Macie's Story

17

(February 23rd, 40 days old)

Hailey stares down at the phone in her hand for another beat, the flashing green symbol at the bottom of the screen is a nagging reminder she needs to answer the phone, but yet she couldn't get herself to bring the phone to her ear. Her heart sank when she had read the caller ID and apparently her face dropped too because Jay quickly squeezed at her hand.

"What is it?" He asks, being unable to see the screen with the way she was angling the phone.

She looks up and meets his gaze with a thick swallow. "It's the hospital."

Hailey can tell he tries to hide the worry filling in his eyes when he shoots her a reassuring smile and says, "Hey, it's gonna be fine." but it's hard to ignore the way his eyes don't seem fully convinced of his statement.

He then edges his chin forward. "But you do need to answer it," he says and Hailey moves her eyes back down, the flashing phone icon catching her attention again as the vibrating continues in her hand. When she doesn't pick up the phone, Jay furrows his eyebrows lightly. "Do you want me to?"

She seems to think about it for another beat before she quickly nods her head and hands over the phone. Jay takes his hand from hers as he slides over the icon, catching it before it disappeared. He raised the phone to his ear as he clarified who it was to the other side of the line.

Hailey watched as Jay seemed to take in what he was being told, at the way his head bobbed up and down to the information. The hand that had been wrapped in her fiancé's moments before raised up to her face as she subconsciously begins picking at her lips, only being able to read one side of the conversation. Her heart sat in her stomach until Jay whispered out a thank you to the person on the other end of the phone and he brought it back down from his ear.

He leaned forward and placed the phone down on the couch cushion before sending Hailey a smile. She brings her hand down from her face and he reaches for it instantly, interlocking their fingers together.

"Everything is just fine," he says and it makes her shoulders fall with relief. He beats her to it before she can ask him why they called and he can feel the smile grow wider on his face as he says it. "The doctor wants to start weaning her off of her tube tonight, they wanted us to know and so we could decide whether or not we wanted to head over there to feed her."

A breath catches in the back of her throat and she struggles to say anything at first. All she could think about was how she thought that phone call would have ended so differently, that something bad had happened with Macie again. Hearing that phone buzzing and seeing the ID at the top had made her heart speed up and stop at the same time and Jay's words were taking just that extra bit to sink in.

Jay waited until it fully hit her and just sat there quietly, gently squeezing her hand until it did. After a beat she edges her chin forward with slightly widened eyes. "They really think she's ready for that?"

Jay nods softly. "Yeah, they're doing it tonight."

Hailey's head then tilts to the side and she can feel her eyes beginning to burn up slightly. "And we get to go feed her.. like a real bottle, like a real baby?"

Her words catch him by surprise and he hides the way his face drops with another nod of his head. "Yeah," he whispers the solitary word before he swallows. "You wanna go?"

xxx

Jay was quiet the entire drive to Med and Hailey couldn't quite figure out what it was that might have been bothering him. He wouldn't normally stay silent for that long, he didn't speak much before they left the apartment either. She tried to push it away and think about the reason they were driving over to the hospital in the first place, but it wouldn't last long when she'd spot him move to look around the block on an interstate or check the sideview mirrors in the corner of her eye and her mind would wander back to him.