Chapter 2

I spent three days in the ICU. When I finally woke up, the first person I saw wasn't Morgan, but my mom.

She was sitting by my bedside, her eyes swollen and red, her hair streaked with gray.

"Raine..." my mom said, her voice trembling as she gripped my hand. "It's such a relief you're awake..."

"Mom," I managed, my throat so dry it felt like sandpaper. "Where's the baby?"

"He's in the newborn unit, he's really okay, very healthy," she said, wiping her tears. "It's a boy. He looks just like you."

At least he took after me. That was all that mattered.

I closed my eyes, then opened them again. "What about him?"

My mom's hand froze. She knew who I meant.

"Morgan...something happened with Ms. Everly, so he went over there," My mom started.

"Mom," I cut her off, my voice so calm it felt strange even to me. "Can you help me raise the front of the bed?"

She hesitated for a second, then did as I asked. As the bed lifted, I caught a glimpse of the sky outside. Evening had fallen, and the sunset lit up half the sky in red.

I hadn't quietly watched the sky like this in a long time. In the three years since I married Morgan, most of my days were spent waiting for him to come home, waiting for him to have time for me, and waiting for him to look back at me.

But now, I don't want to wait anymore.

"Mom, call my lawyer," I said.

"Raine?" My mom's voice trembled.

"I'm getting a divorce," I said, my tone steady.

The instant those words came out, it felt like something finally filled the emptiness in my chest. It did not heal. I just decided to stop pretending it wasn't there.

My mom started crying, holding my hand as her tears fell onto the sheets. But she didn't try to stop me. She just said, "Okay."

Later, I found out Morgan only came to see me in the ICU once during those three days. It was three in the morning.

He had stood outside the glass window, his hand pressed against it, and lingered there for ages. The nurse said his lips moved, but the glass kept his words from reaching me.

I didn't want to know.

The newborn ward was on the sixth floor. I sat in a wheelchair as the nurse pushed me slowly down the long hallway.

At the very end, a big window looked out over the hospital's little garden, where a huge oak tree stood, its leaves already turning yellow.

"Here we are," the nurse said, stopping us outside the room.

Through the glass, I spotted a row of incubators. My son was in the third one. He was so tiny, bundled up in a blue blanket. Only his wrinkly little face was showing.

He was fast asleep, his mouth slightly open, like he was waiting for something.

I pressed my hand to the glass, my fingertips going pale.

"He's a sweet baby. He barely ever cries," the nurse said softly beside me. "He feeds well, too. Thirty milliliters every time."

That number suddenly took me back to a night in my seventh month of pregnancy. I was craving yogurt, but the fridge was empty.

Morgan wasn't home, so I hauled my pregnant self downstairs to the convenience store and bought three cups of yoghurt.

On my way back, he called and said he wouldn't be coming home that night because Belle wasn't feeling well.

I ended up sitting on the curb. I cracked open a carton and drank it all in one go. Each one was 180 milliliters. I downed all three, alone.

That night, I rubbed my belly and whispered to my baby, "It's okay, Mommy can do this by herself."

Looking back now, that was probably the first time I realized that the someday I'd been waiting for might never come.

"Ms. Sinclair?" A voice came from behind me.

I turned and saw a middle-aged woman in glasses, wearing a white coat and holding a medical chart.

"I'm Dr. Preston from the newborn unit," Caroline Preston said, stepping closer with a slight hesitation. "The baby's test results are back. I'd like to discuss them with you and your husband."

"My husband isn't here," I said. "You can just tell me."

Caroline glanced at my wheelchair, then at my bare left ring finger. The day after I woke up, I had taken the wedding ring off and tucked it away in the nightstand drawer.

"Alright," she said, flipping open the chart. "The baby had a brief spell of oxygen deprivation at birth, so we ran some tests. His other vitals are on the mend, but he failed the hearing test twice."

Outside the window, the leaves were falling from the oak tree, one by one.

I sat in my wheelchair, looking at that tiny bundle in the incubator. Suddenly, I remembered how, on the day he was born, he cried just twice before falling silent.

It wasn't that he didn't want to cry. It was because he couldn't even hear himself.

"Is it congenital?" I heard myself ask.

"We'll need more tests to be sure," Caroline said, "But right now, it looks like severe sensorineural hearing loss. It might be because of the lack of oxygen during birth, or it could be something he was born with."

"Can it be fixed?" I asked.

Caroline hesitated. "A cochlear implant might help him hear, but it has to wait until he's old enough. And after that, learning to speak will take a lot of time and effort."

"Will he ever be able to speak?" I asked.