Chapte Fou teen
KENDALL
By the time September rolls around I’m five months pregnant and the city
feels crisp and alive. Inside the stadium, the medical wing is quiet; the boys
are on the ice and I’ve got a rare half hour to catch up on charts, a heating
pad wedged between my chair and my back trying to find some relief.
A knock pulls my attention from the screen.
“Doc?” Aleksi nudges the door with his shoulder and steps in, all damp
hair and grin, a big brown shipping box hugged to his chest. Customs tape,
crooked air-mail stickers, and large letters stamped along one side in blue.
My heart does a stupid sprint. “Please tell me you didn’t order me another
ergonomic footrest shaped like a hockey puck.”
“Better.” His smile widens. “From my mom.”
He sets the box on my desk. I try to play it cool, but my fingers are
already under the packing tape.
“Wait.” He catches my wrist, gentle. “Open slow.”
It’s ridiculous, but I do. Each fold of cardboard peels back like a curtain
and the sweetest scent slips out. It smells like pine and baby powder and
something milky-sweet and unfamiliar.
My throat tightens without warning.
On top, cushioned in tissue, are booties hand-knit in cream and a pale
sky-blue that makes my throat clog with emotion.
“She knit those herself,” he says quietly. “She makes a lot of them and
donates them to the NICU at the local hospital, for the premature babies.
She wanted our baby to have a pair too.”
My thumbs trace over the tiny booties, the yarn impossibly soft beneath
my fingers. It’s more like cashmere than wool. The kind of soft that makes
you want to cuddle up to it and feel it against your cheek.
It’s hard to even imagine he’ll ever be this small… especially looking at
the giant father that he shares half his DNA with. I try to picture a foot that
tiny. Our son’s foot.
“She made these for him?” I ask.
“Yeah.” His smile is full of pride. “She wanted him to have something
from her… something made with love. My father is the reason I thrived, but
my mother is the reason I survived… being the fragile twin and all. I was in
the NICU for a while when I was born. That’s when she started the knitting
habit.”
Beneath them, there’s a small bottle of baby lotion with a label I can’t
pronounce. Probably written in Finnish or Swedish. It has a soft green print
and a forest of little line-drawn trees. I uncap it and that scent rises again.
It’s a mix of pine needles crushed between fingers, vanilla dust, and
something almost clean that I can’t pinpoint.
There’s tea, too—two little muslin sachets tied with string, the tags
handwritten. One says: for mama’s nerves, the other saying: helps with milk
supply. Breast feeding, something I hadn’t quite thought of, but of course
Aleksi’s mom would think of it. The nurturing kind of woman. The kind of
woman I could learn so much from. A woman polar opposite from the
mother I came from. And tucked under everything, folded three times —a
letter in careful, wobbly English.
For the brave doctor and our grandbaby– You take care of my Aleksi, so
we take care of you. We already love you. Please be healthy and happy.
Love, Leena Mäkelin.
The room tilts. I press my palm to the paper like it could steady me.
“She doesn’t even know me,” I whisper, which is only half of what I
mean. What I mean is: my own mother never remembered my birthday,
abandoned me more times than I can count, and yet this woman halfway
across the world is sending me a forest and a future in a box, telling me that
she already loves me.
“She knows enough,” he says softly. “You take care of me. And you’re the
mother of her second grandchild. That’s all she needs to know to love you.”
I swallow, because if I speak I might break in two. I try to turn away, old
reflex, but he’s already there, closing the distance.
“Hey.” His voice goes velvet-soft, hands warm on my upper arms. “You
okay?”
I nod, but my face does the opposite. “Your mom—this is—” I have to
stop. Breathe. Try again. “I’ve never had a mother like this. Not even when
I needed it most. You’re really lucky Aleksi.”
He doesn’t say anything. He just stays. That’s somehow worse and better
all at once.
“Come here,” he murmurs.
It feels natural to fold into him. Like we’ve been doing this for years. His
sweatshirt smells like him, a smell that I now associate with safety and
patience. My forehead finds the hollow at his sternum; his chin brushes my
hair. The baby shifts, low and curious, like he knows his dad is close.
“He kicked last night,” I say into his shirt, because I want to give him
something for showing up like this. “Twice. Like little bubbles.”
Aleksi stills. “He did?” The joy in his voice unties something inside me.
I reach for his hand and guide it to the side of my belly. “He might be shy
now, but…”
We wait. The clock ticks softly over the sink. Somewhere down the hall,
an ice machine groans to life. Then… there. The faintest nudge, like a
fingertip from the inside.
His breath catches. “Hei, pikkuinen,” he whispers. “It’s your papa.”
The word hangs between us. Papa. It slips under my defenses and finds
the emptiest places. I turn my face so I can see him. There are damp
crescents at the corners of his eyes he’s trying to pretend aren’t there.
“Fragile twin, huh?” I manage. “Hard to believe now.”
He grins crookedly. “I’m the product of parents who wouldn’t let me give
up. We’ll do the same for him. No matter what,” he says, his eyes on me.
“You’re going to be a great mother, Doc.’
Something inside me caves cleanly.
I didn’t realize I needed to hear it. Even more than that, I didn’t know I
needed to hear him, of all people, believe it to be true.
I
press the lotion bottle to my nose again and that scent—pine and
powder and whatever that Finnish magic is—pulls up a thousand hospital
corridors and lonely rooms and uncelebrated birthdays and scrubs in
fluorescent light… and erases them, just for a moment.
“This—” I start, and can’t finish. This is what a mother does. This is what
family feels like. This is what safe is.
He doesn’t rush me. He just lets the silence cradle us both.
When the tears finally run their course, I swipe my face with the heel of
my hand and try to pretend I haven’t soaked the front of his sweatshirt.
“Sorry. Mood swings. Second trimester’s a riot.”
“I like all your moods,” he says simply. Then, to my belly, like it’s a
secret, “Even the ones that make you hungry at three in the morning.”
I snort-laugh. “That happened once.”
“Twice,” he corrects, dimples out. “I was there for one and the Uber
receipt says the other.”
I roll my eyes, but it’s useless; the smile is already spreading. “You’re
impossible.”
“Mm,” he agrees, bright and unbothered. He glances at the clock. “You
have patients this hour?”
“Not for another forty minutes.”
“Then sit,” he says, guiding me to the narrow trainer’s couch along the
wall. “Feet up. Doctor’s orders.” He lifts a brow. “I’m a doctor-by-proxy.”
“Thank your mother for me, will you?” I ask as he gently props up my
feet.
“I will. I have to get back to practice. I’ll check on you later?”
I nod, and then he heads for the door.
“Thank you Aleksi.” I call after him just as he stands in the doorway.
He turns and looks over his shoulder at me. His full stature eating up the
doorway. “For what?”
“For giving me more than I thought was possible.”
His eyes lock onto mine. “I just got started, Kendall. I promise… this is
just a warm up.
