They say five days isn’t much. That it’s only the beginning. But five days ago, I watched your body split open to save our daughters’ lives. You’re next to me now, walking so slowly it tears me up. The discharge papers are folded inside the bag I’m carrying—Florence Ivy and Lily Anne still upstairs in those tiny incubators, all tubes and wires and soft beeping sounds. Your hand rests in mine, warm and careful, as we shuffle across the hospital corridor. You lean into me slightly. I know it’s because walking still hurts.

My heart is splintering, slow and quiet like ice cracking on a pond. I squeeze your hand tighter, try to smile at the nurse who passes us. “We’ll be back soon,” I murmur. Mostly to myself. You nod gently. Calm. Steady. I don’t know how you do it, how you keep breathing through all this. You almost died. That’s not me being dramatic—it’s what the doctor said. Preeclampsia. One word and everything snapped out of our hands. At 33 weeks and five days, they cut you open while I held your cold hand and tried not to pass out..I saw them when they came out. Blue and tiny and furious. But alive. I fall in love with them every time I see them. Every squeaky breath. Every twitchy limb. They’re so small—God, they’re so small—and I keep thinking I’ll break them if I touch them too long. But then Florence grips my pinky like it’s the only thing anchoring her to this world, and I swear something inside me reshapes completely.

And now we’re leaving. Just for a few hours. Just a shower and a proper meal and back again. But it feels wrong. Leaving my girls behind like this—it’s not right. I’ve stayed every night since they were born, slept on the goddamn plastic chair next to you, climbed those stupid stairs to the NICU more times than I can count. They let me hold Lily yesterday and I cried right there in the rocker while a nurse pretended not to see.

We pass through the sliding doors and the sunlight feels like an offense. It’s too normal. Too bright. There should be clouds. Rain. Thunder. Something to mark the ache of this moment. You’re moving slowly beside me, arms tucked close around your middle. I can tell how much it hurts, but you don’t complain. You never do.

I catch a glimpse of our reflection in the glass: my skinny black jeans, faded tee, wild curls flattened under a bandana. Tattoos peeking from under my sleeves. I don’t look like a dad. I don’t look like someone who should be trusted with tiny humans who can’t breathe on their own yet. I look like what they all say I am—nineteen and reckless and still pretending not to be scared.

But I am. God, I am.

My throat burns and I know it’s coming before I can stop it. The tears. The ache. The pressure I’ve been swallowing since the moment they wheeled you into that theatre. It’s like a dam cracking. You let go of my hand so I can take the last steps down to the parking lot first. The air feels heavy and cold, even in the sun. I walk ahead and drop the bag to the ground. I can’t.

I sink onto the bench. The one by the hospital entrance. The metal is warm from the sun but I barely feel it. My elbows drop to my knees. Hands clasped. Forehead pressed to my knuckles. And then I’m crying. Like actually crying. Not the quiet, controlled kind—this is the messy, stupid, chest-heaving kind that makes my nose run and my eyes sting. My shoulders shake and I let them. For once, I don’t try to hold it in. I just think about their tiny feet. The sound of the oxygen machine. How Lily opened one eye yesterday and looked at me like she already knew me.

How we’re going home without them.

“I can’t do this,” I whisper, voice cracking like it’s been held together with tape and I’ve finally ripped it off. “I can’t leave them. I don’t know how to walk away from my babies like this.” It comes out choked and helpless, and my hands grip my hair like that’ll somehow ground me. My throat’s on fire and the tears just won’t stop. “They need us, and I—I need them, too.”