Part 3
“Yes,” she said. “We can take her.”
Erin did not answer immediately. She had been their caseworker long enough to recognize the sound of a decision made too fast.
“Mara, I’m asking whether you and Ben are willing to be considered when she is medically ready,” she said. “This is not an adoption referral. Her mother is alive. The current plan is temporary voluntary care while Ms. Reed recovers and moves into protected housing. Reunification is the goal.”
The front door opened downstairs. Ben’s work boots crossed the kitchen tile.
“I understand.”
“Does Ben?”
He appeared in the bedroom doorway in navy work pants, his sleeves rolled to the elbows. He repaired heating and cooling systems across three counties and carried the day home on him: metal dust at one cuff, a shallow cut across a knuckle, cold outside air caught in his jacket.
He looked from the crib sheet to Mara’s face.
“Put her on speaker,” he said.
Mara did, and Erin repeated the facts. Nora remained in intensive care and might not be discharged for several weeks. She could have feeding complications, lung injury, or developmental delays.
Alyssa had not been accused of abandoning her. She was cooperating with police and had agreed to a temporary safety plan because she was too ill to care for a medically vulnerable newborn alone.
“You can say no,” Erin finished. “Don’t say yes tonight and resent her three weeks from now.”
Ben rested one hand on the crib rail. “How soon do you need an answer?”
“Tomorrow morning. If Alyssa signs the hospital release and you’re open to it, we can ask the medical team to begin caregiver training. That is still not a placement guarantee.”
After the call ended, Mara folded the sheet once, then again, making the corners line up though they were meant to stretch.
“You said yes for me,” Ben said.
“A five-day-old baby was left beside a flooded culvert.”
“I heard Erin.”
“Then what are we arguing about?”
Ben rubbed his thumb over the old bite marks Eli had made in the crib rail during his first month with them. “You heard ‘no one else’ and answered for both of us. You did that with Eli too.”
Mara set the folded sheet inside the crib. “I loved him.”
“So did I. I also knew his grandmother was working to get him back.”
“And when she did, you went back to work the next morning like nothing happened.”
Ben’s jaw tightened. “I sat in my truck behind the middle school for two hours because I couldn’t remember why I’d driven there. You didn’t know because you never asked.”
The room seemed smaller with both of them inside it. Mara looked at the bins stacked against the wall, each label written in her own square handwriting. She had organized their grief because organizing was the only thing she knew how to do with it.
“Do you want to say no?” she asked.
“I need to know we can bring Nora here without deciding she’s ours.”
They did not decide that night. They ate reheated soup at the kitchen counter, talked until the words grew blunt with fatigue, and slept facing opposite directions.
At seven the next morning, Ben set two mugs of coffee on the table and called Erin himself.
“We’ll do the training,” he said. “And if Nora needs our house when she leaves the hospital, we’ll take care of her for as long as the plan says she needs us.”
Mara carried the unused crib sheet back to the dresser and shut it in the bottom drawer.
Before their first hospital visit, Alyssa signed a limited medical release with her advocate present. It named Mara and Ben as prospective discharge caregivers and allowed the neonatal team to train them and share the information they would need. It did not transfer custody or change the reunification plan.
At Great Lakes Children’s Hospital, Nora occupied one clear-sided bed in a room of six. She had graduated from a ventilator to a small breathing mask, though adhesive still marked both cheeks. A feeding tube ran beneath one nostril.
When she became agitated, she caught the edge of the thin hospital cloth in her fist and held on.
Mara learned to wash for two full minutes, to lift without pulling the monitor leads, and to recognize the small shoulder movement that came before Nora tired during a feeding. Ben learned the nurse’s paced-bottle rhythm faster than she did. He wrote down the pauses and positions anyway.
On their third visit, a nurse allowed Mara to place one hand around Nora’s head and the other over her diaper while the baby rested in the warmed bed.
Nora’s skin was no longer cold. The fact felt miraculous enough that Mara distrusted it.
Ben stood beside her, close but not touching. After a while, he began to hum under his breath, the same tuneless three notes he used while searching for tools in the garage.
Nora’s clenched hand loosened. Her fingers opened and closed around the tip of his little finger.
Ben looked away toward the monitor. Mara saw his throat move.
Erin arrived with a blue binder tucked beneath her arm. She waited until Ben had withdrawn his hand before placing it on the counter.
“This contains the medical training checklist and Alyssa’s hospital authorization,” she said. “The formal placement agreement comes later, if Nora is discharged to you. Her first supervised visit is scheduled for Friday.”
Ben opened the binder. Across the top page, in block letters, were the words REUNIFICATION PLAN: ALYSSA REED AND NORA REED.
He turned the binder so Mara could read it, then left his hand resting beside hers on the plastic counter…
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