The baby’s skin was cold, mottled blue. Premature, maybe only a few hours old. I checked her vitals — weak but present. “She needs hospital care immediately,” I told him.
“I’m not letting her out of my sight,” he growled. And he meant it. When the medics arrived, he climbed into the ambulance without asking permission.
At St. Mary’s, he refused to leave the neonatal ward. When security suggested he step out, he folded his arms and said he’d wait outside the door until the baby was safe.
The consultant, Dr. Ramirez, eventually told us the girl was stable. Around thirty-one or thirty-two weeks’ gestation, exposed to drugs, but fighting. “She’ll go into care once discharged,” the doctor added.
“No,” Ox said firmly. “She’s not going into the system. She’s coming with me.”
The staff raised their eyebrows. He was a sixty-something biker, unmarried, with a record that included more than a few arrests. But he wouldn’t back down. “I lost a daughter to leukaemia when she was three,” he explained. “I told her I’d look after other kids. I failed that promise for decades. I’m not failing it again.”