Susan pulled out another crisp sheet of paper. “There is something else you urgently need to know.” The entire atmosphere in the room shifted. “What is it?” “Julian was born with a heart murmur. Cardiology is still running several tests. In infants with his specific condition, there can often be cardiac complications. It might not be life-threatening. It might just require some routine treatment. But we desperately need your legal authorization to run more specific diagnostics.”

I felt the plastic chair practically disappear beneath me. “Is my baby sick?” “He is currently being closely evaluated.” “Why didn’t a single person tell me this?”

Susan looked at me with a heavy gravity that left me totally defenseless. “Because you left.”

The brutal phrase shattered between us like a dropped glass. I buried my face back into the knitted blanket. It smelled exactly like my house. Like baby soap. Like everything I had painstakingly prepared for him and completely lacked the courage to actually live. “I want to sign the papers,” I stated. “Absolutely anything. The diagnostic tests, the legal revocation, whatever it takes. I just want to be with him.” “We need to do everything strictly by the book.” “Then do it by the book, but please do not take him away from me.”

Susan went completely silent for a few agonizing seconds. “Nobody in this building wants to rip a child away from a mother who actively decides to stay. But I need you to deeply understand something: just coming back today is not enough. You have to willingly come back tomorrow. And the day after that. When he’s screaming crying, when he gets a high fever, when you haven’t slept in three days, when some ignorant stranger says something incredibly cruel to you on the sidewalk. Are you actually staying?”

The honest answer came from a hidden place deep inside me I didn’t even know existed. “Yes.” “Even if you honestly have no idea how?” “I will learn.” “Even if you desperately need to ask for help?” “I will ask for it.” “Even if you feel deeply ashamed?”

I pulled in a long, deep breath. I thought about my metal prosthetic. The lingering stares. The muttered “poor thing” whispers. The long years of aggressively pretending I didn’t need a single person just to stubbornly prove I was worthy. “Even if I feel deeply ashamed,” I swore. “But I am absolutely never leaving him again.”

Susan held my intense gaze. Then she firmly pushed the legal paper across the table toward me. “Then let’s get started.”

I signed my name with a violently shaking hand, but this time around, it genuinely felt like my own hand. When we finally walked back over to the neonatal nursery, my legs didn’t feel nearly as weak. Julian was miraculously still awake. Nurse Brenda pushed the heavy door open and pointed to the sink for me to scrub my hands. I washed them with an absurd level of intense concentration, exactly as if every single drop of soap and water was slowly handing me back a stolen piece of my own motherhood

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