“My babies.” My voice came out wrecked, raw and scraped from all the screaming I’d done however long ago. “Where are my babies?”
“They’re in the nursery and they are doing just fine.” She squeezed my hand, the one without the handcuff. “Both of them are healthy, strong, and very vocal about their opinions on this whole ‘being born’ thing. Your little girl has been fussing up a storm and your son has the biggest pair of lungs I’ve heard in twenty years of nursing.”
Relief hit me so hard I thought I might pass out again. “They’re okay? They’re really okay?”
“They’re perfect, Mama. Seven pounds even for your daughter and five pounds twelve ounces for your son. Considering the circumstances of the delivery…” She shook her head with a mix of admiration and horror. “Whoever helped you deliver those babies knew what they were doing.”
LaLa. My cellmate. A woman I’d known for barely a month who had stepped up when the entire system abandoned me.
“Can I see them?” I was already trying to sit up again, the handcuff chain rattling against the bed rail. “Please. I need to hold them. I haven’t even—I passed out before I could?—”
“Let me go get them for you right now.” Elise patted my shoulder. “Give me five minutes.”
She started toward the door and I called after her. “Wait. Can you send the guard in? I need to make a phone call.”
Elise stepped into the hallway and I heard her murmur something to the guard. He appeared in the doorway a moment later, his phone still in his hand, looking like I’d interrupted something important. It was probably nothing more than a TikTok video.
“I need to make a call,” I said. “My fiancé… I need to talk to someone.”
He shifted his weight, tucking his phone into his back pocket. “Your fiancé and your lawyer have been here overnight. They’re down in the waiting area. Your fiancé isn’t allowed in the room. It’s security protocol for inmates in custody, but your attorney can come up if you want.”
Prime had been here all night. Of course he had. That man would sleep on a concrete floor in a hospital hallway if it meant being close to me. And Camille had probably been right beside him, already working on whatever legal miracle she was going to pull out of her briefcase next.
“Send my lawyer in. Please.”
He nodded and disappeared.
While I waited, Elise returned pushing a small cart with two clear bassinets. The sight of them in those tiny clear boxes on wheels, each one containing a human being I had made hit me somewhere so deep I didn’t have a name for it.
“Here we go, Mama.” Elise lifted the first one and placed her in my arms, adjusting the handcuff chain so I could cradle her against my chest without the metal cutting into my skin. “This is your daughter.”
My daughter.
She was so small. So impossibly, terrifyingly small. Her face was scrunched up in that newborn way, all wrinkles and creases, her skin a warm brown that would probably darken to match mine. Tiny fingers curled into fists near her chin. A dusting of dark hair on her head. And her lips—she had Prime’s lips. That same full, sculpted shape that made her daddy the finest man I’d ever seen.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. Could only hold her against me and cry silently while Elise placed the second baby in the crook of my other arm.
I had a son.
Nobody knew about him. Not even Dr. Coleman, who’d done the ultrasounds. Not even Prime, who’d spent months talking to “princess” through my belly every night. Somehow, some way, this little boy had hidden behind his sister the entire pregnancy, a secret even my own body kept from me.
He was smaller than his sister but sturdier somehow, compact and solid, with a head full of curly dark hair and features that were unmistakably his father’s. Same nose. Same brow. Same energy, already, of a person who was going to take up space in this world, whether you were ready for him or not.
I couldn’t tell if they had my eye color or Prime’s. Not that it would matter. But wow. I had two babies. I knew that twins were genetic and that it ran in my family. This was the greatest miracle.
“Prime’s son,”I whispered, tracing his cheek with my fingertip.
The tears wouldn’t stop. I held them both against my chest, feeling their warmth, their breathing, the impossibly tiny movements of their bodies as they stirred and settled againstme. These perfect, innocent humans who had entered the world in the worst possible way.
But they were alive. Healthy. Here.
And I was never letting them go again.
A knock on the door pulled me out of the haze.
Camille walked in looking like she’d been through a war. Her silk blouse was wrinkled, her hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail instead of the flawless styles she usually wore, and she had dark circles under her eyes that her concealer couldn’t fully hide. She’d been up all night. Fighting for me while I was unconscious.
The moment she saw me sitting up in bed, handcuffed to the railing, holding two newborns against my chest something in her face crumbled. Not the lawyer face. Not the polished, professional mask she wore in courtrooms and conference calls. Something underneath all that. Something human.
