I see it in your Eyes (you'll be alright)

Chapter 16

Ella held on tightly to Jennie's hand the entire way to the NICU whilst Lisa walked along behind them pushing Jennie through the large hospital hallways. It smelled strongly of disinfectant and the walls were lined with large tubs of hand sanitizer that smelled so strongly it almost resembled gasoline. Ella insisted on stopping and squirting some into her hands every single time that they passed one, and Jennie was sure that her kid had the cleanest hands in the whole entire world by the time the three of them reached the NICU.

"Hey, they told me that you guys would be heading down here." one of the nurses appeared as they all entered the ward through the large double doors. "I hear congratulations are in order." she smiled as she bent down to Ella's level and extended a hand out to shake hers. "Congratulations on being a big sister, I'm sure you'll do an amazing job."

"I will! I'll be so good I'll read her stories and she can have some of my toys, but not the jigsaw puzzles just in case she loses any pieces, that wouldn't be good. She can even share my glitter pens!" Ella exclaimed excitedly as they all laughed.

"Well, that sounds like a pretty awesome big sister to me." the nurse told her happily before standing up and turning her attention to Jennie and Lisa. "If it's okay with you guys, we usually brief the younger kids before we take them inside just to give them a better idea of what to expect so that they don't get frightened or upset by all of the wires and machines and everything attached to the baby."

"Oh yeah that's fine." Lisa told her as she wrapped an arm around Ella and they all followed the nurse through to a little side room.

Lisa rolled Jennie over beside the seat that she herself was going to sit on and Ella clambered onto her lap with commentary from Lisa, reminding her to be very careful and gentle. The nurse spent a little time talking Ella through a couple of different things in simpler terms so that she would be able to understand it all, she even had little cards with cartoon pictures on them so that Ella could visualize what she was saying and Jennie felt extremely relieved by the end of it all. She hadn't even considered half of the things that the nurse was saying until she said it, she didn't realize how seemingly scary the NICU could be for a little kid, if she was being honest she herself found it a little intimidating, but she was beyond confident that Ella would handle it all like a complete champ.

Once she was successfully prepped and the nurse was confident that she was ready to meet the baby, Lisa took Ella to wash her hands, not that it was exactly necessary considering the amount of hand sanitizer that she had used on the way here, but Jennie figured they were better safe than sorry. When the two of them returned, Jennie, with a little of Lisa's help, slowly climbed out of the wheelchair so that the three of them could walk into Evie's room all together.

It was still painful for her, but she was heavily encouraged by her doctors and nurses to walk around as much as she possibly could to help aid her recovery so Jennie did as she was told, willing to try whatever it took to get her back to a place where she was able to function somewhat normally again. Ella held on super tightly to her hand, encouraging her every few steps as she tried to guide Jennie down the hallway.

"Careful mommy, careful. Not too fast, careful. Good mommy, that's good." she mumbled as her brows furrowed in concentration, putting all of her focus into Jennie's every move as they walked while everyone suppressed giggles.

When they arrived outside Evie's room, Lisa gently opened the door, holding it open for Jennie and Ella to step inside first before closing it again behind her. Jennie's stomach was in knots as she made her way fully into the room and settled down in one of the big leather chairs beside Evie's incubator as Ella followed right behind her, suddenly closing in on herself a little as she all but buried herself into Jennie's side the second that she was sitting down.