The night passed in three-hour increments of waking, feeding, and checking the blue plastic bands on my sons’ wrists. I had never known quiet could hold so many distinct sounds, from the dry rattle of the heater in the corner of Room 402 to the rhythmic click of the saline drip.
The room smelled of hospital antiseptic and the sharp, clean scent of the sheets the night nurse had changed before the shift rotation. A thin band of yellow light from the hallway crept under the door, casting a long, narrow shadow across the gray linoleum floor.
By eight o’clock the next morning, the fog of the anesthesia had lifted, leaving a cold, sharp ache in my lower abdomen that made even shifting my pillows a chore.
Nurse Clara, a tall woman with quiet eyes and a faded blue scrub top, wheeled the triple bassinets closer to the left side of my bed. The plastic wheels squeaked against the polished tile, a small, domestic sound that made the white walls feel slightly less sterile.
Noah’s blanket had tiny blue stars, Leo’s had green stripes, and Samuel’s was solid white because the nursery had run out of patterned ones. They were small, but their breathing was steady, the monitors showing green lines that rose and fell in unison.
