“Or a beach.”

“He doesn’t deserve to be here.”

I did not answer him because I knew he was right.

Landon and Patricia were somewhere off the coast, enjoying the ocean breeze.

They had my phone.

They had my car keys.

They had locked me inside a house with a dying three-day-old infant.

A young nurse with purple scrubs and a silver stethoscope around her neck walked out.

“Marissa?” she called out gently.

I looked up, my vision blurry from the tears.

“You can come back now,” she said.

“He is settled in the PICU.”

Arthur stood up instantly and began pushing my wheelchair.

We walked through the double doors and down a long, quiet hallway.

The walls were painted with pastel cartoon animals, a stark contrast to the dread in my chest.

We stopped outside a glass-walled room labeled Room 4.

Inside, Rowan looked impossibly small in the center of a large plastic crib.

A thick plastic tube was taped to his mouth, connected to a blue ventilator hose.

Wires ran from his chest to a monitor displaying colored lines that bounced up and down.