Rowan hasn’t moved. The tendons in his wrist jump under my grip. He looks down at my hand like it’s someone else’s decision. Then he folds his fingers over mine, squeezes me once, and lets me go as the bed starts rolling.
“Sweetie, your sister says good luck. You’re going to do great. Cheyenne will take care of you. We’re going to be right outside waiting for you.” My mom’s voice wobbles as tears well in her eyes—green like mine, a starburst of yellow around the pupil. The bed starts rolling, and she’s chasing me, her hands clinging to the blanket, and that panic in my chest is only getting louder and sharper.
“Tell me what to expect!” I cry out as they all walk down the hallway with me, like we’re in a parade. “Talk to me. Anyone.”
Rowan’s voice is right by my ear. “You’ll feel cold when they scrub your belly. The light will look like a spaceship. Your arms might be out to the side. That’s normal. They’ll test you before they start. You might feel pressure, not pain.”
“You’ll hear crying,” Declan continues. He swallows. “You’ll hear three cries.”
In the elevator, Declan’s hand is on the rail above my head like he can hold the whole box up by himself. The attending is a steady block of calm across from him. Sean stands at my feet like a guard dog that learned to smile. It’s absurd, this convoy. It’s the only thing keeping me from shattering.
The OR is a different country. Air colder, voices brighter, everything stainless and blue. The overhead light is exactly like a spaceship. The anesthesiologist is there with a name I forget twice. The NICU team is already in the corner—three Isolettes, three tiny hats, three teams in matching blue.
Declan squeezes my shoulder as they wheel me in. “Everything we talked about, see? Bright lights,” he says. “That’s what this is. Just a different plan, not a failure.”
“Say the part about the cries again,” I call out as they close the door.
“You’ll hear them,” he calls back. “One, two, three.”
And then there’s a needle in me and then there’s a blanket blocking off my sight and a screen if I really want to see. “Okay, Willow,” the surgeon says from the far side of the blue, voice pure ballast. “Pressure now.”
It’s a sensation like someone stacking books on my ribs. Not pain. Gravity. I breathe in the mask and, without meaning to, reach for the hand that isn’t supposed to be mine.
Cheyenne is at my shoulder, her eyes wet, looking at me like I’m some sort of marvel, like I’m the northern lights. I reach for something, and she slips her hand in that place without hesitation. “You’re doing it,” she breathes. “You’re doing it right now, Willow.”
I glance out the tiny glass window in the door and see Rowan standing there, tears and focus fighting in his eyes. He gives me a thumbs-up, and I laugh around tears. He holds my gaze for two breaths, three, and in those seconds I understand something I’ve been refusing to know—I depend on him. On the way his voice flattens panic, on the way he turns information into a ladder I can climb. On the way he anchors me without touching me at all. The man who promised me distance is the one I’m using as a lifeline.
“Here we go,” someone says, and I have one horrifying thought: am I ready? The thought can’t last too long because then all I feel is pressure, pressure, pressure—and then the world tilts toward sound.
A crackly cry peels the air open, and a baby is lifted over the drape, a tiny little shrimp-shaped baby, curled in on herself and bright red. She’s placed on my naked chest, and I laugh and sob at once. Another cry screaming through the space and then another baby, quieter but just as red, lifted and placed onto me. And another, and all the weight on my chest is a reminder of the responsibility of all these lives. The names I don’t have yet land in my throat like birds anyway.
Cheeks like petals, eyelids purple, mouth a perfect O. “Hi,” I say, uselessly. “Hi, hi.”
Cheyenne is at my side, holding up the one that’s sliding off my chest. She looks at me, and we burst into laughter at the strangeness of it all. “Should we let your baby daddies in?” she asks, dropping her forehead to mine.
“How about just us for a minute?”
“Us like you and the babies, or us like you and me and the babies?” she asks with a laugh, and her question gives me goose bumps.
There are all kinds of ways to beusnow.
31
SEAN
“Left at the mural, now,”I narrate, directing Willow out of habit. As if she needs the directions. As if she hasn’t practically lived at this hospital since that day she got her referral here and our lives changed.
As if reading my mind, Rowan says, “I’m sure she knows by now, so.”
Willow’s hands are white at the grip of the wheelchair. A whale smiles down from the wall, painted the exact blue of her favorite mug. I keep talking like a rope tossed across water. “They changed the paint, when did they do that? It used to be black and white, I thought.”
“A sperm whale,” Declan adds absentmindedly, trailing to my left, almost rubbing my shoulder with his. I can see his hand wanting to reach out for the handles of Willow’s wheelchair, but he mercifully lets me. I appreciate it more than he could ever know.
“Oh, well then it makes sense they changed it. Maybe they thought the women in these halls might be a little tired ofsperm,” I ramble on. The joke is thin; it evaporates as soon as it leaves my mouth. “Ah, sure, look—tough crowd.” Willow’s tosses her own rope back—a tight, brave smile. To my right, Rowan chuckles, and I’m too surprised to say anything.
We arrive at the NICU door, but Willow points to the glass wall. From here, we can see the babies in their little pods, soaking up light like plants. I steer her over, and we can see them, “Baby Girl Abel A,” “Baby Girl Abel B,” and “Baby Girl Abel C.”
“Honest, Willow, I had no idea I could be right about three girls, so I didn’t,” I tell her, petting her crown from above her.
