The roads were slick with freezing rain by the time Ethan got me to Riverside General.
I remember the burn of antiseptic, the bright lights, the pressure in my back, the nurse fastening monitors with quick practiced hands.
One baby’s heart rate dipped.
Then the other.
The room changed.
More people came in.
Somebody said emergency cesarean.
I remember Ethan in blue scrubs beside me, his face pale above the mask.
I remember a doctor telling me to stay calm.
I remember Margaret somehow already in the hallway when they wheeled me past, standing with her purse tucked under one arm like she had arrived for a committee meeting instead of a crisis.
The anesthesia pulled me under in waves.
I drifted in and out of sound.
Metal.
Instructions.
Footsteps.
Pressure without pain.
And
then, so clear I thought I had imagined it later, I heard a baby cry.
Then another.
I tried to lift my head.
Someone pressed a hand to my shoulder and told me to breathe.
When I woke up fully, the room was dim and too quiet.
My stomach felt hollow in the deepest possible way.
Ethan sat in a chair near the bed with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.
He looked wrecked.
I asked where the babies were.
He looked up like he had aged ten years in an hour.
Before he could answer, Margaret stepped in from the doorway.
‘I am so sorry,’ she said, and even half-drugged, I knew something terrible had happened.
She told me there had been complications.
She told me the girls had not made it.
She told me the staff had done everything they could.
