Page 40 of Doctor’s Surprise Twins

“Nothing new. Still no Baby B.” I tugged the hair net on and slid into the gown, letting Chelsea tie me up as I washed up to the elbow. When I was clean, she held out the gloves for me to put on and helped me double glove in preparation for surgery.

“Let’s go!” She led the charge, and I followed, backing through the doorway into the operating room. The screams plagued me. The woman was in so much pain I could hear her while I was washing, but what was most plaguing was the fear that I was too late and her precious Baby B was suffering.

But when it hit me that I knew that voice, I was forced to push it all aside to be professional and save lives. Maggie’s life.

I stared down at her as Chelsea draped a mask around my face. “Hello, Maggie.” Chelsea tied the mask on, and I blinked back the emotion clouding my vision. I glanced at her protruding stomach and looked back at her. “I hear you’re having twins.” I could see shock in her face followed by relief. “Baby B is missing, huh? Well let’s do a little search and rescue, shall we?”

It was all I could do to remain calm. I took a deep breath and stared at her hardened stomach, tense with a strong contraction. While it wasn’t entirely unethical for me to operate on Maggie, if those babies were what I feared they were—her reason for disappearing and not telling me where she was—it was definitely unethical for me to be doing this. But in the emergency situation we were in, with Dr. Rhee out of town, I was her only choice.

“Nurse, scalpel.” I held out my hand, and Chelsea slapped a scalpel into my palm. I had done this a thousand times or more. As I settled in to perform the C-section, my muscle memory kicked in and I forgot who I was operating on. Baby A came first, screaming and healthy. Baby B came second, a bit lethargic, but still scoring well on the Apgar. When I had sewn Maggie up and went to scrub out, she was resting. The medication hadn’t yet worn off, and the nurses had a bit of cleaning up to do. I got rid of the bloody gloves and washed up, ditched the gown, and dropped my mask. Maggie’s eyes were shut, but I pulled a chair up next to her and asked Todd, the last nurse in the room, to give us a few minutes.

Maggie’s eyes fluttered open. I could see that she was exhausted. Now that the babies were here, she would receive the antibiotics she needed to treat whatever sort of infection she had developed. Nurses had taken blood when they gave her the spinal, so the results would be back soon.

“When did this happen?” I knew the answer in my heart before she responded, but I wanted her to tell me. Tears brimmed in her eyes, and she shook her head. I just wanted the truth, no matter how hard it was to hear.

“He’s not in the picture, Derek.” Her voice was hoarse, as if she’d been shouting in pain a while. Strands of hair lay across her face at odd angles. My fingers ached to brush them away, to place a soft kiss on her forehead and comfort her. How scared she must have been all these months alone, knowing this was her fate. And I had been the one to scare her off.

“The timing... I don’t see how...” It made no sense to me. She would have had to have either been sleeping with someone else at the same time as me or met someone while we were on the rocks. These babies were thirty weeks gestation. I didn’t want to call her a liar, not after what she just went through, but I was feeling angry.

“I said he’s not in the picture, okay?” She began shivering, whimpering as the spasms tore through her body. It was a normal reaction with postpartum mothers. We always had hot blankets ready to warm them as the adrenaline mixed with the loss of body heat. I grimaced, though, realizing I’d have to return at some point to speak with her again when she wasn’t exhausted.

“Todd!” I turned and called over my shoulder. “Thanks for giving us privacy. We need some warm blankets for Maggie now, and she would like to rest a bit. She is exhausted.”

I stood and looked down at her. Words couldn’t express how I was feeling, but it didn’t matter. She needed to sleep, and I needed to let the shock of this entire weekend sink in. I staggered out of the operating room, tossing my hairnet and mask in the bin on the way out.

As I walked out toward my car, the same biting rain and sleet that had chased me into the building didn’t faze me. I began to wonder if Curt knew about this and kept it from me. I wondered if Gypsy knew, or Barbra. If anyone could have told me that Magnolia Brock was pregnant with my child—children—and I had been that deceived. Or maybe Maggie had done this on her own, told no one and kept it a secret to carry to her grave.

How far would she have taken this had fate not intervened?

My heart wrenched as I slid behind the wheel and started the car, silently cursing myself for not having used remote start this time. The thin layer of ice on my windshield after the less than two hours I was in the hospital easily swished away when I turned on the wipers. The car’s headlights lit up the ice crystals glistening in the trees. We would have a few inches of snow before I woke up in the morning, and I’d have to scrape my windows. It felt like my heart had been scraped wide open.

Maggie had explaining to do, and I intended to get to the bottom of it.

Soon.

CHAPTERTHIRTY-TWO

Maggie

For the pastthirty-six hours I had been so drugged from pain and tired from being ill and laboring alone, I slept. The moments I did wake up were spent with nurses jabbing me with needles and holding suckling infants to my chest. I dreamed I saw Derek a number of times, but my mouth wouldn’t form words to communicate with him. I could only cry and push him away—the thing I’d been doing for the past nearly six months, anyway.

For a Tuesday afternoon, it was pleasant. From my spot reclining in the hospital bed, I could see the blanket of snow that covered everything outside. Chimneys and roof vents spewed warm air and smoke into the sky. I could almost feel the crisp winter breeze on my face as I watched cars pass by the hospital. Gypsy had just left after a nice visit. She offered to return in the morning to take me home but had also confessed that she couldn’t keep my secret anymore.

She told Curt, who told my father. They were on the way to visit.

The term “anxiety” didn’t begin to describe what I was feeling. I held Baby B, still without a name, to my breast, and he sucked eagerly. The lactation consultant hovered over me. I’d called her in to see if she could help me with the twins because neither of them was latching on easily.

“He looks like he’s doing much better now. You need to remember that if you’re stressed, the baby will sense that. If you’re relaxed and calm, they will feel at peace when you hold them.” She stepped back, checking on Baby A in her bassinet, sleeping soundly.

“It’s not like it’s easy being a new mother.” I fidgeted with the receiving blanket I had draped over my chest and the baby. I felt exposed sitting there with my breasts out, so I had uncovered him and used his blanket to offer us both some privacy and warmth.

“And a mother of twins, single... I get it.” She smiled at me softly. “You have a lot on your plate, which is why the hospital provides this service for free. I only wish we could provide it for weeks or months postpartum because there are plenty of moms like you who may need more support.”

“Thank you for your help. I think we'll be fine now.”

She hovered for a while, watching as I finished nursing and made myself a bit more presentable, then swaddled Baby B in his blanket and held him. When she excused herself, I decided I might catch a short nap before Dad and Curt arrived, but the minute I shut my eyes, there was a soft knock at the door. I had given the nurses explicit instructions that I wanted no visitors at all, so when I found out they were coming, I changed that order to let Dad and Curt in. The request had only been in place to keep Derek away.

“Mags, oh, my God,” Curt whispered as he tiptoed in. “Gypsy told us everything.” He went directly to Baby A’s bassinet and peeked at her, pulling the edge of the blanket back a bit to see her face.

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