Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(86)

Luca patted him on the back. “Yeah. Follow me.”

By the time the nurses had sanitized him and gowned him, Carlo and Sabina were heading out with the priest. Carlo tried to say something, but Theo just shouldered past. He was not in the mood to talk to people who thought they’d saved his little girl from sin she hadn’t even had a chance to live long enough to commit.

The isolette was closed; he wasn’t sure how the baptism had exactly happened, and he didn’t care. There was a nurse with her, checking machines. She smiled at Theo. “You’re Daddy, right?”

“Yes.” He stared into the box that held his child. Small and oblong, so much like a coffin it turned his stomach. “Will she be okay?”

The nurse patted his hand where it lay on top of the isolette and then gave his fingers a squeeze. “She’s a tough little cupcake. She’s fighting already. We had to give her a little something to calm her down, because she doesn’t like all the fussing we’re doing. That’s a good sign. From what I hear, it sounds like she takes after her mama that way.”

Theo wondered what Carmen had done. But he knew her fire, and he smiled. “Can I touch her?”

“I can open it for just a minute, and you’ll need to put your mask and gloves on, but after that, for a little while, it’ll be best if you put your hands in through the sides. We need to keep her away from germs all we can. She’s got enough of a fight on her little hands without having an infection to deal with, too.”

He got gloved and masked, and the nurse did, too. Then she opened the isolette, and there was his little girl. Blinking away the tears that blurred his vision of her, he reached in and pressed his index finger into the palm of her wee hand, like a little pink shell. Her fingers closed around the tip of his finger immediately and held on. He could feel her strength in her grip, and his tears fell.

“I’m sorry, Daddy. I have to close her up now.” When he didn’t—couldn’t—pull away, the nurse laid her hand gently on his arm. “It’s not the last time she’ll hold your hand.”

He nodded and pulled away. When he broke the touch, Teresa opened her eyes and stared right at him. Her eyelids were swollen, too young yet to be in use, but Theo saw the eyes beneath them.

They were blue.

When the nurse closed the isolette, he saw the ID card on the end:

WELCOME BABY GIRL!

Teresa Joy Wilde

2lbs., 13 oz.

14 in.

30+1 ges.

Mother: Carmen Pagano Rm. 217

Father: Theo Wilde

Theo smiled. His girl.

His girls.

oOo



The waiting room beside the NICU nurses’ station was packed with Paganos. They had already organized, setting up a schedule so that Teresa and Carmen would not be alone. Theo had noticed the large men standing apart from the group, and recognized them as bodyguards. The thought that his daughter had been shot and needed a bodyguard on her first day of life made his blood boil.

When Teresa was strong enough to come home, she was coming home to Maine with him. Her mother was, too. He had no idea how he was going to make it happen, but he was taking his girls out of this place and settling them into his snug, safe woods.

He scanned the room for Luca but didn’t find him. He went to Eli and Rosa. “I want to see Carmen.”

Rosa answered. “I don’t think she’s awake yet.”

“I don’t care. I need to see her.”

She nodded. “Okay. We’ll take you.” She took his hand, and then Eli’s, and they walked three abreast down the hall.

There was another guard outside Carmen’s room, and another in the waiting room, where still more Paganos, including Carlo Sr. and Adele, sat. Eli and Rosa left him to go into the room alone.

She was sleeping, breathing on her own, only a cannula in her nose for a little help. A heart monitor and IV stand were the only machines she seemed to be attached to, though he could see a tube in her chest that seemed to be a drain.

Her skin was pallid, seeming nearly transparent, and the skin under her eyes had a bluish tinge. But she was still gloriously beautiful. He bent over the bed and kissed her cool, dry lips. Then he sat at the side of the bed and picked her limp hand up, lacing their fingers together.

She was going to be okay; they would both be okay. And she was coming to live in Maine with him. She and their daughter. There was a way; there had to be a way. Carmen would see that it was right; after this, she would see.

She had to. He would make her see.

He sat with her in the deepening dark as afternoon became evening. Her family came in in dribs and drabs, checking in and then leaving him to be with her. Despite their breakup and the drama and their recent acrimonious legal correspondence, they all seemed to have accepted that he belonged there—and more than that, that he had first privilege to be with her and with Teresa.

It occurred to him to wonder whether Carmen had been lucid and calm enough at some point to have given the information on Teresa’s crib card, or whether someone else had done so. But he didn’t care enough to ask. Teresa was named as she should be. He was her father.

Just as he was thinking he wanted to go to the NICU again and check on her, Carmen’s hand closed around his, and he stood up. “Carmen? Are you with me, beautiful girl?”

Her dark eyes opened, and she smiled. “Theo.”