After 10 years of trying, I woke from my C-section to meet our twin girls—but my husband was gone and wouldn’t answer his phone. “You really don’t know why he left?” my doctor asked. Then a visitor arrived with an envelope—and I decided she and Andrew needed to face me together.
“The long phone charger,” I said, perched on the edge of the bed with both hands on my belly. “I didn’t pack it.”
“Side pocket.” Andrew knelt by the hospital bag. “Charger, slippers, that lavender lotion you pretend you don’t love.”
“I didn’t pack it.”
“Socks?”
“Two pairs. The fuzzy ones.” He zipped the pocket, then pulled something from under the clothes, grinning like a kid. “And this. For afterward.”
It was my caramel-filled chocolate bar. The gold wrapper crinkled in his fingers, and I laughed so hard the girls kicked.
“And this. For afterward.”
“You’re ridiculous,” I said.
“I’m prepared. There’s a difference.”
His phone buzzed on the dresser.
He glanced at the screen, and his shoulders sank a little. “It’s Mom.”
His phone buzzed
He put her on speaker.
“Andrew, darling, I’ve been thinking,” she said, her voice sweet as cough syrup. “I’ll come stay after the discharge. Someone has to help properly.”
“Thanks, Mom, but Helen’s already coming. She’ll be with us the whole recovery. It’s all settled.”
A pause.
“Someone has to help properly.”
“Helen,” his mother said. “Well. How lovely for Helen.”
“Mom.”
“I only meant it’s lovely. Call me the second anything happens. I am the grandmother, after all.”
The line clicked off.
I stared at the phone.
“Mom.”
“Is she upset?”
“That was Mom being Mom,” Andrew said, rubbing the back of his neck.
I let it go. It was our day.
***
Later, when the bag was by the door and my coat was on, he went quiet.
“Is she upset?”
He stood in the nursery doorway, looking at the two white cribs he’d built with his own hands.
“Can I say something dumb?” he asked.
“Only smart things allowed today.”
“Ten years.” He swallowed. “All those needles. All those waiting rooms. The doctors said it plain, you know. It was me. My numbers.”
He went quiet.
He hung his head.
“If I’d just been different, you wouldn’t have had to go through any of it.”
I had heard him blame himself before. I hadn’t expected to hear it today.
I crossed the room and took his face in my hands.
“Listen to me. I don’t see our girls as something you failed to give me. They’re ours.”
He hung his head.
I smiled.
“Your side, my side, a lab dish, and a whole lot of luck. We did this together.”
“I know. I just…”
“We did it together,” I said again. “And in a few hours, we get to meet them.”
“We did this together.”
His forehead dropped against mine, and he let out a shaky breath.
I remembered the bathroom floor then, just for a second.
The cold tile against my back. The test on the rim of the tub with its one stubborn line.
I had cried until I couldn’t breathe, and Andrew had slid down beside me without a word.
Just for a second.
