Everything in me strains at once, pain and pressure colliding into something blinding as my body gives everything it has left.
“Again,” he says, steady as ever. “Don’t stop.”
I don’t stop. I can’t. There’s nothing left in me except this, nothing left but the need to finish it. I push again, sobbing, my grip slipping as my entire body trembles under the effort, the pressure peaking into something unbearable?—
And then it breaks. The release is immediate, overwhelming, and a cry fills the room, louder and stronger than the others.
“Baby three.”
The words barely register at first, distant and unreal, because my body is already collapsing back against the bed, every muscle giving out at once. The tension drains so fast it leaves me shaking, my chest heaving as the reality crashes down on me all at once.
I did it.
Right after the last cry fades into the rhythm of the room, a nurse presses firmly down on my abdomen, and the relief I thought I’d earned shatters into a new, dull pain that makes me flinch. “I know, I know,” she murmurs, her hands working with practiced pressure to help my uterus contract, to keep me from bleeding too much.
Or so she says. I’m pretty sure she’s torturing me for fun.
I barely have time to process it before another wave rolls through—not a contraction like before, but something deeper, heavier—as my body shifts again, pushing out the placenta with a strange, slippery release that feels both foreign and final. There’s more movement between my legs, quiet instructions, the clinical cadence of voices checking, counting, assessing.
I lie there shaking, half-aware of hands still working, of the nurse continuing that steady, unrelenting massage, grounding me in the reality that even though the babies are here, my body isn’t done yet. But when she’s done, I’m convinced things will go back to normal.
I’m wrong. So wrong.
The world doesn’t snap back all at once. It comes in slowly, in pieces, like my body isn’t ready to hold all of it at the same time. The pain is still there, but it’s different now—duller, distant, no longer the only thing I can feel. In its place is something else, something heavier and softer all at once, settling deep in my chest as the sound of them reaches me.
Three separate cries.
I turn my head, slow and unsteady, my neck barely cooperating as I try to see them. Everything feels far away, like I’m looking through water, like I haven’t fully come back into myself yet. There’s movement everywhere—nurses, doctors, hands working quickly but no longer in that sharp, frantic way. Controlled now. Measured.
“They’re stable.”
“They’re strong.”
The words tap somewhere deep, somewhere that makes my chest ache in a completely different way than the pain did. My eyes burn, tears slipping sideways into my hair as I try to focus, trying to catch a glimpse of them through the blur of motion and exhaustion.
And then I see Ronan again.
He’s already moved away from me, standing near where they’re working on the babies, his attention split, tracking everything at once. He’s not rushing. Not hesitating. Just steady, the same way he was through all of it, like nothing in this room exists outside of what needs to be done.
This is him in his world, in control of everything around him, making sure my babies—ourbabies?—
No. I shut the thought down so fast it almost hurts.Mybabies.
That’s all they can ever be. My chest tightens anyway.
“Careful with that line,” Ronan says, stepping closer, adjusting something with steady hands. “Good. That’s it.”
He doesn’t even look at me. Not once. I don’t know why that stings. It shouldn’t. This is his job. This is what he does. He’s nothere for me in any intimate way. I’m a patient in his hospital. I needed someone with his skill set.
That’s it. That has to be it.
But I can’t stop thinking about the way his voice sounded when he said my name the first time. The way he didn’t hesitate, didn’t treat me like I was anything less than capable of getting through it, even when I was falling apart.
“You did well.”
The words pull my attention back to him, my gaze snapping up as I realize he’s moved closer again, back at my side.
Up close, he looks the same. And completely different.
