The next morning, Dr. Harrison cleared Berlin to visit the NICU in a wheelchair.
Karlos was already at the hospital when the clearance came through. He appeared at the door of her room ten minutes after the doctor left.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Since yesterday," she said.
He pushed the wheelchair himself. He did not hand it to a nurse.
The NICU was its own kind of world.
Hope was in the incubator near the window.
Berlin had been preparing herself since she woke up.
Hope was so small it rearranged something permanent inside Berlin's chest. The smallest fists she had ever seen in her entire life, both lives combined. Her face was doing the complicated, cycling thing that every new-born baby did, moving through expressions too fast to name.
Berlin pressed her hand over her mouth.
"She looks like you," he said quietly.
"She has your chin," Berlin said in a whisper, trying not to make her cry.
"That is the most incorrect thing anyone has ever said."
