PART 2
The first sound I heard after waking was not the soft cry of one of my babies.
It was the steady rhythm of a machine beside my bed.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Each small sound felt like a hand pulling me back from somewhere far away.
My eyes opened to a blur of white ceiling tiles and fluorescent light. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was. My body felt foreign to me, heavy and hollow, as if I had been taken apart and put back together in the wrong order.
Then pain bloomed low in my abdomen.
The memory returned in broken flashes.
The operating room.
The blue curtain across my chest.
A nurse saying, “Baby A is out.”
A tiny cry.
Then another.
Then a third.
Then pressure. Panic. Voices rising.
Someone shouting my name.
And Grant.
I remembered looking for Grant’s face before everything went dark.
He hadn’t been there.
My lips moved before sound came out.
“My babies.”
A nurse near the window turned quickly. She was young, with tired eyes and a gentle face. Relief softened her expression when she saw me awake.
“Mrs. Holloway,” she said, hurrying to my side. “You’re awake.”
“My babies,” I whispered again.
“They’re alive,” she said immediately. “All three of them. They’re in the neonatal unit. They’re small, but they’re fighting.”
A sob rose in my throat, but my body was too weak to release it properly. It came out as a broken breath.
“Can I see them?”
The nurse hesitated.
That hesitation frightened me more than any machine beside my bed.
“Why can’t I see them?” I asked.
She glanced at the doorway.
