I didn’t ask him directly. I’m not that person. Some things you wait for.
But around hour thirteen, when Baby Boy Nolan had been fed and changed and was sleeping again against that broad chest, Wade looked up and caught me watching.
He didn’t look embarrassed.
He said, “His name was Cody.”
I sat down in the chair next to him. The one families used.
“He was five weeks early,” Wade said. “Back in 2015. Hospital about three hours east of here.” He looked down at the baby. “There wasn’t a program like this one back then. No volunteers. His mama, she had some complications after. Couldn’t be there the first couple days.” He paused. “And I didn’t know how to ask if I could just sit with him. Thought they’d tell me to go wait in the hall.”
He rubbed his thumb, very gently, along the edge of the baby’s swaddle.
“So I waited in the hall.”
He said it without self-pity. Just stated it, the way you state a fact you’ve had nine years to get used to.
Cody had been in the NICU for eighteen days. He’d had a heart defect nobody caught early enough. He made it home. He had two years and four months of life, Wade said, and he was the kind of kid who laughed at everything, even the things that weren’t funny, especially those.
Wade stopped talking for a bit.
Then: “When I heard about this program, I thought, well. I know how to sit still. I know how to be quiet. Figured that counted for something.”
It counted for more than that. But I didn’t say it.
I just sat with him for a few minutes, the same way he was sitting with the baby.
