why she wants to see me and not, you know, Ribbon too."
"I'm sure she has a perfectly acceptable reason," Ricken said, glancing over to where Ribbon was still curled up, blissfully unaware of what was going on. "We'll have to wait until Kjelle's back in here so that Ribbon's not alone, but then we can head up together. Sound good?"
Yarne responded by arching his back until it made a sickening pop in several places, due to how uncomfortable his sleeping arrangement had been. "Sounds great to me. She shouldn't be gone too long, when she wakes me up at night I'm usually back to sleep in a couple of minutes so I think it'll be the same here."
"Even in the middle of the night, you're the same you as always." Smiling, Ricken put his hand on Yarne's back, patting it with all the affection he could muster in the moment, while his son tried to figure out what he'd meant by that statement. The moment they both heard Kjelle come back into the room, through the door heading back to the lobby, they looked at her, made sure she recognized that they were leaving and that she was in charge of keeping track of Ribbon while they were gone, and then they were walking through the big doors, off into the unknown of the next part of the building.
Ricken seemed to know exactly where to go, even in the still and quiet of the late-night hallways in that wing of the hospital, and it wasn't until they were at the elevator going up that Yarne's mind even processed that they really were just walking through empty halls. "It must be a pretty calm day in this department, because I haven't seen anyone else yet," he remarked, watching his father press one of the buttons in the elevator so it could start taking them to the higher floor they needed. "Do you think everyone else is asleep too?"
"From what I understand, that bottom floor isn't really used after a certain time, it was a lot busier earlier when I first got here with your mother. But at the same time, it's nearly four in the morning, so it being empty makes a lot of sense." Leaning against the wall of the elevator while it continued upward, Ricken stifled a yawn, which in turn caused Yarne to yawn as well. "Sorry, it's been a long night for all of us. I haven't slept at all yet, I told Panne I'd do this for her before I even tried."
"You…told her you'd go get me?" Yarne asked to clarify, to which his father nodded. "Right, because her getting to see her failure of a son is what she needs more than knowing that her husband is rested. You should've picked sleep over me."
"No, this is more important, I can tell you that much." The elevator came to a stop and the doors opened up, both men exiting so that Ricken could take the lead down to a desk at the end of the hall, where a tired nurse smiled at him, motioning for them to go into a room off to the side. For a moment, Yarne thought that was where he'd be able to see his mother, but the room was filled with scrubs and masks for them to put on, him even having to get a hairnet to hold the massive mane of hair he had. Once they were outfitted with the protective goods, they were back out at the desk, where the same nurse passed them a clipboard and a pen.
After he'd written his name and the date down, Ricken handed it off to Yarne, who took a moment to try and understand what he'd been given. First, it looked like a log of visitors, which seemed incredibly reasonable. Then, he noticed that his father was the three most recent sign ins, which also checked out given what he knew about the night so far. But as far as knowing why they needed to be logged, the page didn't seem to hold any indication, so Yarne wrote his name under where his father had written his, writing the same date and then handing it back to the nurse. "Is this the son you mentioned?" the nurse asked, looking at Ricken after reading the sheet for herself. "He looks a lot like your wife. Strangely tall, though, wonder where that came from."
"That's something we've been asking ourselves since he got that tall," Ricken replied, while the nurse laughed and opened a door off to the other side of the desk. The two men went inside and she shut the door behind them, going back to her post while they went on their way unguided. On this part of the floor, all of the doors were closed with signs hanging on the outside marked in pinks and blues, as well as the occasional flag that had both colors intertwined. When they stopped outside of what Yarne could only assume was the door they were looking for, he noticed that there was not just a pink flag on the door, but there was one that was yellow and blue, unlike any of the others he'd seen so far.
Before he had the chance to ask what it meant, Ricken opened the door and motioned for him to go inside first, which he did with great reluctance. The room was dark, aside from the lights on all of the machines that covered the walls and surrounded the bed, but before Yarne's eyes could adjust to the dimness, the overhead light came on and he was able to see his mother in the bed, an oxygen tube attached to her face and her eyes blankly staring in his direction. "Mom…" he started, feeling himself choke up behind his mask. "How are you doing? Dad told me you wanted to see me, so I came up with him, and..."
The blank stare remained for a few moments, while Panne seemed to realize who it was that was talking to her. "I expected you to stay downstairs and be fearful of what awaited you up here," she replied, her voice slow and deliberate with every word. "It's good to see you, Yarne, if even in these circumstances." She raised a hand to show him a monitor attached to one finger, as well as needles and tubes attached up and down her arm. "It would have done me a lot of good to have your fearful nature for once."
"At least you were able to get here before things got worse."
"Not quite, I should have been here long before I finally came. They're hoping I can hold on until daybreak, by the time I'd arrived the doctor they need had gone home for the night but it wasn't quite pressing enough to call her back in." Lowering her hand, Panne let her head roll to the other side, where she stared at a machine that was constantly updating with different heart rates, the numbers on which must have meant something to her. "The level of distress she's in is far from good for her little body, they're expecting a long stay under heavy medical care for her after birth."
These weren't words that Yarne wanted to hear, but he had to put on a brave face there to keep himself from breaking down over it. "At least they're thinking they can care for her and whatever she needs to survive, instead of thinking she's not going to make it."
"A child born at twenty-eight weeks, as she will be, has a very good chance of surviving, although with some of her…differences it will be harder for her to pull through." Panne's words cut through the air like a blade, and Yarne felt himself stumble at hearing them, having to brace himself against the wall to maintain his balance. He looked over at Ricken, who'd taken a seat on the makeshift bed in corner of the room, listening to the two talk, before looking back at his mother. "Oh, forgive me, I had chosen not to tell you about those differences because I didn't want you stressing out over what you cannot control."
"What…what kind of differences does she have?" he asked, voice as small as he felt in that moment. Panne was right, he was going to stress out over things even if he couldn't have any impact on them.
"I'm not going to tell you them right now and make things worse for us all," she chided, looking away from the machine to see the way her son's legs were beginning to buckle underneath him. "Yarne, things like this are exactly why I've always considered you to be hopeless. You can't handle the slightest setback without losing all control."
Even in a hospital bed, hooked up to a million different machines, it was still possible for Panne to absolutely devastate Yarne's sense of being, and he slid to the floor after his legs gave out. "I-I'm not hopeless," he argued, "I'm just a worried brother and an even more worried son right now. I want to know that my mom and my sister are going to be okay, but apparently that's too much to ask for!"
"Don't raise your voice at her, please," Ricken pleaded, sounding just as tired as he looked as he continued to watch the two. "The last thing we need is for the nurses to storm the room because she's getting worked up."
"She called me hopeless, Dad, and you're going to just make me sit here and take that?" Anger and rage were beginning to build inside of Yarne's chest, replacing the fear and worry that should have continued to manifest there. "I could've just said, you know what, Ribbon's old enough to be at home by herself—you guys left me home alone at that age all the time! I could've seen that you weren't home and chosen to ignore it, instead of dragging her and myself and my pregnant fiancée here to—"
"Your what?" Panne interrupted, her voice raising to as loud as it seemed her body could manage in that moment. "Since when have the two of you been engaged?"
Closing his eyes tightly as he hid his face, realizing far too late that he'd said something he shouldn't have in those circumstances, he quietly answered, "Since earlier tonight, we were going to come by the house and tell you and that's why we were there and found Ribbon by herself, this isn't how you should've learned. I'm so, so sorry…"
"The whole time I was down there with you two, and neither of you said a thing about it?" Ricken seemed surprised, but then something dawned on him and he gently chuckled. "I suppose that when I thought I saw something on her finger earlier, it really was that there was something there and it wasn't just my tired eyes playing tricks on me."
"I'm surprised it took you this long to ask for her hand, given how much you've adored her since the day you two met." Calming back down, Panne glanced at a different machine and flinched when she saw what it said. "I hope that isn't high enough for the nurses to show up, it's red but not flashing."
"We'll just have to see. Hopefully they don't come in, I'd like to get some sleep before sunrise." Ricken was laying down now, trying to make himself as comfortable as he could on what could barely be called a bed. "If only I was able to sleep like Ribbon is, curled into a tiny little ball with zero cares in the world."
Yarne looked toward the door, hoping that nurses would in fact come in to check on his mother so he could use them as a diversion to leave, but the door remained shut for as long as he was checking it. "I didn't want to rush into marriage, even with the person I'm sure I'll be spending the rest of my life with," he said, to get back to the discussion he and Panne were having, but trying to keep it much calmer than it was. "Then all of this stuff this year happened and I felt like I needed to get it done."
"The stuff this year…" Panne repeated, before taking in a few deep breaths using the supplemental air she was being given. "That brings me to why I wanted you up here. I need to confess something to you."
His head turned to face his mother's bed, unable to properly see her given that he was still on the floor and she was up above him. "What is there that you could need to confess while you're this sick and miserable?" he asked, the surprise he felt on full display.
"I've been a horrible mother, and a manipulative one as well," she started, pausing once more for another deep breath. "The depth of the traditions I've forced upon you has been of my own creation, building on what the taguel of my childhood actually did. Some of it, namely what puts us where we are right now, was never part of the tradition."
It took a few seconds for Yarne to process that when she said that, she didn't mean her own health failing—she meant what was causing her health to fail. "You said that your family was all born in the year of the rabbit. Was that a lie?"
"No, that part was true. Most of what you've been taught about how taguel approach this year is exactly as I'd been taught it by my Nonna, as by the time of my first year of the rabbit she was the only guardian I had." Panne's voice was remorseful, as if she felt that now was the time to fully come clean about everything she'd done wrong. "Nonna Felicis was a kind soul, the loveliest of women, the very woman I named you after, and she did her best to teach me all of the traditions she'd grown up with. Candles, family meals, blessings and growth as individuals, all of those were her teachings she left me with, and I swore after her funeral that I would follow her word to the letter."
"So then what happened? Why are you suddenly saying you were doing things that weren't part of the tradition?" He had risen to his knees, his hands grabbing the foot of his mother's bed to get a better look at her. "It sounds like you said you'd follow it and then you did."
Panne's mouth moved from side to side as she thought about her next few sentences. "It was always the plan to follow Nonna's word, but after my last remaining relative, one of my dear cousins, passed away weeks before the year of the rabbit twenty-four years ago, I realized that following Nonna's word would spell doom for the taguel if I strictly adhered to it. Her exact wording was that one's first-born child in the year of the rabbit would be a taguel, and any further children would never be able to claim the entirety of the culture as their own. The culture started with a select group of people and those people's first-born children were able to pass things down, and so on and so forth, but over time they began to dwindle until it was only me left. Knowing this, of course, was how we were all raised, and I'd taken pride in being that first-born in my family and the only taguel left standing, but when I was the last person of taguel blood, period, left alive I realized a crucial flaw in all of this…"
"So, going by that tradition, it would've just been me to take the title? Ribbon and this new baby wouldn't be allowed to?" What had happened was starting to make sense to Yarne, but he didn't want to assume that he had it straight right away. "Then you changed it, because you wanted to make all of your children have access to the culture you loved."
"That's exactly right. I hadn't explained the entire tradition to your father when we'd met, other than that it was imperative that we have a child in that year, and if it had been possible we would have easily attempted to have a second one before the year ended, but my grief after losing my last relative, coupled with the general instability I felt in the weeks after you were born, made that an impossible task." Pausing again, Panne looked at Yarne and saw that he was staring back at her with misty eyes. "I didn't want to be alone, and I didn't want you to take on the burden of being alone at any point either. So I just…conveniently left out the fact that only you would be a taguel under the original tradition, and changed Nonna's teachings in that one little way."
"And then you let it get to your head or something and forced it on me," Yarne said, his words bitter but his tone gentle. "You could have explained it to me and then let me and Kjelle make the choice when we were ready, and in a way that was reasonable, instead of pushing us to where we are."
Panne shook her head very slightly. "I felt like my hands were tied on the matter, not because of what the tradition was but because of what we thought her specific medical conditions were. I was fully accepting of the fact that you would not be able to meet the expectations of the tradition—either Nonna's version or my own—and then a legitimate miracle happened, just weeks after I'd learned of the miracle of my own. For years we'd been discussing the possibility of being able to have a third child during a third year of the rabbit, and everyone insisted that it wasn't going to happen. Until it did, and everything that could have been wrong seemed to happen right away."
"Wait, if the original tradition is that it's just the first-born, then it's okay that we're not going to be having more children, right?" His eyes shifting to the unmistakable lump in the blanket his mother was covered in, Yarne had a moment where he envisioned all of these things being wrong with Kjelle instead, and the mere thought was enough to make him feel lightheaded. "She can't be forced to do this again, just like you shouldn't have forced yourself to do it again either."
"Everything here was a mistake, but I was too wrapped up in maintaining that my version of the taguel tradition was the true one to acknowledge that. I'll be very honest with Ribbon as the next year of the rabbit approaches, so that she feels like she is given a fair chance at making the decisions best for her." Pushing her lips together, Panne reached out toward Yarne with her open hand, and he hesitated on moving before standing up to grab it in his own. "You deserved that same chance that your sister will be getting. Please, forgive me for my shortcomings as I've ruined so many things in your life."
Letting his fingers tighten around his mother's, there was so much that Yarne wanted to say to her right then, but he chose to take the high ground in that vulnerable moment. "Mom, you've constantly put me down and made me feel like I was worthless, but now I get it. I get that you were grappling with the fact that this…failure of a son was the one who was the only true taguel of your children, and you didn't want me to continue passing down our family heritage while being a failure at the same time."
"That's not…" Panne started, before her whole body tensed up, noticeable to Yarne not just by her hand in his but in how her face contorted in pain. Once she'd ridden out the sudden wave, she kept on talking. "Most of my mistreatment of you comes entirely from my own feelings of not being good enough. Nonna took care of me and raised me like I was her own, but she was not as loving as I remember my parents being. She had many others to focus on, and because of that I didn't learn how to love a child properly until…" She grew quiet, her fingers slipping out of Yarne's hand. "Until very recently, if we're being honest. The time we've spent together these past weeks has shown me that I can love you exactly as I'd always wanted Nonna to love me, and together we can pass down the correct traditions as she'd intended for me to do."
She started tensing up as more pain began to overtake her, and Yarne stepped back from the bed, unsure of what to do. "Mom…thank you, for all of this," he said quietly, stepping further away from her. "I look forward to getting to teach Tjana the traditions with you as my guide."
"I look forward to being your guide in this journey. Oh, have I mentioned yet that that's such a lovely name for a lovely taguel…?" she murmured, even while looking highly uncomfortable, and he found it in himself to smile at her comment. For a moment, things seemed peaceful, until an alarm started sounding in the room, startling Ricken back awake after he'd dozed off, bringing a few nurses who were on the floor in to investigate, and giving Yarne the opportunity to leave the room and head back downstairs.
He'd gotten as far as depositing the gown, mask, and hairnet into the trash outside of the nurses station before the sinking feeling that he'd just been witness to something horrible began creeping up on him. "Hey, are you able to tell me about what certain alarms mean?" he asked the nurse still at the counter, her looking at him with raised eyebrows. "In my mom's room, just a moment ago, it started beeping and people came rushing in, could you tell me why that is?"
"Oh, on this floor? It could be anything from her heartrate plummeting to there being no sign of fetal life, and anywhere between's fair game as well." The nurse, seeing the look of panic appear on Yarne's face, quickly retracted her statement and modified it by saying, "I would put money on it either being her heartrate skyrocketing or there being more signs of fetal distress. Those are the two things they've been closely monitoring her for, after all."
The answer did nothing to ease his worries, but Yarne knew going back to see what was happening for himself wasn't wise in any way. "Okay, thank you, have a good night," he told the nurse, heading toward the elevator with the hope that he'd be able to make it back to the waiting room on the bottom floor by himself.
It took a bit of wandering, but he did eventually reemerge in that large, pastel-colored room to the sight of his sister curled up in a different chair and Kjelle looking like she'd just woken up out of a deep sleep, her eyes half-lidded as she stared forward, smiling at the sight of him coming into view. "Perfect timing," she said as Yarne came closer, her standing up so that they could hug before she was walking toward the other door out. "I'll be right back, even though it's only been me and Ribbon in here this whole time."
"Hopefully I'll be able to stay down here for a while," he replied, sitting in the same chair he'd been in before he'd ever gone upstairs, the exhaustion he felt catching up with him quicker than he thought it would. He didn't even register Kjelle coming back in minutes later, until she was putting her head on his arm and going back to sleep like they were meant to be there right then. As he slumped over to rest his head on hers, a sense of peace began to overtake him, like he was right where he needed to be in that moment.
Sunrise was on its way, and he knew that the world was going to be different when it hit, but he couldn't sit there and wait for it to come. Sometimes, a man just needed to sleep.
Although he had just fallen asleep, Yarne was vaguely aware of the fact that he was dreaming, based entirely on where he was when he opened his eyes. He knew he was in the waiting room moments before, so to be back in a hospital room upstairs told him that what he was seeing wasn't reality in the slightest. However, the moment he thought he was just working through his stress and anxiety of what might have been going on with his mother, he was faced with a sight that he didn't want to have to endure.
Unlike what he knew was actually happening, he wasn't in a room where Panne was the one in the bed, strapped to machines; instead, it was Kjelle there, looking much more heavily pregnant than she really was. Her breathing was rapid, like she'd just been running for her life and was now getting the opportunity to collect herself, but as he stood next to her watching it seemed like there was no slowing down how hard she was struggling to breathe. Even with the help of machines, it was like she couldn't get enough air to sustain her, and soon he heard that alarm sounding off, except this time, no doctors or nurses came to investigate the sound.
It was just him, watching the love of his life fighting to survive as she began to gasp for air, her eyes widened and staring into the nothingness around her in horror. It was just him, listening to the attempts to breath coinciding with the pulsing of the alarm above their heads. It was just him, seeing the screens on the machines flashing red with errors and warnings. It was just him, helpless in place as he heard her scream out in panic, before everything went silent. No heartbeats registered on the machines across from him, no more sounds of trying to breathe, no more motions that looked like attempts at drawing breath.
He woke up with a heaviness against his chest, and he looked to see the real, still-alive Kjelle laying across him with her head pressed against him right over his heart. "I hope everything's okay up there," he muttered, taking a moment to get some deep breaths of his own before he looked around the waiting room, everything the same as it had been when he'd fallen asleep, aside from the peeks of sunlight coming in through the windows behind them. "Please, gods, keep Mom safe in all of this."
With the arm he had access to, Yarne reached up and began stroking Kjelle's hair, just like he had at the park not even a full day ago. It felt like an entirely different lifetime, the time between the park proposal and where they were now, but he knew that barely any time had passed at all. Things would get better and get back to their new normal, eventually, and then they'd be able to move on with what they'd planned on doing that week without any problems arising. They'd be able to catch up with his parents once things had calmed down from where they currently were, and everyone would be able to look back on that crazy night at the hospital and realize just how bizarre it had been.
"Yarne," he heard Kjelle softly say, and he gave a small noise to let her know he was listening. "If something happens and I end up hospitalized again, please don't make anyone sleep in these damn chairs. This has been the worst night of sleep I've had in a long time."
He felt slightly ill at hearing her mentioning being hospitalized, given what he'd just had a nightmare about, but he nodded in acceptance of her request. "If it happens, I'll make sure that only those who really want to sleep in the chairs have to do it."
"Sounds like a plan to me." She sat up, groaning as she did. "I really feel like I didn't sleep at all, even though I know I did. I don't think that's exactly good for me or Tjana right now."
Once again, she was talking about things that were correlating with what he'd been dreaming about, and he could feel himself starting to slip into a panic mode. "I think you'll be fine, we should hopefully get to go home soon and you can sleep in the bed all day if you want. I'm not planning on going to work tomorrow after all this, I don't think you should be going either."
"Huh, yeah, probably not." After rolling her neck and shoulders to try and work out some of the kinks her uncomfortable sleep had given them, Kjelle stood up and immediately went right back down into the chair, looking dazed. "Whoa, that's a new one. I felt so dizzy getting up that the whole room started spinning upside down."
"How about you don't get up and let your mind collect itself?" he suggested, about ready to break down over the fact that she was starting to speed-run his nightmare. She didn't argue against it, and so while she remained seated, he stood up in front of her and prepared himself to need to be her support to get her back on her feet. While he waited for her to feel ready to try again, he looked over at where his sister was curled in a chair, her eyes open as she stared right back at her brother. "Oh, hey Ribbon. Good morning."
"I'm hungry, Yarne," Ribbon replied, not even returning the greeting. "My tummy's been rumbling for, like, an hour or something. I don't even know what time it is, but I think it's time for breakfast."
"The cafés in the lobby should be open for business, I could walk her down to get something to eat, since I'm pretty hungry as well." Kjelle held out her arms for Yarne to grab, which supported her as she got up on her feet without the same feeling of disorientation she'd had before. "There, now that I'm up and don't feel like I'm going to go back down, I think I'm going to head out there to see what those places are selling, regardless if you want Ribbon coming with me or not."
As he pulled his arms back to his sides, Yarne looked between the two before giving a long sigh. "I'm not exactly hungry myself, so you don't need to worry about grabbing anything for me, but please don't go overboard on buying things. We don't need to be making someone sick on breakfast."
Ribbon scrambled up to standing, rushing over to grab her brother and shake him slightly, no sign of exhaustion based on her energy. "You're sounding like Mom right now," she teased, "and I mean that in the best way possible."
"Someone's got to step up and do her job," he reminded her, gently bonking her on the top of her completely disastrous hair with one hand. "But seriously, you know what Mom and Dad would let you get, don't convince Kjelle to get you anything different."
"You know, I wasn't going to agree with what Ribbon said, but you are sounding a lot like your mom. Must be practice for the future or something like that." Crinkling her eyes as she gave Yarne a quick amused smile, Kjelle waited for Ribbon to stop antagonizing her brother before heading to the door with her, the two of them slipping out one right after the other, leaving him completely alone in that waiting room.
He sighed again, sitting back down and pulling his phone out of his pocket. He'd intentionally chosen not to use it much after ordering dinner the night before, because he didn't have a charger and didn't want to drain its battery, so when he unlocked the screen and saw it covered in notifications, he groaned and began the process of going through them all. Not a single one was important in that moment, aside from the picture he'd been sent at some point between him getting back to the waiting room and him waking up from his nightmare. The picture was of him sleeping with his head contorted in a weird angle, looking like he was going through things in his sleep, which would have been the case based on when it was sent. "When did she…" he started, before chuckling. "Ah, right, she probably got up again at some point before I woke up, makes sense."
With all of the notifications checked and all other messages acknowledged, Yarne could safely say that nothing had come of what had taken place upstairs before he'd come back down, given that he hadn't been sent anything and his father hadn't come down to retrieve him again. While it did worry him that there weren't any updates on what was going on, he was going to assume that no news was good news, and that there was no reason at all to get worried about it any further.
Of course, by the time that Kjelle and Ribbon came back with pastries and drinks from a lobby café, he was sitting with his head down in the chair, fighting back tears and the desire to run upstairs and check on his mother himself. He heard their footsteps and looked up to see them both staring at him, muted expressions on their faces. "We saw Dad," Ribbon said, her voice shaky. "He was leaving when we went out there, I don't think he saw us."
"He was pretty focused on getting down the hall," Kjelle added, before she sat back down in her chair next to Yarne's. "Ribbon wanted to chase him down, but I convinced her not to do it. Whatever's going on, he'll let you guys know when he's ready."
Almost like what he was hearing simply didn't make sense to him, Yarne nodded and tried to mentally justify it as them seeing the wrong person entirely, but he knew there was no chance that both of them had mistaken a stranger as the same person. "I hope it's soon, things had started going badly when I left last night and I haven't heard anything since."
His words hit their ears at the same time, and the reactions they received were very different. Ribbon, young and naïve and innocent, broke down into wails on the spot, almost dropping her breakfast before she made it to a chair and set it down there so she could lay on the floor and cry. Kjelle, knowing that Yarne's definition of something going badly was often different than her own, merely looked at him for more information. "What do you mean by that? Did the conversation she wanted from you just not end well or what?"
"I mean, the conversation actually went really well, after we yelled at each other over things and I accidentally told her something I wasn't supposed to and she confessed a lot of really bad things she'd done." His words spilling out of his mouth, Yarne knew he needed to be mindful of how much he said there where his sister could overhear him talking. "Mom wanted me up there so that I could hear the truth about something that…" Grasping at straws for a way to imply what he needed without coming out and saying it, he reached over and put a hand on Kjelle's stomach, them locking eyes as she seemed confused at the sudden contact while he gestured with his other hand to try and get the point across. "Something related to this, that I will have to tell you later."
"Okay then," she replied, rolling her eyes as she looked away from him while he pulled his hand back, apologizing quietly for the contact without asking first. "So then what do you mean by things going badly?"
"After we finished talking—well, actually, it was while we were still talking—she'd started being in pain and then the alarms in the room went off. I left when the nurses showed up, because I didn't want to be in the way." He nodded, feeling that was a sufficient way of summing up the end of his time upstairs. "Oh, also, they know about what we did yesterday, might've been a bit heated and not thinking things through and called you my fiancée in front of them and…yeah."
She laughed at first, before a realization hit her. "Gods, that's what I really am to you now, huh? Guess we'll see how long that lasts for. How'd they take learning that in that way?"
"Pretty well, I think? Dad kind of figured that was the case, he'd noticed you were wearing the ring when he'd come down to get me, and Mom was expecting it for a long time now. I wish we'd been able to tell her the way we'd planned, but I guess telling her in that moment worked too." Yarne paused, before looking over to where Ribbon was still on the floor, having stopped crying pretty quickly and was sitting up in front of her chair, using it as a table for her food. "But there's still someone in the family we've got to tell."
"You're right, I doubt you brought this up with my parents beforehand, so we'll have to let them know eventually." Kjelle's answer came without her seeing where Yarne was looking, unaware that he was referring to his sister until he cleared his throat to get her attention, then motioned toward Ribbon when she looked. "Oh, that someone. I think she might already know, I don't know."
"Let's find out, then. Ribbon, over here!" Yarne was doing his best to keep his spirits high, and getting a little silly with his little sister felt like an appropriate way to keep everyone from emotionally spiraling and crashing. His sister, rather than picking herself up and walking over, laid back down and rolled across the floor until she was on her back at their feet, smiling up at them both. Undeterred by the strange way of transporting herself, Yarne continued, "Okay, are you ready to learn something really cool?"
"Hmmm, I don't know." Putting her hand over her face and dramatically making thoughtful noises, Ribbon only stopped when she saw two hands held out over her, one much bigger than the other, but the smaller one having the slightest shine to it on one finger. Her noises stopped at once and she pointed up to the ring firmly in her sights. "Hey, that's kind of neat, where'd you get that?"
Kjelle wiggled her fingers, so that the ring moved a bit and Ribbon's attention was drawn entirely to it and what it was doing. "Your brother gave it to me."
"Oh, that's—oh! Oh, oh, that means you two are getting married, doesn't it?" With all of the force she could muster, Ribbon threw herself up off of the ground, barely missing smacking both hands with her body as she got up, and once she was on her feet she grabbed Kjelle's hand to look closer at the ring, her nose scrunching at how plain it was on top. "If I were you, I wouldn't get married to him over this, he could've done so much better."
"E-excuse me, it's perfectly fine for what we need it for," Yarne said, trying not to sound hurt by his sister's declaration, despite also feeling like he could've done better if he'd had the chance. "We can always get something flashier later."
"I happen to like it exactly like it is, it suits me perfectly and that's what matters." Looking over at Yarne with a small nod, to show that she meant what she was saying, Kjelle ended up having to pull her hand away from Ribbon when she felt the girl starting to try and get the ring off of her. "What are you doing? That's mine, you don't need to hold it."
"I just wanted to see it better," Ribbon replied, pouting that she hadn't been able to get her way. "But okay, I get it, it's just a ring and it doesn't really matter what it looks like or whatever, that's one of those adult things I don't really get." She shrugged, before getting back down on the floor to roll back over to her makeshift table, squealing while she went.
Letting that sink in for a moment, Yarne muttered, "Maybe telling her like that wasn't the best way we could've gone about doing it."
"Hey, don't worry, aside from her trying to steal it, I think it went pretty well."
The waiting room ended up being invaded by other people for the first time in over twelve hours not long after they'd gone back to sitting in their typical silence, each family coming in bringing at least one child for Ribbon to get distracted by. No one was in there nearly as long as they'd been, but there were some groups that spent a couple hours sitting in the room as it filled up with more and more people, and the more people that came in, the louder it started to get. It got to the point that Yarne felt like he couldn't hear his own thoughts with all of the chatter happening around him, but rather than leave and find somewhere quiet to sit for a while, he just put his head down on top of Kjelle's and closed his eyes, hoping to drown things out by not paying attention to them.
That worked for a little while, until she was telling him to sit up with a sense of urgency in her voice, which he took to mean that he needed to move so she could get up. When he opened his eyes, his father was standing in front of them, looking even more exhausted than he had the night before, but wearing a paper badge that he hadn't had on at any point before. "Thank you for that," Ricken said, directed toward Kjelle, who smiled back at him. "I didn't want to interrupt you if you were napping, but she seemed to know exactly how to do it."
"Hard to nap when there's so much chaos in here," Yarne replied, unsure of if he'd actually fallen asleep while he was laying there or not. "What are you doing down here, Dad?"
Bounding over to see what was going on as well, Ribbon tackled her father and nearly took them both down, but caught herself before she knocked them to the ground. "Dad, we saw you down here earlier at breakfast time! Why didn't you come say hi and tell us what's going on then?"
"I didn't realize you saw me then," he admitted, "but I was sent down on a very specific mission from your mother and couldn't be even a second late or she'd have gotten upset with me." That was a good piece of news, given that it meant that nothing horribly wrong had happened in the time since those alarms had gone off, and it brought Yarne a bit of peace of mind. "Actually, she's been moved to a slightly less restrictive floor, which is why I'm down here. You're all welcome to come up for a little while, then I think it'll be time for you guys to get home."
There was a moment where no one said anything at all, then Ribbon started cheering and hugging Ricken tightly, followed by the other two getting up out of their chairs. The four of them walked out of the main doors to the waiting room, heading down the hall toward the lobby before veering off down a side hallway to access a different elevator than the one Yarne had used the night before. They all filed inside, the button for the floor was pressed, and they rode up in silence, until Ricken made a statement to explain what was going on a bit better. "There's something you're going to hear about when we're in there that is going to be hard to take, but…I promise, everything's okay. They wouldn't have moved Panne to a new room if it wasn't okay."
"I can't wait to see Mom," Ribbon stated, her head swinging back and forth as she patiently waited for the elevator doors to open, then bolted out as soon as they arrived on the correct floor. When he came out onto the floor, Yarne looked around for a desk to sign in at, much like before, but there didn't seem to be any such thing right there; it wasn't until they were further down the hall that a nurses' station was set up, and none of them needed to write anything because Ricken had handled it previously. The nurse waved them on down further, a friendly smile on her face as they passed.
"This definitely feels less serious than where Mom was last night," he said under his breath, Kjelle hearing that he'd said something and looking at him to see if she'd needed to hear what it was in specific. When he didn't repeat himself, she looked away, allowing for him to quietly add, "Still more serious than I want you to have to be, too."
"Okay, I heard that one," she whispered in response, "and I don't even think I want to know what's going on in your head right now."
The door to the room they were looking for had two little decorations attached to it, one being a pink teddy bear and the other being the exact same bear but in blue and yellow, them set up so that they were holding hands. "Remember what I said in the elevator," Ricken told them as he knocked, waited for an answer, then opened the door for them to all go inside, one at a time, until he was the last one to file inside with the door closing behind them all.
"Well, aren't you three just a sight for sore eyes!" Sounding in much better spirits than she'd been previously, Panne looked at her visitors with a peaceful expression on her face. "Here I was, starting to think that Ricken would be coming back to tell me that you'd all left and needed to come back over here, but nope, here you are!"
"We weren't leaving until we knew what was going on, after…you know," Yarne started, not wanting to dwell too much on the past. "So, uh, what happened after I left last night?"
Rather than answer that question, Panne's eyes shifted over to Ribbon, who was glancing around the room with eyes filled with terror. "Ribbon, dear, do you need a hug from your mother to help you calm your nerves?"
"I…I don't like you being in here," Ribbon replied, but based on how she slowly walked to the bedside and sat down on the edge, it was clear that she did indeed need that hug. Panne reached out and wrapped her in her arms, holding onto the girl for a moment before something seemed to strike Ribbon from above. "Mom! Where's the baby?"
Those words rang in Yarne's ears for a second, him realizing that there were no longer the machines around meant for monitoring the baby's current state. "Is that what happened after I left? Did something happen to her?"
Her hands falling out of their hug around Ribbon, Panne seemed to fall back into her resting place in the bed, sighing as she did. "You could say that something did happen, yes. There was just too much going against her in that moment, being inside me was no longer the safest place for her and so they fought just long enough to get the doctor here, and then…" Panne clicked her tongue as she shook her head. "I don't know what happened next, my body was in a state of distress that I couldn't handle, my next memory comes from asking your father to run down to the gift shop to buy something."
"Which was what I was doing down there when you saw me," Ricken explained, making that part of the day's events make sense. "As for what had happened, they had to perform an emergency surgery to save your mother's life, and in the process saved your sister as well."
"Sorry, I'm not super familiar with how this all works when it's a situation like this," Kjelle said, looking between the two people who'd been speaking. "If the baby's okay, where is she? We're not on the nursery floor, this isn't a room that they're going to be bringing her into, as far as I understand."
"That'd be correct. If we want to visit her, we'll have to go across the building to the other wing to visit." Ricken gestured to the badge still visible on his shirt. "That's where I got this, I stopped by over there before going to get you three. I don't think visiting her is something we'll be able to do as a group today, they have her pretty well intubated and everything, trying to catch her up so that…"
He trailed off, biting down on his lip, and Panne once again started to speak. "The intention is that she'll be in there for at least the next month or two, perhaps longer if things go poorly, but hopefully growing enough that they can perform the surgery she needs in a timely manner, then she'll be discharged after recovering from that. Of course, with children in intensive care, it's a bit hard to ever stick to a timeline when things are so fluid."
"What do you mean, surgery?" The word felt wrong to be saying in relation to a literal newborn, yet there Yarne was, saying it like it was normal. "What's wrong with her?"
Panne hesitated on answering, clearly hoping that she wouldn't have to be the one to say anything, but Ricken still seemed like he was thinking about what he had just said himself. "There is a sizeable defect in her heart, nothing that cannot be repaired, but severe enough that it had been something we'd been watching since it was first discovered. As lucky as she has been all along, that was quite the blow to endure." With every word, Panne's voice had gotten quieter, until she was speaking just above a whisper. "All of the odds were stacked against us, and now that she's here things will not be any easier until that surgery is completed and the hole is repaired. After that, it's one step at a time learning how to give her the best life with her differences."
"Differences?" Ribbon repeated, swinging her head around to look at both parents dramatically. "Like, different hair color than me and Yarne? That kind of difference?"
"Er, not exactly." Panne reached over to a shelf beside her bed, where her phone was plugged in and charging, and after grabbing it she opened it up to her gallery. "Your father was able to get a few pictures of your sister before they got all of the tubes attached to her, I'd like you to take a look at them."
The phone was passed to Ribbon first, who flipped through the pictures and only commented on how small her sister was, noticeable even when she was being held by complete strangers. When she finished, Panne took the phone back, then held it out so that Yarne could come grab it from her. As much as he wanted to, he felt his feet were rooted in place, and there was only so far he could lean forward even with his long arms, which led to Kjelle having to step forward to grab the phone, her looking at the first picture and gasping when she saw it, which only made Yarne's fears about seeing it amplify. Once she was at his side, she gave the phone to him and he looked at the screen, touching it to zoom in closer on the very, very small baby on the screen.
It was hard to look past her size, but he did notice something else about her, specifically her face—the way her eyes and nose looked didn't match anyone else in the family. Her forehead was bigger, her eyes further down and more rounded than either of their parents', and her nose looked almost entirely flat. Swiping through the pictures, he was able to determine that wasn't a trick of the angles, and when he looked up from the phone to his mother, he could see the serious look on her face. "As I have already said, she is lucky. When we first found out that this was her fate, I might have spent more time than I should have researching what her quality of life will be, and I found phrases that stuck with me, even now. All about luck, and how being given a child with a chromosomal difference is like finding a four-leaf clover in a field, precious and deserving of a safe home to thrive in."
Yarne looked at the picture again, a different perspective having just been given to him when looking at his sister's face. "She's pretty," he said, "and I think she'll only get prettier as she gets older, won't she?"
"And we'll be able to watch her grow, all together. The moment I saw the first picture, her delicate little features on full display, I knew that our decision on what to name her was the right one." Finding the ability to smile, even though she was clearly still in her serious mood, Panne reached over to the shelf again, pulling out what looked like a small piece of mesh, cut into a heart with blue and yellow border sewn on. "My usual doctor—oh, you've both met her, I suppose—made this as a gift for her when we found out the diagnosis. A lace heart."
"And once we knew her length and weight," Ricken added, turning to grab a tiny little stuffed rabbit from behind him, "I was able to go downstairs and have them personalize this for us at the gift shop." He held the rabbit up, its light pink fur reminiscent of the pastel paintings down in the waiting room, but what was more important than its color and shape was what had been stitched into its back. In beautiful lettering, the rabbit had the day's date, the time that she'd been born, her size, and finally, her name: Lace Felicis Leichtfoot.
"We're going to put the heart on its front after we find someone who can do it delicately," Panne finished, handing the heart over to Ricken so they could keep the two pieces together. "To fully represent our safe, lucky piece that completes our lives."
Based on how no one really had any exuberant outbursts at that, it was clear how tired they were as a group, and soon enough they decided to part ways for the day. There was nothing they could really do aside from sit around and talk, and since there would be plenty of opportunities for them to come back and visit with Panne in the future (she didn't think she would be there more than a few days, but nothing was certain), and getting to visit Lace at the moment wasn't plausible, it was best to just go home and sleep. After their goodbyes and their muted congratulations, the three who'd ridden over together left the same way, heading out to the front entrance to finally get the car back from the valet. Once that stress was dealt with, and the car seemed to be completely intact, they piled in and decided that taking Ribbon back to their house was better than just leaving her home alone, so they began the drive at once.
Almost as soon as she was buckled in and the car was in motion, Kjelle was asleep in the front seat, while Yarne focused on the road and Ribbon talked to herself in the back, working through all of the things that she'd gotten to be a part of in the past day. "I like knowing I have a sister now, but can I say something?" she asked, leaning forward to be just a bit louder in Yarne's ear in order to get his attention. When he nodded, she said, "I wish I could've gotten her without all of these problems. Can I, like, keep her but throw the whole year away?"
"Like a bad luck charm?" he replied, glancing over to see that no, what he'd said hadn't been heard by the one person who would've been amused by it, but he enjoyed it anyway.
"Uh, I mean, I guess? I was thinking more like trash, because this year has been super icky and I'm over it. I want all of the good things and not the bad ones, please and thank you." With that, Ribbon sat back in her seat properly and continued talking to herself, while Yarne considered the pros and cons of what his sister had just suggested. Ultimately, he decided that the negatives were making the positives all the sweeter, and no matter how good decrying the year of the rabbit would make him feel, the year had changed his life for the better in ways he couldn't fully express.
He could only hope that this was the last bump in the road for their family, and that everything else would be smooth sailing going forward, because he was certain that he couldn't handle even more heartbreak and stress than what he'd already endured.