“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head, swiped her tears against my shirt. They soaked through my dress shirt and she pulled back. “I told Lizzie I’d wait out here for you, but the ultrasound tech just got here. Fucking finally. It’s been hours. But they keep checking the baby’s heartbeat and it seems to be okay.”
“Good. That’s good.”
I unpeeled her from my body where she still clung to me, fingers gripping my shirt, and handed her to Joey as gently as I could.
“I got her,” he said, and wrapped his arm around her, bringing her to his side. “Go do what you need to do.”
I took off, jogging the short distance to Lizzie’s room, inhaled a deep breath to try to settle my racing heart and the fear burning my veins. I needed to be strong for her. For whatever we were about to find.
I opened the door and didn’t give one shit about the woman to her right, the machine with a small screen on a tray. My focus was entirely zoomed in on Lizzie, a scratchy blue hospital gown over her. Her legs covered by a thin white blanket and her stomach exposed.
“You’re here,” she whispered, chin shaking and lips pressed together. Her hand reached out for mine and I grabbed hold of her immediately.
She was freezing, her body shaking, and I could barely choke out a sound, much less speak.
“I’m here.” It came out garbled, strained. “You okay?”
She nodded, but fear had drained the color from her face and darkened her eyes.
The tech moved closer, into my peripheral, but I didn’t care she was there. I leaned down, pressed my forehead to Lizzie’s and whispered in her ear. “I’m so damn sorry I wasn’t here for you. So fucking sorry.”
Her hand was at my neck, fingers in my hair. Nails dug into my flesh and I relished the pain. Deserved it.
“I’m not mad. And they say so far, everything’s okay. Mostly. We’re just waiting for the doctor to come back before we do the ultrasound.”
“What do you mean, mostly?” I twisted, glaring at the tech.
“You’ll have to ask the doctor.”
“Garrett.” Lizzie’s hand slid to my cheek, turned me back to her. I was half bent over her bed, one hand bracing myself by her opposite shoulder. My arms shook with restraint and exhaustion. “I’ve heard the heartbeat, everything’s good. My hormone levels are just higher than they should be, so they’re being cautious.”
“Hormone levels?” I should have done more reading on the plane. At home. I’d had a week to read the book I downloaded, but even in the parts I did read, I couldn’t recall a mention of that. Or what it meant.
Movement caught my attention and I spun, expecting to see Gabby or Joey but instead it was a guy old enough to be Lizzie’s grandpa, gray hair from what he had left, wearing scrubs and a stethoscope draped around his neck.
“Hi. You must be the father. I’m Dr. Drake.” He held out his hand and I shook it, firmly.
“Garrett Dubiak.”
“I know.” He grinned and it vanished quickly. “Big hockey fan myself, played for Harvard. But that’s not why we’re here.” He smiled warmly at Lizzie and then at his tech. “Since you’re the main player tonight, let’s get on with this, huh?”
Any other moment, I might have appreciated his small joke. Tonight I was too tense. Too scared. Too racked with anxiety to give him any more attention.
He glanced at me quickly while he tore a pair of gloves from a box on the counter. “Usually, I let the techs do their job and take a look at the digital pictures, but I have some time in between a couple moms about to deliver and I know you’ve had a long night, so I figured I’d sit in. Get you checked out, okay?”
Lizzie nodded.
“Thank you,” I gritted out. I didn’t know if the special treatment was because he knew me, or if he was truly that generous.
Didn’t give a shit either.
He took a stand on one side of the monitor, gestured for the tech to go ahead and she turned to Lizzie, holding up a bottle of something. “This will be cold on your stomach, so take a deep breath. It warms quickly.”
She got to work, plopped some clear goopy shit on Lizzie’s stomach. She hissed, and I reached for her hand, hating that she’d be cold and miserable and scared and shit. I needed to get my act together. And quick.
As soon as it was done, the tech held a device in her hand. Looked a lot like how we heard the heartbeat the other day, but as she moved it, grainy, fuzzy images appeared on the screen.
“Holy shit,” I said. There were black spaces, white lines and dots and a whirring noise that sounded like distant traffic on a busy road.
“There we are,” the tech said, and on the screen, not only did I hear that louder sound of the heartbeat, there was another one, slower.
“What’s that? The slow sound?”
“That’s Lizzie’s heart. The faster one is the baby,” the doctor said, and he gestured to a tiny white blob that looked more like a miniature gummy bear. “And there’s your baby…” He grinned at both of us as the tech continued wiggling the wand and then….
No fucking way.
Lizzie gasped at the same time I swore I saw something else… something else moving.
“There’s the other one.”
Lizzie’s hand squeezed mine in a bone-crushing grip. “What?” she breathed, her jaw hitting her chest. “What’d you say?”
“Right here.” The doctor pointed to a second gummy bear. “Baby B, we’ll call this one. Baby A is to the right.”
As he pointed them out, the tech started typing, so the words the doctor spoke appeared right above the tiny, blurry blobs.
“Sometimes, one baby can hide behind the other, making it harder to find another heartbeat. If you haven’t had ultrasounds early on, this can happen.”
“Twins?” Holy freaking shit. I’d thought I was seeing double. But there they were. Curled into large lima bean shapes, little limbs sticking out. And as he zoomed in, their faces came into the picture. Well, their skulls. Eye sockets. Creepy little things, really, but so freaking beautiful. “You’re kidding, right?”
We were just getting used to the idea of one. And…
I peeled my eyes off the screen and back to Lizzie.
“Twins.” She smiled at me, color still gone from her face but her eyes back to their lustrous gleam. Although that could have been from the tears giving her eyes a sheen. “We’re having twins.”
“Fuck,” I breathed out and she laughed, tugged on the hand she was holding until I almost fell on top of her.
“Twins. Two of them.” I kissed her, slid my tongue into her mouth and didn’t give a single fuck we had an audience until the doctor cleared his throat.
When I pulled back, the color returned to Lizzie’s cheeks, flushed pink, and I grazed her cheekbone with my thumb. “I love you.”
“Me too.” She smiled, and it was so beautiful. Almost as beautiful as the family she was preparing to give me.
“So,” the doctor said, “I assumed this was the case once we saw your hCG levels, hormones,” he clarified, looking at me. “But we had to make sure. Based on everything we’ve seen initially, both babies look completely healthy, but I’ll still take a look at the digital images as soon as I can.” He focused on the tech. “You’ll get those to me?”