He turned onto the neonatal ICU ward and wasn’t surprised to find Jax standing outside the room, staring in the window. He expected Carly to be inside with the baby, then, if Jax was out in the hallway.

Jason stood next to the taller blond man and he could feel his eyes on him for a moment. He was surprised when Jax didn’t say anything, but instead turned back to the window where his son lay, always fighting for his life.

Inside, Courtney’s son lay in the incubator, tiny and breathing with the help of an oxygen machine. Carly, the only mother he would ever really know in his life, sat next to him on one of the hospital stools, her hands slipped inside the two holes in the incubator, holding his tiny hand with two of her fingers.

“She’s very dedicated to him,” Jax commented finally and Jason nodded. Carly seemed to have a soft sport for children, especially those she was close to and it was obvious that she was becoming close to John. Jason, admittedly, was impressed with the way that Carly had immediately vowed to be a mother figure to Courtney’s baby, but he worried about what this would mean when it came to Jax being the child’s father.

Carly looked up to the window and saw Jason standing next to Jax outside. She whispered to John that she would be back and walked outside, closing the door behind her. 

“Hey,” she said to him. “What are you doing here?”

Before Jason could answer, Jax excused himself to go to the cafeteria and asked Carly if she wanted anything. “No, thanks, I’m fine.”

Once Jax was on his way to the cafeteria, Jason answered, “I came to see how you’re doing. Sonny said you were spending a lot of time up here.”

“Yeah. I can’t seem to tear myself away from him for very long, you know.”

Jason did, and he nodded. Carly stepped closer to the glass to look in on her nephew.

“What about the boys?”

“I’ve brought them up to see him a couple of times, but he’s still so little that they can’t go in. Elizabeth brought a couple of stools out so they could watch him through the window better.” She waited a couple minutes before continuing. “They always want to know when we can bring him home.”

“How are they, you know, dealing with Courtney’s death?” Jason asked solemnly, in near disbelief at the words he’d been forced to say. [I]Courtney’s death.[/I]

Carly pursed her lips together tightly. “As well as I can expect. Morgan still asks about her; he’s still young enough that I don’t think he comprehends the full meaning of what we’re telling him.”

They stood in silence for a few moments, just watching the baby through the window. It seemed as if hours had passed before Carly spoke again. “Do you want to go in?”

Jason was startled by the question and he looked at her for a minute, trying to decipher whether she was serious or not and he saw that she was. He hadn’t even considered it, but now that Carly had proposed the idea, he found that yes, he would like to. “Sure.”

She walked inside to where the gauzy yellow paper gowns were and brought one to him. She helped him slip it on over his clothes and he went in, although tentatively. “What about Jax?”, he asked, giving the baby’s father a slight thought. Jax didn’t like him and he didn’t think that he would be happy with having Sonny’s right hand man in the same room with his baby, not to mention that he was Courtney’s ex-husband.

“Don’t worry about him, it’ll be fine,” Carly assured him and she motioned that she would be standing right outside, watching through the window. Jason nodded and then began to slowly walk towards the incubator the baby had been living in for the past few weeks of his life. He pulled the stool Carly had previously been sitting in closer to the baby and sat down.

He looked in, and the baby just lay there, breathing. His eyes were closed and he was still, aside from his chest moving up and down. He was tiny, so small and fragile looking that Jason almost convinced himself that the baby would break if he was touched. He remembered Micheal when he was a baby; he’d been small. Now, his dead ex wife’s child looked so innocent and as if he was a doll. But, Jason knew better than that; he was real and needed protecting from sickness and harm. Jason spotted the sink on the other side of the small NICU room and stood up. He went over to it and washed his hands; you couldn’t touch the baby without doing so.

After he was finished, he sat back down on the stool next to the incubator. He could feel Carly’s eyes on him whatever he did, but at the moment he dared not look out at her. Right now, inside this room, it was just him and the baby. He slipped his hand inside the hole in the incubator and found John’s own tiny hand. Jason’s fingers looked like giants compared to his, but he watched as Courtney’s son gripped his fingers tightly in his fist. He felt his heart swell at the gesture and he could feel tears start to well up in his eyes. He didn’t brush them away, though, not with Carly standing outside right now. The baby sighed and whined in his sleep for a moment and it sounded more like the squeak of a mouse.

“Hey,” Jason said quietly, in a voice that was almost lower than a whisper. What else could he say to Courtney’s baby? He barely talked to her in the last few months of her life and now here he was, visiting her baby after her death, the baby she’d given her life up for. “You probably won’t know me very well when you get older, but I knew your mom. Your dad doesn’t like me too much, though, so I don’t think I’ll get another chance to talk to you.” 

Jason stopped talking for a second and mustered up enough courage to look out at Carly. He expected to see Jax there next to her; hell, he expected him to burst in the door any minute and demand him to get away from his son. But he wasn’t and he didn’t, it was just Carly standing out there watching him. She nodded at him. He wondered if she could hear what he was saying. What could he say to John? He didn’t feel comfortable just sitting there, staring at him. He talked to Micheal all the time about Carly when she was away after he was born, why not try the same with John? 

He turned back to the baby inside the incubator. “Your mom and I were in love once,” he whispered. “That might surprise you to know, it might surprise anyone who didn’t know us then. Yeah, she dreamed of having you even then, all the time, I’m sure. We were going to have children one day, when…my job wouldn’t get in the way, when it would have been safe.” He paused for a moment and just watched the baby sleep before continuing. “I know your mom wanted you and loved you so much. I saw her the day she got the news…that her miracle was finally going to happen. She’d been told for years after the miscarriage that she wouldn’t be able to have children. And then, she got her wish.” 

Jason licked his lips and closed his eyes. He could still picture the way she looked that day, her smile lighting up her entire face, her eyes. He hadn’t seen her so happy in a long time. He smiled at the memory of her, probably his last, although before that moment there were hundreds, thousands of memories of her that were filed away in his mind. “Her whole face lit up; it glowed. Your mom had man happy moments, but I think that might have been her happiest. You made her happy, even before you were born.” 

Jason sat for a few moments wondering at his ability to ramble to babies. He’d been told numerous times that he was good with children, but he couldn’t explain how much he enjoyed being around them. Maybe because they actually seemed to listen to him. After relaying his memory of Courtney, Jason grew somber. “We had some happy times. But your mom deserved better than what I could give her and I knew it. I was selfish, though. I loved her so much and I stayed with her, even though I thought there was someone better out there for her. We broke up later, from complicated reasons that I won’t explain, and you probably wouldn’t understand if I did. Eventually, she was happy with your dad, or at least I thought so, I don’t know much about it.” 

He cleared his throat and continued. “That’s all in the past now, though. Your mom was a beautiful, strong person. And, I know she loved you, deeply, and her death proves it. She loved you more than she loved herself. And, I know it’s going to be hard for you when you get older, never knowing her, but you’ll have your dad and Carly to help you.” Jason paused for a few moments. John’s eyes opened briefly and Jason gently squeezed his fingers and grinned at him slightly. “And I will, too. Whenever you need me. Remember that, okay?”

Jason got up from the stool quickly and slipped out the door. Jax still wasn’t back but he’d spent enough time in there with the baby. He looked at Carly and said, “If he ever needs anything, let me know, Carly. I mean it. Anything” before walking down the hallway briskly. He paid attention to nothing on his way out and didn’t stop until he got to his SUV parked in the hospital parking lot.