“I’ll take the boys,” she said, eyeing her daughters with awe and envy. And then, as Tanya placed one tiny body in the crook of Elise’s right arm, she had eyes only for Daniel. He might be the largest of her crew, but at four pounds one ounce, he wasn’t much bigger than her fist.
“What about the tubes?” From her vigils at the window, she knew what most of them were for.
“I’ve got them taped,” Tanya said, reaching back into the bed again. “Just be mindful and you’ll be fine.”
She turned back, her expression soft as she looked at the infant in her arms. “Here’s Baby B.”
Thomas. My littlest love. Only three pounds eight ounces. Elise accepted him—and he opened big blue eyes to stare straight at her. She glanced up with tears streaming down her face, just in time for Joe to snap a picture.
Two minutes later, he was in a rocker opposite her, with a baby girl in each arm. She wished she had a camera, but knew she wouldn’t need one for this.
The sight of her partner, sitting in a rocking chair in the neonatal nursery with her daughters in his arms, was something she was never going to forget.
JOE STAYED UNTIL MIDNIGHT on Sunday night to watch the eleven o’clock feedings. Each baby had to learn how to breathe, suck and swallow. As soon as that was accomplished they could go home. Elise was due to be released in the next day or two, assuming her incision continued to heal as nicely as it had so far.
And on Monday morning, after feeding two lonely cats who continuously brushed against his legs as he stood at the counter preparing their food while his coffee percolated, he left for the airport. He wanted to be at the hospital by nine for the next feeding and he had an important errand to run first.
He recognized the older couple almost immediately as they came down the hall past the security checkpoint. He brushed his sweaty hand against his slacks as he stepped forward. He couldn’t ever remember being so nervous to meet another human being.
“Dr. and Mrs. Fuller?”
The man was tall and thin, with a full head of white hair. His wife, Elizabeth, was round and gracious and couldn’t seem to stop smiling.
“Thank you for coming to pick us up,” Dr. Fuller said, shaking Joe’s hand. “Elise has mentioned you. You two are in business together, aren’t you?”
“For more than ten years,” Elizabeth put in. She scrutinized Joe. “Are you married?”
“No, ma’am.”
“And you’ve been staying with Elise?”
“Yes.” He felt heat creeping up his skin as he considered some of what he and Elise had done during those months together.
“She still doesn’t know we’re coming?” Dr. Fuller asked as they waited for their baggage.
“Nope.” Joe had taken their call early Sunday morning on Elise’s cell, which he’d brought home to charge. “I wanted to surprise her.”
“I can’t wait to see those babies!” Elizabeth beamed. She was a pretty woman. A peaceful woman.
“You two never had any children?”
“We tried, but it wasn’t to be,” Elizabeth said. “But we had Elise. What a dear, dear child she was. In more pain than most of us could have endured, and she never complained.”
“Did she tell you about finding an article that had been written about her on my desk?” Thomas Fuller asked, hands in his pockets as he rocked back and forth on his feet.
“No.” But Joe hoped the doctor was going to tell him.
“I’d won an award for my work at the plastic surgeons convention. There were pictures of her face—in all stages of her ordeal. I’d never told her I’d published them.”
The man’s pain was obvious, which made it a little easier for Joe to continue to like him.
“She was shocked. Hurt,” Thomas Fuller continued. “But she never held it against me. That girl has the ability to see inside a person and love what’s there, no matter what’s on the surface.”
Joe saw clearly now what a jerk he’d been all these years, sharing much of his life with an angel and not seeing her wings.
LIFE WAS INCREDIBLE. Brimming with wonder. Full.
Elise sat in her hospital bed Tuesday afternoon, listening while Thomas and Dr. Braden discussed her as though she wasn’t there. Joe had taken Elizabeth down to the nursery while the doctor made her rounds.
“Excuse me,” she finally said, smiling. “Can I go home now?”
“I don’t know. What do you say, Doctor?” Dr. Braden looked at Thomas. “Can we trust her to follow orders?”
“You can trust that if she doesn’t she’s probably going to be just fine anyway,” Thomas said. “This girl’s a survivor. The one thing I’ve learned about her is never to underestimate the strength of her will.”
Elise wanted to hug him. She still couldn’t believe he and Elizabeth were really here.
And couldn’t believe that Joe, for the second day, was hanging out at the hospital and not at B&R.
She wondered if what Thomas had said was really true. That if she wanted something badly enough, she’d get it. She thought of B&R and how successful it was. She thought of her babies, all beautiful and healthy.
It must be true.
THE FULLERS, staying in a room at a local bed-and-breakfast, were in town another day after Elise was released. And then it was just Joe, who was sleeping in his own room in her house again, watching over her and taking her to and from the hospital to visit her babies. She decorated the babies’ warming beds and the walls in front of them with Santa Claus faces and brightly colored ornaments, read to them, learned how to care for them, staying long hours because she didn’t want to miss any feedings.
On doctor’s orders she had to miss the middle-of-the-night ones, and so she pumped milk to cover the feedings. She was able to breast-feed all four of them by the end of the first week, though Thomas’s meals were still being supplemented by tube feedings.
On Saturday, Ellen was put on medication for reflux. And on Sunday the neonatal team called for a renal ultrasound on Danny—suspecting possible blockage. Baby Grace had gained the most weight—six ounces. Thomas was still on ultraviolet light for jaundice, and Elise was exhausted.
“You should go home,” she told Joe just after six Sunday evening. “You’ve been here all weekend and you have to work tomorrow.”
They were sitting in the neonatal waiting room eating sandwiches from the vending machine. Christmas lights, the tree and decorations, gave the room a warm glow.
Joe supposed she was right. Someone had to do laundry. He was wearing his last clean pair of jeans. It was less of a problem for Elise—she was still in sweats—but she had to be getting low on underwear and bras.
“I have to come back and get you anyway,” he said. She’d asked about the office every evening the previous week when he’d come to the hospital from work. Was somehow keeping up on what was going on there as well as in the nursery.
“Then I’ll leave now, too,” she said, standing.
“And miss the eleven-o’clock feedings?”
“I pumped enough to cover for me.”
“Thomas does better when you feed him directly.”
Besides, he wanted to give Ellen her bottle. He had a system with her, a few tugs and he pulled the bottle out, giving her more time to swallow so she didn’t gulp air at the same time. But you had to time it just right or she’d cry and then the entire feeding became a struggle.
She spit up less when he had her.
“I’ll be fine,” he told Elise, not as amazed as he might have been to know the words were true.
“Joe—”
“It’s okay, Elise.”
She sat back down, glaring at him.
She was beautiful when she frowned, her dark hair framing the expression. Maybe because her eyes became smokier.
“I’ve discovered something about myself,” he said. Now probably wasn’t the place and time for this, but she’d given him the opening. And he owed her. Like Thomas had once, he’d hurt her. He’d been so hell-b
ent on the life he’d mapped out for himself when he was a kid, when he was blind to so much, that he’d closed himself off from the truth.
He knew that now.
“What’s that?” Her grin was almost playful, as though she didn’t expect much of a revelation.
“I’m an idiot.”
She laughed. “I hate to break it to you, Joe, but your big discovery is a bust. There’s nothing stupid about you.”
“There is. Was. I’ve spent my entire life running from something that didn’t exist, and missing everything I wanted in the meantime.”
“Such as?”
“A full life. Love. Sharing. Family. I have such a big family I took it all for granted. Figured the family was already there so I didn’t need to create another one.”
Her silence was a bit unnerving.
“I put all this pressure on myself as a kid,” he went on, “thinking I had to take care of my mom and the little ones, when in reality, my mom was there to take care of me. She was always so busy, I didn’t figure she had time for me. A lot of days I didn’t think she even noticed me except when I was there to relieve her burden.”
Now Elise spoke. “I can’t believe she really felt that.”
“Well, here’s where the idiot part comes in.” He wadded up the plastic wrap from the sandwich he’d consumed, put it back in its hard plastic container and set them both on the table. “I did believe it. I knew she loved me. But I honestly thought she was so overwhelmed with children she couldn’t be there for me.”
“Middle child syndrome.”
“Maybe.” He’d like to think there was some valid basis for his trek so far off base. “What I’ve recently discovered, and should have figured out twenty years ago, was that she was thinking of me all along. Here I thought I was escaping to the attic, feeling guilty for doing so, when in reality, she and my father told the other kids to stay away from there—it was my special place and I wasn’t to be disturbed.”
“And you never knew that?”
He shook his head. “We see what we expect to see.”
Her reply was slow in coming, drawn out. “Yes, we do.”
“This past week, probably even before that, I found that I go to bed exhausted, but when I wake up in the morning, even if I’ve only had a few hours’ sleep, I’m energized all over again—more so than when I relax in the evenings and get a full night’s sleep. I have a purpose.”
There was more to it than that. He went on.
“The thing about kids, the thing I didn’t get until after these four were born, is that the joy and love and anticipation they bring to your life is like a magic spell.” Hands folded between his knees, Joe studied the laces on his tennis shoes. “You go to bed tired, but you can’t wait to get up in the morning and start all over again. To see what they’re going to do that day. Will Thomas gain an ounce? Is Danny okay? Will Baby Grace smile when she sees me?”
He glanced up and stared when he saw the tears on Elise’s cheeks.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She brushed them aside. “Except that you’ve just proven what I’ve known for fifteen years.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ve got a lot more courage than I have.”
AN ORDERLY POPPED HIS HEAD in the door and then left. The unit was quiet, peaceful, this late on Sunday.
“How can you say that?” Joe asked.
Elise moved over to the couch he sat on.
“Because all of this—these past months with you, the scares and the birth and the fact that Danny might be facing surgery—has shown me something about myself I’d never realized. I’m a coward.”
“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met! My God, Elise, you fought pain worse than death, all alone, a little girl who’d just lost her mother, and the rest of her family. Thomas told me how they’d take bandages off and you’d bite back screams. That they’d put you through therapy that had tears rolling down your cheeks and you never said a word.”
“I’m a survivor. I know that. I endure. But until this week, I never risked opening my heart to anyone since the night of that fire. That’s why I couldn’t find a man to share my life with. Not because I had a fake face, but because I wouldn’t risk loving and losing again.”
Even now, she trembled with fear. So much could go wrong. If Danny needed surgery, they’d be putting a four-pound baby under general anesthetic, risking infection. And any of the babies could go into cardiac arrest, or quit breathing, or get hit by a car when they crossed a street sometime.
“Do you know, other than the babies now, I’ve never told anyone I loved them since I was eleven years old?”
“That’s not true.”
“I know it’s hard to believe, but actually, yes, it is.”
“Actually, no, it’s not.”
Elise stared at him. “What do you mean?” Did he have some inside scoop on her life that she was missing?
“Because one week and one day ago when you were about to give birth, in front of about ten other people, you told me you loved me.”
Elise panicked. “I did?” Oh, God. What else had she said?
“You did.”
“What did you do?”
“I told you I felt the same.”
She shivered, but not from cold. Her entire body was shaking so hard her teeth chattered. And then Joe’s arm was around her shoulders, pulling her into his warmth.
“You just said that to spare me in front of all those people, didn’t you?”
“I said it because it’s true.”
Turning her head against his shoulder, she looked up at him. “It is?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t seem all that upset about the idea.
“I have four kids.”
“I love all four of them.”
The nurse came in, asking if they wanted to help bathe the babies, and Elise, the coward, took the excuse to escape.
JOE WAS ALMOST ASLEEP that night, the covers keeping out the December chill that had permeated the old house in their absence, when he heard his door open.
“You awake?”
He was now. Completely. “Yeah.”
“Can I come in?”
“Of course.”
“I…um…just wanted to let you know that I’m going to call the clinic tomorrow and have them unseal the fertility records.”
She hovered at the end of the bed, still wearing the sweat suit she’d had on all day.
Joe sat up, watching her with eyes adjusted to the darkness. “Sit.” He indicated the bottom corner of the bed.
She sat.
And he wondered if all that talk earlier in the evening, the part about loving and opening up, had to do with someone other than him. Could she be hoping that Adam Fallow was the father of her children? Was that why she’d run off when he, Joe, had confessed his love for her?
And been chatty all the way home, with an urgent need to visit the bathroom as soon as they got there?
That she’d been avoiding personal conversation with him was obvious.
“Have you let Adam know your decision?”
“Not yet. I just made it.”
And she’d come to him first. That had to be good, didn’t it?
“The thing is, I’ve been living with this…I’m not sure what to call it…this scarcity mentality ever since I lost my family in the fire,” she said slowly. “Like there’s not enough love to go around for all of us. When, in truth, love is everywhere, and sharing it, while risky, also breeds it. And when you think there’s not enough of it, you tend to hoard what little of it you have, which prevents it from spreading—and creates the scarcity of love you feared to begin with.”
Even as tired as he was, he understood. He just didn’t know exactly where this was leading. If it was leading anywhere.
“If it turns out that Adam is the babies’ father, I don’t have to give him fatherly rights to let him love them. He can be a doting uncle or something. It doesn’t mean I lose any of their love.
It just means their lives will be richer.”
Joe thought he was the uncle.
“And if he’s not,” she went on, “then he has a chance to have children of his own and become a real father with a woman he loves.”
Not Elise.
He thought about everything she’d said. About the things he’d learned about her over the past months. And the last of the dam within him broke wide open.
“I love you, Elise Richardson. More than I’ve ever loved anyone, anywhere, in my lifetime. I’ve wasted far too many years, and I need to share the rest of my life with you.”
He ran out of words. And though he hated the silence that followed, he didn’t regret speaking up.
“Are you asking me to marry you, Joe?” Her voice was hesitant in the darkness. She hadn’t moved.
He considered her question. “Yes, I guess I am.”
“Then I guess I accept.”
Heart thudding in his chest, Joe slid out of bed, walked to her and pulled her up and into his arms.
“Say the words,” he whispered, his lips an inch from hers.
“I just did. I’ll marry you.”
“Those are fine words, Elise, but not the ones I’m asking for. Tell me now, when you’re completely sober and with your full faculties, what you told me last week when you were about to give birth.”
He’d heard it in his head every day since. Analyzed the meaning behind those words in more ways than he’d have thought possible. She’d been speaking to someone else. Speaking out of her head. Speaking as a friend.
Speaking to her cats, which were right now curling about their ankles.
“I love you, Joe Bennett. I have since the day I first laid eyes on you. I was just too scared to realize it.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears, but they didn’t fall. Her hormones were settling down. She was getting back to her normal self.
And she loved him.
JOE PETITIONED to have the Richardson quads become the Bennett quads the same day he married their mommy, a full week before any of the babies had ever seen sunlight—there weren’t any windows in the neonatal nursery.
Merry Christmas, Babies Page 20