mine {h.s.} | {b3}

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

user65854056 this is NOT for you... y'all please remember i have a life, it's not worth it to attempt to guilt me into uploading faster. if anything, it'll have the opposite effect <3

— CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR —

april, year two.

"You are the strongest person I know."

Raven Vargas spoke the words to me upon my first time walking back into the hospital. I'd been nervous, but I took my fear by the horns, forcing myself to face it. Cowering was not an option. Not when I needed to be strong in order to do my job. Not when I'd been doing my job when I took care of that baby, ensuring that nothing happened to them. Not when I looked at myself in the mirror and realized that every choice I make for the rest of my life sets a standard—a standard and model that I someday hope my own daughter will replicate. I'd taken my time, noting that there was time for me to be weak. Time when it was okay for me to be weak. But now, now, I'm ready to return to the world. Now, I have to show my daughter it is time for me to be strong.

Harry and Edie were with me in that first moment. Edie was held tightly on my hip with one hand, the other clutched firmly in my husband's. She didn't know it—how could she—but in that moment, Edie was my biggest source of strength.

We were planning on taking Edie to the day care at the hospital while we were at work. Leaving her with Fitzy and Ruth wasn't an option. Officially a couple now—official as of April first, which caused a lot of understandable confusion and disbelief. Only on April second did we believe that their claim had any sort of merit—Ruth was helping Fitzy pack up his apartment and move the rest of his stuff into her room, the room that they plan on sharing until the basement suite renovation is done. We'd spent much of the past month starting to shuffle our boxes and storage around down there to clear room for the space we'd need for the project. The best part of all had been renting one of those giant garbage containers to get rid of all of the stuff that we didn't need anymore. Stuff that we didn't even realize we'd had, let alone hold on to.

The project had been consuming, something to keep my mind off of things outside of my immediate line of sight. I'd needed something like that as I continued to mend; something menial like directing piles of my junk out of the house and onto their new homes: whether it be recycled, trashed, or donated.

Without realizing it, I'd become my mother. A pack rat through and through, there was intense documentation of everything that had happened to me over the past seven or so years since I moved back into the house. Worse, I hadn't even realized. Why did I need to? The house was large enough to shove most of the evidence far, far away. At least, until now.

But that being the case, we couldn't leave our daughter at home with Fitzy and Ruth. The both of them were concerned enough with the back and forth trips to Fitzy's apartment and the house, and all of the unpacking and moving and shifting, we couldn't expect them to be able to put their full attention on Edie during that time. Nor did we feel comfortable asking them to.

Accordingly, Harry and I devised a plan. It being my first time back in the hospital since I left after my injury, he wanted to be there with me the whole time. He wanted to offer me support as well as he was able—at the very least, if only by his immediate proximity. We planned on him walking me from the car to the nursery to drop off Edie. From there, he would take me to the lounge where we would change into our scrubs together before he walked me to the OB/GYN ward before taking off to the peds wing himself.

Of course, our plan was quickly derailed when he was called on an emergency, needing to scrub into his surgery immediately upon walking into the building.