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hand.
    Mom guides the wheelchair toward the bed and helps me into it. When she bends down to ease my feet onto the footrest, I notice streaks of gray running through her hair. I smooth them down. Suddenly I don’t want to see time passing.
    “She’s a fighter, Rose. Like you.” Mom looks at me as if I’ve accomplished something great, instead of merely surviving.
    They wheel me out of ICU and to the neonatal intensive care unit. Mom pushes me to a double sink next to the doors. Several plastic scrub brushes are stacked in a cabinet over the sink.
    Lily grabs three of the brushes and hands them out. “Make sure you get under your fingernails,” she says as she shows me how to squirt soap onto the sponge and lather every inch of my hands.
    She’s fast, scrubbing her hands with the brush, then scraping under her nails with a tiny plastic file. She counts as she works, and I mouth the numbers with her. We stop at thirty-two.
    Lily blots her hands with a paper towel, and then dries mine for me. When we finish, Mom wheels me down an aisle lined with cube pods, each of which houses a baby in a plastic bubble. It looks like something from a science-fiction movie. Quilts in bright colors—orange, pink, and purple—cover the bubbles.
    “There are so many.” I whisper, afraid of disturbing the babies. I had expected crying, but other than the beeping monitors, the room is silent. Nurses bend over babies. Some of them sing. Some stroke tiny feet or hands. Others adjust IVs and oxygen sensors.
    Lily turns down an almost-empty row and stops next to a bubble draped in an orange quilt. A round nurse dressed in SpongeBob scrubs pushes buttons on a monitor. She looks up when we enter. “Is this Mom?” she asks.
    Mom. Hearing that startles me. I need to grow into the word.
    “We’ve been waiting for you.” The nurse adjusts something on the monitor and writes the displayed numbers on her palm. Then she folds the orange quilt down, opens a curved plastic door on the bubble, and I see my daughter for the first time.
    She is tiny, so small she looks more like a doll than a baby. She is asleep, lying on her stomach. Her hands are balled into fists. A purple plaid hat covers her head, but a fine mist of hair pokes out from under it. Blonde, like mine. I touch the tips of my hair and smile.
    Other than the hat, a diaper, and booties on her feet she is naked. “Can I touch her?” I ask the nurse.
    “Just slide your hand into the isolet. She’s having a little trouble regulating her body temperature today. It’s been low, so she needs to stay in there, but she’ll know you’re here.”
    I run my fingers along her back. At my touch, she sighs and moves her head to nuzzle my hand. I melt.
    “We took her off oxygen this morning. She’s been fine.”
    I nod as if the words mean something, but I’m only half listening. I’m too busy studying the eggshell pearl of my daughter’s fingernails, and her toes, which look like tiny peas.
    “She knows you,” Lily says.
    “How can you tell?”
    “She hasn’t reacted this way to anyone else. She normally doesn’t move much, even when someone touches her. I’ve never seen her lean into anyone. Have you, Mom?”
    “Never,” Mom says softly. I hear pride in her voice.
    My baby’s eyelids flicker. I lean forward, hoping for a glimpse. “Has she opened her eyes yet?”
    The three women glance at each other. “Once,” Mom says.
    I take in their glances. “What is it? What’s wrong?” A list of problems flash through my mind. Blind. Missing eyes. Cataracts.
    “Nothing. Her eyes are unusual. That’s all.”
    “Can she see?” I ask the nurse.
    She nods. “We think so. Some preemies have vision problems because of the oxygen, but we don’t think that’s the case with her.”
    Lily says exactly the right thing. “Her eyes are just an unusual color. They’re not dark blue. They’re pale blue, like cornflowers.”
    “Like yours, Rose, when you were a baby,” Mom says.
    I run