"It will be soon. Maybe thirty minutes. Do you want to change into?—"
"No," I say.
"This is fine."
They hook me up to a monitor, and for a while the world is reduced to the beeping of the fetal heartbeats, the rise and fall of my chest, the pressure of Ruairí's hand on mine.
I want to talk, to say something witty or defiant, but the pain is relentless, and the only thing I can do is breathe through it, counting the seconds between each crest.
At some point, Lena comes in.
She stands at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, face unreadable.
"They're clear," she says.
"No one followed. Fiachra's outside. He's got a new toy. Wants to show you after."
I want to laugh, but the next contraction makes it a snarl.
I push through it, eyes closed, sweat slicking my forehead.
"You're doing good," Ruairí says, and for the first time ever, I believe he means it.
The doctor arrives.
She is young, hair in a braid, eyes sharp as scalpels.
She checks the monitor, then me.
"Ready?" she says.
"Do I have a choice?" I reply, and she grins.
"Push when I tell you," she says.
"Don't waste your effort."
The next hour is a blur of pain and rage and a kind of primitive joy.
I am outside myself, watching as my body does things I would never have allowed under normal circumstances.
I hear my own voice, sometimes screaming, sometimes whispering curses in Irish.
At one point I think I seemy mother, standing in the corner of the room, but when I blink she is gone.
When it happens, it happens fast.
The first baby comes with a sound like tearing silk, and then the room is filled with a wail so loud and pure it drowns out the monitors, the nurse, even my own voice.
"A boy," the nurse says and hands him to Ruairí, who holds him like something made of glass and starlight.
I see the way his hands tremble, the way he looks at the child, and for a second I think he might drop him.
But he doesn't.
He just holds him, staring down with the kind of awe that makes religion look like a cheap con.
The second baby is harder.
