Malik and Jade

Chapter 1 (Jade): He Knew I Knew

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

*** TW for premature birth ***

Walking after a C-section was no joke. But walk you must and the nurses had encouraged me to take a walk to the NICU to see my son who'd been born prematurely less than sixteen hours ago. Moving, shuffling like an old lady, I felt like I needed to cradle my abdomen as if I was still pregnant. But twenty-eight weeks into an extremely difficult pregnancy, my body had decided it was done and my son had been taken from me by emergency C-section. So early. Too early. But everyone, in an attempt to be supportive and positive and boost my spirits, had been throwing statistics at me.

Survival rates at this age are good.

Eighty to ninety percent of babies born at this stage live.

Only ten percent of the babies born this early have long-term issues.

And so on until I was ready to scream because I didn't want to be comforted. I wanted my baby back inside me until he was ready to be born as a full-term, healthy infant with no talk about survival rates surrounding his birth, no fear for his life.

I wanted to be able to hold him at will and keep him in the room with me and nurse him when he cried. I wanted to watch my husband proudly walk around the room with him, introducing our son to our parents.

As if I had conjured him, I heard my husband's voice from around the corner. Then a feminine voice. I wondered if he was talking to our son's doctor. As a surgeon in this hospital, my husband knew almost all of the other doctors, and he'd been so worried about my state of mind yesterday, I wondered if he was talking to our baby's doctor away from me to shield me from any possible upsets.

That would be just like him, to want to protect me. We may have had an arranged marriage as was so common in our culture, but during our courtship and the two years we'd been married, he'd been attentive and sweet, treating me like any woman would hope to be treated by her husband.

I peeked around the corner and saw him standing in front of the door to the NICU, ready to go in to see our tiny baby who was fighting to live.

That part wasn't surprising to me.

If he wasn't in my hospital room with me, I'd have expected him to be near our son. He was an extremely protective man.

No, what was surprising to me was the woman glued to his side wearing scrubs. Doctor? Nurse? Her arm was wrapped around my husband's waist and, although I couldn't see her face, from the way she was standing, her other arm was probably resting against his chest.

That was my chest to touch, I thought.

Then I realized his arm was around her waist, and his cheek was resting against her head.

If she was our baby's doctor, I did not like her bedside manner.

"This could have been our baby," she said.

"I know," he said gently. "But it wasn't meant to be for us."

"I will never know why you just went ahead and married the girl your family picked out for you. That's a throwback to another age."

"You aren't from our culture, so it'd be hard for you to understand, but I had to do as my family asked. It was time I married, and in our tradition, marriages are arranged and they work out satisfactorily for the most part."

Satisfactorily? I thought he was happy with me. Or was I outside of the for the most part category in his mind?

"But you loved me," she said, "and I think...you still do."

"I will always hold you closely in my heart. Of course I miss what we had together, what we could have had. It helps that I see you around the hospital just about every day. Or maybe it doesn't help."

He kissed her head and then moved away from her. "I need to go check on my wife."

"See you for lunch tomorrow?"

"I don't know if I'll be able to make it this week given everything."

Why was he being so damn gentle with her?

The blonde woman walked down the hall, in the opposite direction from me, and I pulled my head back quickly. It was then I noticed the pitying eyes of the Labor and Delivery nurses on me, their station just across from where I'd stopped. They'd also had a view of my husband and the woman.

I couldn't run, could barely move, so I couldn't even try to escape as my husband turned the corner and saw me pressed against the wall.

Saw my face.

And he knew I knew.

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA