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If asked, Jack would say that he usually does an excellent job of keeping his emotions in check. Calm. Controlled. He’s the guy who can walk into the world’s most horrific trauma scene and take command without even raising his voice. The one that the residents and med students turn to for advice, for approval.
Therapy and time passing had helped him carry his grief and trauma. Jack carries it well, by now. He’s the steady one, even if his second wife helps carry the burden. He feels a sense of responsibility to Eve, to protect her and shield her from the horrors of the world. She often tells him that he doesn’t have to do that; she, too, is an emergency medicine physician. All too aware of how awful the world can be.
He’s always been a protector. Swore he wouldn’t break again the way he had when his first wife had passed.
Even so, as he looks at the isolette, Jack can feel the cracks splintering, threatening to cleave him in two.
It had been, aside from some horrific nausea, a relatively routine pregnancy. Eve had worked right up until forty eight hours before contractions had ramped up; she’d been cramping on and off for days, gone to pee, and had her water break unexpectedly.
A routine birth. Phoebe had come out perfect – crying, pink, perfect APGARs. They’d gone home 24 hours later. Aside from unsettled sleep, a little poor feeding, everything had been… fine. Neither Jack nor Eve had been parents before. They didn’t know what to expect; they’re ER doctors, not neonatal specialists.
But then they’d noticed a few episodes of blank staring. The way Phoebe wouldn’t quite respond. What had started as a let’s take her to be checked out at the local non-trauma centre hospital had resulted in their eight day old being airlifted to PTMC, who had a higher grade NICU.
Keeping one solid arm around his wife’s shoulders, they watch as the NICU nurses carefully, so carefully, move their infant daughter to a heated bassinet. They have one downstairs in the ER, but it so rarely gets used.
One of the nurses turns on and adjusts the heat lamp. Jack has seen unwell infants before, in plenty of places and situations, but it’s a different kind of confronting when the baby in question is his. Big, blue eyes, a mop of dark red curls, freckles on her pale, chubby cheeks. There’s no denying that she’s his child, a carbon copy of him in miniature.
“But I don’t understand...” Eve’s saying to the NICU attending, “she’s term. We aren’t supposed to be here. Isn’t that the deal? You make it to term, baby comes out healthy, you thank your stars that you got that lucky, and then you go home and everything’s okay.”
Jack wishes he could reassure her, but he’s not a paediatrics doctor. Wishes he could explain to her why this is happening, but he’s as in the dark as she is. Tearing his gaze away from his daughters’ tiny hands, each one with an IV line in, he tries to tune back in.
“We don’t know exactly why, but we’re going to find out. There are a lot of tests we can run. Blood gasses, an MRI, ultrasound, chest x-ray.”
“Sepsis?” Eve blinks, suddenly alert; Jack can see the clinical side of her mind snapping into place. It’s how she copes, how she can dive headfirst into a trauma bay and keep everyone sane through it.
“Potentially. We’d like to rule that out, first. As well as aspiration pneumonia. We’ll see what her blood and urine tests show, then go from there.”
Once all this is over, Jack will look back on it as a blur of tests. Of scans and ultrasounds and x-rays and permission for a lumbar puncture that ultimately failed because of how small she was.
But right now? Right now he feels like he's in hell.
A week passes. The last time he felt this helpless, his first wife had been wasting away before his eyes. Jack isn’t a man who shies away from his feelings and emotions; he’s been in therapy long enough to make his peace with it, and never really bought into the toxic hyper-masculinity anyway, even when he was active duty.
Regardless of this, he feels like a bit of an asshole; he goes downstairs to work shifts in the ER during the day, while Eve stays with Phoebe in the NICU, asking a million questions of each specialist on her team. They go home together of an evening, but there's no comfort there, either, staring at the empty bassinet in their bedroom that their baby has only slept in for a week, where she currently should be.
Jack feels himself shutting down a little, focusing too much on taking care of Eve, making sure she gets to do as many little things for their daughter as possible when they visit.
He only really comes out of his own head when Phoebe's care team throws around the phrase failure to thrive and he witnesses Eve almost literally shrink in on herself.
"So it's something I did? That's why she's here?"
Jack chances a glance at his infant daughter, asleep, still with tiny IVs in each hand, an NG tube peeking out of her nostril just beneath the oxygen cannula.
"Absolutely not," he says firmly, just as his daughter's treating attending voices the exact same.
The neonatal specialist attending shows them some x-ray images of Phoebe's throat, with a few parts circled.
"See here? Her oesophagus has some weakness to it, a floppy airway. It's why she isn't able to latch properly and wasn't getting enough nutrition. It's likely that those seizure like episodes she was experiencing were caused by low blood sugar."
Jack takes the x-ray image and studies it. Thanks to the barium the technicians put in the formula, he can see where precisely Phoebe aspirates.
"So what do we do? This is something you can fix, yes?"
If his voice is a little rough, he thinks it's excusable, given the circumstances.
"Oh, yes. It's actually incredibly common. Usually in premature infants, but we do sometimes see it in the thirty seven weekers, too. Most babies simply grow out of it. Severe cases sometimes need corrective surgery, but that's not the case here."
Phoebe's attending introduces them to a speech pathologist, who helps explain that she'll need a special type of bottle to be able to latch properly, and that she'll need some thickener in her formula for a while.
She's an exceptionally patient and reassuring person, and Jack feels far more at ease when he sees Eve absorbing every single bit of information.
The best news is two days later, when they get moved out of the NICU to the infant paediatrics ward. Phoebe's attending is satisfied that she's no longer considered critical: no evidence of sepsis, infection, or epilepsy. If she remains this stable with no setbacks for seventy two hours, she can go home, even.
"Thank you so much for everything," Eve tells the charge nurse; the older woman had brought them blankets, diet coke, picked up the phone in the middle of the night when Eve had just wanted to know that Phoebe was okay.
In the scariest moments, the kindness and humanity of the NICU staff had been a bright light.
"You're most welcome hon. Now, with all the love in the world, I hope we never see you again. Not as a patient, anyway."
Without all the monitors and alarms, it's easier for them to pick Phoebe up without disturbing her. He watches Eve hold her for what feels like several hours before she catches his eye and smiles, relief evident in her dark eyes.
"Your turn, I think."
Jack blinks at her. He wants to hold his daughter so badly, hasn't been holding her enough because of how difficult it was in the NICU with all the wires and cords.
"Are you sure?"
His wife gives him a look like he's just asked the silliest question imaginable, so he gives her a sheepish look and takes their daughter gently from her.
Jack holds her upright against his chest, one hand cradling her while the other supports her head. Phoebe yawns, wrinkling her face adorably before resting her head on Jack's shoulder, her tufts of auburn curls tickling his cheek.
She still has her oxygen cannula in, but she looks far healthier. Far more peaceful and content than she did when she'd first been admitted.
"Don't worry," he whispers to her, "we'll be home soon. You just keep on kicking ass, okay?"
The three days in the ward that follow fly by; endless meetings with the speech pathology team to ensure that they have the right bottle type, the right thickness consistency for the formula.
A respiratory doctor comes by and assesses Phoebe's lungs, and agrees that she no longer needs the NG tube or the supportive oxygen.
None of their friends from the ER come up to visit, too afraid of bringing contamination or illness upstairs, but Dana swings by and leaves a card for them at the nurse's station that everyone's written well wishes for Phoebe into.
Jack reads them out to her, one by one, as he cradles her in his arms while Eve takes a nap on the uncomfortable fold out bed that each room supplies for a parent to stay.
"See? You're so loved already," he tells her, "there are so many people who can't wait to meet you."
Phoebe blinks her big blue eyes up at him, hanging off his every word even if she doesn't understand him yet.
"This is all gonna be behind us soon. But no matter what happens? I got you, and your mom. God, Pheebs, your mom loves you. I can't wait for you both to be home and together where we all belong."
Blinking rapidly to avoid the sudden blur to his vision, Jack sniffs, clears his throat.
"And for you to meet all the sentimental idiots who wrote these lovely words for you."
Jack thinks he carries things pretty well, but when they finally walk out of the infants ward, Phoebe in her car seat, the alarmed doors closing behind them, he feels an overwhelming sense of relief.
"Stop by downstairs, or head home?" Eve asks, gently squeezing his free hand.
Jack looks at her, then down at Phoebe.
"Home," he says firmly, "been waiting almost two weeks for this moment. I just want us all home as a family."
"Yeah," Eve agrees softly as they get into the elevator, "me too."
There'll be time for introductions later.