Four days after I lost my premature twin daughters, I woke up in the ICU to my husband holding my hand and promising we’d survive it together. I believed him until the night nurse bent over my pillow and told me he’d been taking flowers to another woman in Ward 8.
The beeping monitor was the first sound I heard when I opened my eyes. The ICU lights buzzed faintly and yellow above me.
My belly was flat under the blanket, and the pain was deeper than any wound a scalpel could leave.
I was 41 and pregnant after fourteen years of trying, five miscarriages buried in silence, and more heartbreak than I knew how to name. Then, finally, there were two heartbeats on a screen.
Now there were none.
A warm hand wrapped around mine, and I turned my head slowly on the pillow. Daniel sat in the plastic chair beside my bed, his eyes red, his shirt creased as though he had been sleeping in it for days.
“Lydia,” he whispered.
“You’re awake. Oh God, you’re awake.”
I tried to speak, but I couldn’t. The ache in my chest drowned out even the pain in my stomach.
“The girls,” I whispered.
Daniel shook his head and pressed his forehead against my hand.
“I know, baby.
I know. I’m so sorry.”
Tears slid sideways into my hair. I had already known.
Some part of me had known the moment I woke and felt the emptiness where they used to kick.
“I held them,” Daniel added. “Before they took them. They were so small, Lyd.
So perfect.”
“They had your nose.”
A broken laugh escaped me, then dissolved into a sob. He climbed half onto the bed, careful of the tubes, and gathered me against his chest like I might shatter.
“We’re going to survive this,” he whispered into my hair.
“I promise.
I swear on my life, Lydia.”
He fumbled in his jacket pocket and brought out two tiny pairs of pink socks I’d carried everywhere for weeks, ever since we learned it was two girls. He pressed them into my palm and folded my fingers around them.
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