Cheyenne answers for me. “She has me and my husband. Her mom.”
“And a job?” the doctor asks, answering her own form before human curiosity. “We can write you a note if nausea’s interfering.”
I think of the hot days in the market, of the tourists grinning while surveying the thousandth woven basket under the canopy. My boss who lets me sell my own art sometimes. The water I get to dip my toes in while eating whatever benne wafers didn’t sell. The smell of horse manure on the sidewalk mixed with the smell of fish. I swallow. “I’ll manage.”
The doctor nods like that is both brave and ordinary. “Questions?”
I could ask a thousand.Do triplets like the same songs? Is there enough love to go around when you’re one person and there are three of them? How do you find three Irish men in a city they don’t live in when all you know is the way they kissed?Instead, I ask a small one: “What can I do for nausea?”
“You can try ginger tea,” she says, and smiles. “Try B6 too. We’ll call with your lab results.”
In the parking lot, the air punches us. September in Charleston can be beautiful if you catch it at the creek in the evening, but the midday asphalt heat is merciless. Cheyenne unlocks her car with a beep and doesn’t start it, just sits with me and lets the silence settle. On my lap, the black-and-white ultrasound printout gleams like a secret.
Three.
At home, I put the printout on the fridge with a magnet shaped like a pelican. It feels absurd, historic, sacred—like filing your prayers or emailing a will. Cheyenne fusses with toast and lines up vitamins I didn’t know I had, likely expired. She finds powdered ginger and vows to buy me some fresh.
“We need names,” she says after a minute, because this is how she copes—with lists, with labels that make wild things less wild.
“For the babies?” I ask, whipping my head up. “I don’t even know if I’m…” I don’t finish the sentence:if I’m keeping them.Mostly because I don’t want to say it out loud if I am. But also because I feel pretty certain that I am, though I don’t know why yet.
“No. For the project. Operation Find the Irish.”
A laugh peels out of me, powerless and grateful. “That sounds like a band.”
Cheynne’s eyes are bright. “Doesn’t it? Or a seeking ad in the paper.Looking for three very handsome doctors with questionable decision-making and perfect teeth.”
“They didn’t all have perfect teeth,” I say, chasing a detail to avoid drowning.
She gasps. “Which one?”
“I’m not telling.”
“Rude,” she says, and then her hand finds my knee. “We’ll try the cruise line first. They have to have records of conference attendees. We can narrow by specialty if you remember. Internal medicine? Emergency? Orthopedics? The tall one looked like an orthopedics guy. Big hands.”
“Chey.”
“What? Don’t pretend you weren’t thinking it.”
I manage a small joke. “Wish I had just used his hands.” Cheyenne gasps in response from across the kitchen, turning to offer me a teasing smile, but I can’t look up from the ultrasound printout. The shapes are still abstract, little beans against a moon. They don’t look like choices yet. They look like fate.
I stand at the fridge and think about all the people I won’t be telling: my dad, my sister Camille, my mom, the father. No one except Cheyenne. Soon, Cheyenne will tell Dylan and then there will be three people in the entire world who know about the three blurs, the three beginnings. For now, that’s all I have. Myfriends, this city, a referral, and three heartbeats that sound like a future refusing to be theoretical.
In the morning, I’ll call MUSC. I’ll eat a saltine and try the B6 and take shallow breaths when the dishwasher smells like low tide. I’ll make a pros and cons list and decide what my future holds. For now, I’ll let Cheyenne think for me.
Once, when I was a child and afraid to fall off my bike, my dad held my seat while running, his voice whipping away in the wind as he said, “Willow, if it happens, it happens twice because you worried.”
And then he let go.
7
SEAN
The thingabout first appointments is that I’m good at them. I’ve got what people call an “easy charm.” Nervous women are my specialty. New mothers—easy peasy. Flash a smile, let them know they’re in good hands—that’s all anyone ever wants. To feel like they’re in good hands.
And first appointments are usually routine. They’re here at Medical University At South Carolina Women’s Pavillion because something’s gone amiss. If they’re referred to the three of us, something’sreallygone amiss, someone is high-risk, and someone high up needs to CYA. And I don’t mind being the person they cover their ass with because I trust myself. I trust medicine. Other doctors trust me so much they send their problem cases to me, and I take care of them. That’s who I am. I tell them a joke, and wouldn’t you know it? By the end of the appointment, they’ve forgotten about needles and risk factors and words like “complication.”
So when nurse Nicole hands each of us a chart, I know that Declan and Rowan will open it and study it dutifully while I crack the jokes. What I don’t expect is for Declan to nudge thechart in my hand and say, “Doctor, you should really open up your chart.”
