I knew that.
But my heart did not care what was appropriate.
“They’re stable for now,” Dr. Mehta, the neonatologist, told me. “Girl is three pounds twelve ounces. Boy is three pounds four. Both premature, both under stress, but they responded better than I expected.”
“Complications?”
“Too early to say. Respiratory support for both. We’ll monitor brain oxygenation, feeding tolerance, infection markers. The next forty-eight hours matter.”
I nodded, barely hearing the clinical details over the question pounding in my skull.
Whose children are you?
The thought shamed me the moment it formed.
They were Hannah’s children. That was what mattered.
And Hannah had been alone.
That mattered more.
“Did she say anything before surgery?” Dr. Mehta asked.
I looked at the little boy’s face.
“She asked about the babies.”
Dr. Mehta smiled faintly. “Mothers usually do.”
Mothers.
The word settled heavily in me.
When I finally returned to the nurses’ station, Carla handed me a clear plastic hospital belongings bag. Inside were the pieces of Hannah’s life reduced to inventory: worn sneakers, a faded coat, a cracked phone, keys on a plain ring, a wallet, and the silver bracelet I had noticed on her wrist, removed during surgery and placed carefully in a smaller pouch.
I stared at it.
The bracelet looked older now. Scratched. Tarnished. One link had been repaired with a bit of wire that did not match.
She had kept it.
After everything, she had kept it.
“Her phone is locked,” Carla said. “No emergency contact available from the screen. There were missed calls from a number saved as ‘Mara,’ but no one has answered when we tried from the hospital line.”
“And the letter?”
Carla pulled it from the bag.
It was folded into a plain white envelope, creased as though it had been carried for a long time. There was no name on the front.
I should have handed it back.
I should have waited until Hannah woke up.
But then I saw the faint stain at the corner of the envelope, the place where rain or tears had blurred the paper fibers, and something inside me twisted.
“Log that I viewed it for medical emergency contact purposes,” I said.
Carla studied me for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll note it.”
My hands were steadier opening bodies than opening that envelope.
Inside was a single sheet of paper.
The handwriting was Hannah’s.
I knew it instantly.
Dear Mara,
If anything happens before I make it to the clinic appointment, please don’t let them separate the babies.
They only have each other.
I know I should have told him. I tried so many times. I wrote the letters and never sent them. Maybe that makes me a coward, but I couldn’t survive being told they weren’t wanted.
If they ask about family, tell them I have none.
That is easier than the truth.
Please make sure they know I loved them from the first moment I knew they existed.
Hannah
I read it once.
Then again.
The words blurred.
I couldn’t move.
I should have told him.
The hallway seemed to tilt beneath my feet.
Him.
