Chapter 6: Baby Leo

CHLOE

The first thing that hit me was the smell.

Sharp. Chemical. Clean in a way that felt wrong. My throat was dry, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. When I tried to move, a dull, deep ache spread across my lower abdomen, heavy and tight, like someone had stitched me back together with wire.

My eyes opened slowly. White ceiling. Dim light. The steady, mechanical beep of a monitor somewhere near my head.

Hospital.

My hands moved before my mind caught up. They pressed against my stomach.

Flat.

Empty.

The sound that left my mouth was not a word. It was raw, broken, animal. I tried to sit up. Pain exploded through my middle. An IV tugged at my arm. A thick bandage held me down.

A nurse appeared in the doorway almost immediately, as if she had been waiting for the moment I woke.

“Miss Vance, you need to stay still,” she said, moving quickly to the side of the bed. “You had an emergency C-section. You’re safe. The baby is safe.”

The words did not land at first. I stared at her, breathing hard.

“Where is he?”

“Neonatal intensive care unit. He was born at thirty-two weeks. Small, but he’s fighting. He’s breathing with support, but he’s stable.”

I sank back against the pillow. My eyes burned. I did not cry. I simply stared at the ceiling while the nurse checked the machines and adjusted the drip.

“Can I see him?” My voice came out rough, scraped raw.

“Soon,” she said. “The doctor wants to speak with you first.”

The doctor arrived twenty minutes later. A woman in her forties with tired eyes and a direct manner. She did not soften the facts. The baby weighed just under four pounds. His lungs were underdeveloped. He needed oxygen and close monitoring for at least three weeks. I had lost a significant amount of blood during the surgery.

The doctor paused, flipping a page on her clipboard. "We need to discuss the financials, Miss Vance. The surgery was extensive, and the NICU stay will be lengthy. The hospital will need to set up a payment plan."

I nodded. I had no insurance. I had barely three hundred dollars left in my account. But I didn't care. I just needed to see him.

When they finally wheeled me down the corridor to the NICU, the fluorescent lights felt too bright. The unit was quiet except for soft alarms and the low hum of machines.

The nurse stopped beside an incubator near the window.

Inside lay a tiny body, red-skinned and impossibly small. A thin tube rested under his nose. Dark hair, still damp, stuck to his scalp. One hand was curled into a fist the size of a walnut. His chest rose and fell in rapid, determined little movements.

I leaned forward until my forehead almost touched the plastic.

“Leo,” I said quietly. The name had been sitting in the back of my mind for weeks. It felt right the moment I spoke it. A lion. A fighter.

The nurse adjusted something on the monitor. “He’s a fighter. You can touch him through the ports if you want. Skin contact helps.”

I slid my hand through the opening. My fingers brushed his arm. His skin was impossibly soft and warm. For a second, his tiny fist opened, then closed again around my fingertip.

A sob tore from my throat. The tears I had been holding back for months finally spilled over, hot and fast.

"I am so sorry you have to fight so hard," I whispered. "But I am here now. I am not going anywhere."

I stayed like that until the nurse said I had to return to my room.

That night the hospital was quieter. A different nurse came in around midnight to check my incision. She was younger, kinder.

“You’re doing better than most,” she said while she worked. “A lot of mothers in your situation fall apart. You’ve been very calm.”

I did not answer. Calm was not the right word. There was simply nothing left to fall apart with.

The next morning, a hospital administrator came to my room with a clipboard. She looked exhausted and professional.

"Miss Vance, we need to finalize the birth certificate paperwork before you are discharged."

I took the pen from her, my hand still shaking slightly from the surgery.

"Name of the child?" she asked.

"Leo Vance," I said, my voice steady.

She typed it in. Then, her pen hovered over the next line. "Father's name?"

I looked at the blank space on the form. The space where Damian Sterling's name was supposed to go.

He had signed away his rights the moment he dropped those divorce papers on the table. He had chosen Victoria. He had chosen his freedom. He had chosen a life without me.

He would never know about the boy in the incubator. He would never know about the tiny fighter who shared his eyes and his stubbornness.

"No father," I said, my voice cold and absolute.

She paused, looking up at me. "Miss Vance, the baby will need a father on the legal documentation, or we will have to list him as unknown."

"List him as unknown," I repeated.

I watched her type it in. Father: Unknown.

It was done. The legal severing was complete.

That evening, I sat up in bed despite the pull of the stitches. I reached for the small notebook I had started keeping and wrote three lines.

Leo Vance.

Born too early.

Already stronger than the man who does not know he exists.

Outside the window, the sky over Oakhaven had turned a deep, cold blue. Somewhere in another city, life continued without us. Meetings. Dinners. Soft laughter in expensive rooms. None of it reached here.

I turned my head toward the small speaker still carrying the soft, steady rhythm of Leo’s heart monitor.

The sound filled the quiet room. I listened to it until my eyes closed, the beeping following me down into sleep like a promise I intended to keep.