Lily looked satisfied. She held the rabbit closer and announced that the next rocket would need a hospital room for emergencies. Jack smiled, but the comment stayed with him. His daughter was already trying to make sense of a frightening experience by imagining how she would protect somebody else from it.
The weeks after the equipment was removed were not all easy. Lily needed physical therapy to regain strength, occupational therapy to help her manage tasks that had suddenly become tiring, and regular assessments to understand how well her heart was recovering. Some mornings she worked enthusiastically with the therapists. Other mornings she cried because sitting on the edge of the bed felt harder than running through the backyard used to feel.
Jack learned not to praise every effort as a victory when Lily was simply tired and angry. Sometimes he held her hand and said the situation was unfair because it was. Sometimes he made up ridiculous stories about Commander Flops training for a mission to Neptune. When she complained that he was treating her like a baby, he listened and asked what she wanted to do herself. The answer changed from day to day, and he tried to let it.
Claire watched this change with quiet respect. The father she first met had seemed determined to protect his daughter from every possible hurt, as though enough vigilance could make the world harmless. Now he sat beside a child who sometimes wanted to do things he could not do for her, allowing her the dignity of struggling without rushing to take the struggle away. He still worried, still asked careful questions, and still looked exhausted after difficult days. But he had become better at giving Lily room to recover on her own terms.
Near the end of February, Lily moved out of intensive care to a step-down pediatric unit. Her new room had a smaller collection of monitors, a chair that folded into a bed, and a window overlooking a courtyard where the snow had begun to melt. Jack stood in the doorway while nurses helped settle her belongings. The move should have made him happy. Instead, he felt an unexpected surge of panic at leaving the room where so many people had worked so hard to keep her alive.
Leah found him standing beside the old bed twelve, now stripped of sheets and waiting for its next patient. "It's strange, isn't it?" she said. "You spend so long wanting to leave a room, and then leaving feels like stepping off a cliff."
Jack nodded. "I know every sound in here. Every alarm, every person coming in. I don't know what I'll do when I can't see all the numbers."
"You learn a different kind of watching," Leah replied. "And you let Lily be a girl instead of a monitor. It takes practice."