Page 252 of Mile High Ruin

“He will grow.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I told him.”

I look up at him through tears. “You told our premature baby to grow?”

“Yes.”

“And did he agree?”

“He moved one finger.”

“That’s not agreement.”

“It’s close enough for now.”

The nurse smiles. I cry and laugh at the same time, and then she helps me reach through the incubator opening so I can touch my son’s hand. His fingers twitch against mine, barely there, and I feel something inside me settle in a place fear has occupied for months.

“My baby,” I whisper.

Vadim says nothing, but when I look back, his eyes are fixed on our son with an expression I don’t think anyone outside this room would recognize.

He is afraid.

He is in love.

He has no idea what he’s doing.

For once, neither do I.

The next few days pass in hospital time, which doesn’t feel like normal time at all.

I sleep in short stretches. Nurses check me constantly. Doctors come and go. Vadim handles calls in the corridor and returns before I can properly miss him. He brings updates about Ethan, about the baby, about everything else, and he delivers them in a practical tone that helps more than excessive reassurance would.

We name the baby Leonid Ethan Mercer Chernovar on the third day.

Vadim says that’s not how names work.

I say it is how this one works.

We compromise only after Ethan, from his own hospital bed, weakly says that if we keep arguing over names, the baby will grow old enough to choose one himself.

Ethan improves slowly after Vadim brings in more specialists. Not magically, not in a way that makes everything easy, but enough that the fear sitting in my chest loosens little by little. He gets more color in his face. He jokes more. He asks to see pictures of Leonid constantly, and every time I show him one, he says something rude about how the baby looks like a tiny angry businessman.

Vadim is offended every time.

This doesn’t stop Ethan.

Anya and Nadia come to see me on the fourth day. Anya walks in holding Boris under one arm and a paper bag in the other, looking far too serious for a child visiting a maternity ward.

“Is the baby still in the glass box?” she asks.

“Incubator,” Nadia corrects softly.

Anya nods. “The glass box.”

“He is,” I say.