Our Perfect Imperfections - Jolex

Chapter 5

15 hours later

Jo's POV

beep, beep, beep...

I felt how I was now able to open my eyes. The lights were so bright, so it took me a few seconds to get used to it. I saw Alex, whose head was laying on my bed. I was looking around and realized I was in a hospital bed. My mouth felt dry and my stomach hurt. Wait. What happened? I suddenly had to cough. Alex rose his head and I could literally see the relief in his eyes. He stood up and came closer to me.
"Jo, I'm so glad you're awake." he kissed me softly on the cheek.
"What-what happened?" I couldn't talk properly because my mouth was still dry.
"You passed out.", he said with his voice shaking.
"Am I....is everything okay?" The first thing I thought of was our baby, not knowing if Alex knew.
"You're stable", he said.
"And-"
"And our baby? About which I didn't know and probably wouldn't know now if it wasn't the reason you passed out?", he said with a slightly angry but also worried and hurt voice, looking deeply into my eyes which I felt filling with tears. I waited for him to say that they tried everything they could and that it was too early for the baby to survive. I was only in my 6 1/2 months...
"She's alive. But nothing's stable yet." He held my hand and squeezed it.
"A girl...?" I started crying with a mixture of laugh and pain. I was an emotional mess.
"I'm so sorry, Alex. I was going to tell you. I just didn't feel ready and I didn't know if you were ready", I told him, tears still running down my cheeks.
"You didn't know if we could raise a baby, right? You didn't know if two people with messy lives could give a child what we never had? You didn't know if you were good enough as a mother and I were good enough as a father. You didn't know if we'd screw up or not... I understand that, Jo, I do. But remember what I told you in the restaurant? We can do this. Together we can." After Alex was done, he turned around and left. I started to heavily cry again and screamed "Alex! Wait!"
"I'll be back in a second", he said with a slight smile.
A few minutes later he came back with a wheel chair. I smiled because I knew what he wanted to do. He helped me up and drove me to the NICU.
We just stood in front of that, our, tiny human for about an hour. Squeezing our hands. Watching her little heart beat, and her tiny body being connected to wires that were twice as thick as her fingers. We cried and smiled and prayed. I felt like a mother in that moment and it felt good. The worst thing was that we had no control over our child. We couldn't help her, we could just watch her and pray for her to survive.
"We should give her a name. She deserves it", Alex said.
"What about Sarah? It means princess." I smiled at him.
"It's beautiful! I also like Louisa. Sarah Louisa?"
I grinned, nodded, stood up, leaned my head against his chest and we just stood there, staring at our baby.