Nurse Nicole jokes, “I’m always saying that,” while I ignore him, knocking on the patient’s door lightly and confidently. That combination is important. Light and confident. A knock that saysit isn’t serious, but I am.
“There’s nothing that chart can tell me that the patient can’t tell me better, is there now?” I crow back, pushing the door open.
“What about a name?” Rowan asks, flashing the chart in front of my eyes.
But my mouth is already starting my sentence, the same as it always does. “I’m Dr. Byrne, nice to meet you—” And I look up from the chart to make sure I’m not hallucinating, that it’s not a coincidence.
But no, because when I look up, I see her as plainly as I did on the cruise. Her name falls out of me like it has its own momentum, the end of my sentence trailing like the back of a train car. “Willow Abel.”
Looking into her eyes is like being struck by lightning,Jaysus, even worse to see her in such a vulnerable state, her hands on her stomach either consciously or unconsciously, her face white as a sheet, her hair piled on top of her head except where it’s sticking to the sweat on her forehead. The paper sheet is crinkled beneath her thighs, and it’s unmistakable, even this early, because that’s what triplets do. A bump.Herbump. To be determined whether or not it’sourbump.
The math on her chart detonates in my head like a bomb—itcouldbe our bump. Any of ours.
Triplets, the chart says. My mouth goes dry. The smile dies.
Rowan stiffens at my side, subtle but not enough for me to miss. Declan clears his throat, the sound rougher than usual. Willow’s green eyes lock on mine, and for the first time in my life, I’ve no words. No charm, no quick line. Just the thud of my heart, heavy as a fist, and the realization that the woman I swore I’d let go is sitting here with proof written across her body that we’re bound tighter than I ever imagined.
“Miss Abel?” Declan is the first to recover, his voice professional, low. He glances at the chart like he needs reminding, like the letters on the page will make this moment less impossible.
She swallows. “That’s me.”
Her voice is the same—soft, wry at the edges, secretly hopeful. Romantic and bitter. The charm of an enigma but the comfort of someone who feels like everyone you ever knew wrapped up in one. I feel it again now, sharper.
Rowan steps forward, posture soldier-straight, and I can tell he’s bracing against something he doesn’t want to feel. I should do the same. I should remember ethics, boundaries, the rules drilled into us since our first day in med school. Never get personally entangled with a patient, not romantically, not sexually, not in any way that compromises judgment and objectivity. That’s day one stuff.
Declan asks the first questions—blood pressure, nausea, the polite script. Willow answers, steady enough, but her hands are clasped tightly in her lap, knuckles white. I want to uncurl them, hold them, tell her she’s not alone. Instead, I scribble something on the chart because if my hands are moving, they won’t reach for her.
“So, triplets. Trichorionic,” Rowan says, voice carefully neutral.
She nods, and the paper crackles again beneath her. “That’s what they tell me,” she murmurs, clasping and unclasping her hands.
“Three heartbeats confirmed on ultrasound at eight weeks,” Nurse Nicole chimes, tapping her clipboard.
Willow’s eyes flick to me, then away, like it costs her to look too long. She inhales sharply and looks over at the nurse in the room, ankles hooked and legs swaying, before asking, “So…do you all three…work together? Here?”
It’s an odd question, and the nurse looks up sharply from adjusting the blood pressure cuff on Willow’s arm, maybe catching a whiff of impropriety. She jots numbers on her clipboard. Nicole keeps her expression neutral, but I see her glance flick between us, sharp and assessing.
Rowan interjects, “Sure look, you heard right.Aye, it’s true, we were all three recruited together. Trained in Dublin, brought over to Johns Hopkins for residency, then the lovely MUSC asked us to come head their new high-risk maternity program. They wanted a ready-made unit…and our numbers, well…” A little gentler, he murmurs, “What I’m saying is you’re in good hands with us.”
It gives her the answer she wants while sounding casual, not like what she’s really asking, which is “Is this a coincidence? Or do you live in my town?”
Her lips part. A hundred thoughts cross her face, cloaked in shock, anger, and something softer she swallows before it can stay. “Of course.” She catches the nurse’s look and forces a smile. “I am. Of course I’m in good hands.”
Declan doesn’t look up, his eyes scanning her labs along with Rowan. Muscles twitch in their cheeks. “We’ll order baseline labs today. CBC, thyroid, glucose,” Declan says evenly, as if saying it could make this room normal again. “And we’ll keep you on a schedule of biweekly viability checks. I know it seems like a lot, but we really need to be hands-on with a case this?—”
“Delicate,” I murmur, looking over his shoulder at her paperwork. The words sit on the page like any other patient. I look at the ultrasound, the visible IUD floating near the developing fetuses. The fetuses that might have my DNA. I swallow down a rising nausea. When I look back up, Willow’s eyes are wet as it all starts to catch up to her.
In all my fantasies of keeping her, none of them looked like this. None of them involved sterile walls, ultrasound screens, her belly curved with life, or HIPAA violations. I can’t stop thinking about her skin under my hands—God,ourhands—and the way she whispered my name like it mattered. I can’t stop looking at the life she carries and wondering if part of it started with me.
For once, I’ve got no smile to give. Only silence, heavy with all the things we can’t say. And the raw, undeniable truth that our story isn’t finished.
“Excuse me” slips out of my mouth as I slip out of the room that feels smaller with each passing second. From the hallway, I can hear a muffled version of their conversation. The nurse is taking vitals and translating for Rowan and Declan, who can get too caught up in medical speak.
I can hear them reassuring her, the timbre in their voices low and slow, every word a lie simply because no one’s said the thing that I know is screaming in all of our heads: “Weren’t we in an orgy together? Do these babies belong to one of us?”
I stand in the hallway and try to convince myself that this isn’t as bad as it seems. That’s who I am. I’m the guy they call to smile at someone and tell them they can finally breathe.
Right now, that guy is looking at me and saying, “You’rebollixed.”
