Chapter 86 The Smallest Fighter
Valentina
The NICU felt like another world.
I followed the nurse’s directions down the pristine hallway, my shoes quiet against the floor, my heart anything but. A soft chime sounded as I approached the double doors, and another nurse stepped out to greet me.
“You’ll need to scrub in,” she said gently. “And put on a sterile gown, gloves, and a cap.”
I nodded and moved to the sink, washing my hands until they stung from the water temperature and nerves. The gown felt thin, like paper armor, but I tied it anyway—because someone had to show up for that baby. Someone had to give a shit.
Once cleared, I stepped inside.
The room was hushed, lit by the faint blue of monitors and the rhythmic pulses of machines keeping fragile little lives tethered to this world. There were several incubators, each one with a tiny body inside, but I found her immediately.
She was smaller than I expected.
Delicate.
Bathed and wrapped, her skin still held that faint reddish tint of the freshly born. A nurse was fastening a tiny diaper over her barely-there belly while the doctor adjusted a tube and murmured instructions to another tech.
An IV was already threaded into the back of her hand.
Wires trailed from her chest to the heart monitor.
A pulse oximeter blinked red on her foot.
Another nurse carefully secured a feeding tube down her throat—and then came the hardest part: the intubation.
I stood there frozen, helpless, watching as they guided the breathing tube in. Her chest hitched once, and the machine took over with a low, steady hiss.
It was like watching someone drown and be resuscitated at the same time.
“Is she… is she okay?” I asked, barely recognizing my own voice.
The doctor glanced up, then nodded slowly. “She’s going to be just fine.”
I stepped a little closer.
“At thirty-seven weeks gestation,” he continued, “about seventy percent of babies’ lungs are fully developed. She’s just having a bit of trouble catching up—pretty common for late preemies.”
He checked her vitals again, adjusting a knob on the ventilator.
“She needs help breathing, so we’ve started her on oxygen support and just gave her a steroid shot to help her lungs mature more quickly. The goal now is to slowly reduce how much the machine does for her. Each day, we’ll scale back the assistance and see how her lungs respond.”
“How long will she be here?”
“It depends on her,” he said gently. “Some babies come off the vent in a few days. Others take two or three weeks. There’s no set timeline—only how strong she is and how much she fights.”
I swallowed hard and nodded.
Then he added, “But I’ll tell you this—babies fight harder when someone’s here for them. Even though she can’t be held yet, having someone nearby makes a difference. They hear you. They feel you. So if you can sit with her… talk to her… that helps more than you think.”
I blinked back the sting in my eyes and looked at the baby.
Her chest rose and fell with the machine’s rhythm.
Her tiny fingers curled around nothing.
And yet, somehow, she was still here. Still fighting.
She wasn’t mine.
She wasn’t my problem.
But I was here. And maybe that was enough for now.
I pulled the small chair closer and sat down beside her incubator, the wires and tubes making her look more like a fragile experiment than a newborn.
“Hey, little one,” I whispered, my voice barely above a breath. “I’m here.”
I didn’t know her name.
I didn’t know if Arianna would ever bother to give her one.
But I knew this.
She wouldn’t be alone.
Not while I had anything to say about it.
My phone buzzed.
Matteo:
You ready to grab dinner? We’ve all been here for hours and everyone’s starving.
I glanced at the baby again—tiny, intubated, her chest rising with the machine’s breath—and typed back:
Me:
Yeah. Just walking out now.
I stood, gave her one last look, then slipped out of the NICU, peeling off the gown and gloves in the designated disposal bin. The hallway was quieter now. Fewer footsteps. Dimmer lights.
I retraced my path toward Arianna’s room, only I wasn’t entirely sure which one was hers. The numbers blurred together—some combination of 324 or 326 or 328. They all looked the same. Wood grain doors, quiet lighting, and soft beige walls trying to convince you this was a luxury hotel instead of a place where people screamed and bled and died.
I paused outside a room I thought was hers, knocked lightly, and pushed the door open.
The room was dim, shades drawn.
No monitors.
No IV beeping.
No Arianna.
But there was sound.
Flesh slapping flesh.
Breathless panting.
And then I saw it.
A nurse bent over the patient bed, hands braced on the mattress, scrubs around her ankles, and a man driving into her from behind like it was the only thing keeping him alive.
“Oh my God—I’m so sorry, I thought this was someone else’s room—”
The man’s head turned lazily over his shoulder, sweat-damp curls clinging to his forehead.
Luca.
He sighed, utterly unbothered, and slowly pulled out of the nurse, who looked more annoyed by the interruption than embarrassed. His cock—still half-hard—hung out for a second too long before he tucked it back in with unhurried fingers, meeting my eyes like he was waiting for a reaction.
Was he… showing it off?
Jesus.
No comparison to Matteo. Not even in the same league. Not in length, not in girth, not in energy. Matteo had authority. Luca just looked like a bored frat boy who faked his way through a marathon and called it a sprint.
I stood there frozen.
Half horrified.
Half just stunned that he didn’t give a single fuck.
By the time my brain caught up with my body, Luca had already crossed the room. He grabbed me by the throat and shoved me against the wall, fingers digging into the sides of my neck hard enough to make me gasp.
“Why the fuck,” he growled, his face inches from mine, “are you always cock-blocking me?”