Secret Triplets

by Holly Rayner

  The clinic was nightmarishly full, nearly every seat occupied by another wan-faced somebody. At the walk-in clinic front counter, I went through the motions, got an appointment for who knew when, and slumped into the only empty seat, the scratched-armrest one at the far end of the room.

  There, I tried to distract myself by flipping through glossy magazines and looking at celebrity couples who glowed with wealth and good humor. Everywhere I turned, however, were babies.

  Baby shampoo, happy babies, fat celebrity babies, celebrities as babies, silly babies, baby purses, baby cats, baby, baby, BABIES.

  Even flinging the magazine aside did no good; the waiting room itself was filled with babies. Babies crying, babies cooing, babies still inside mothers’ tummies, and even, just maybe, my own baby in my own tummy. God, how was I going to stand waiting for hours?

  The answer came as a tormented belly groan of inspiration: eat. I leaped out of my seat and hurried past the other patients. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  By the time I returned to the first floor and got to the gray-carpeted, airy oasis of food, I was ravenous. I could hardly wait in line without nearly grabbing a passing pigtailed little girl’s chocolate ice cream cone.

  When I got to the counter, I was practically speechless with the enormity of what I wanted, something like a pizza ice cream hot dog taco brownie delight. For appearance’s sake, however, I only timidly asked for pizza, going as far as to request two slices of pepperoni when asked.

  After unsteadily making my way up onto the sky-high chairs, I dug in. The two pepperoni pizza slices were a good before-meal snack, so I soon returned to the counter to request one mint ice cream sundae. This too proved to be a good appetizer, so I returned to the counter a few minutes later to get a real meal: a hot dog and a steak taco. After a few minutes of rather contented devouring, I returned to the counter a final time for three brownies. I polished those off soon enough, the largeness of what I had just consumed finally catching up with me; I could barely get down from the stool I was perched on.

  Once I did, however, my stomach seemed so full that it would bring me to my knees. Instead, I stumbled back to the elevator and then into the waiting room. It had cleared out a bit, enough for me to sink into a closer, comfier chair.

  So there I slumped, regretting everything: the food and the entire past week.

  I only realized I had fallen asleep when I was shaken awake.

  “Miss. Excuse me, miss.”

  Opening my eyes to a bulbous nose, I managed an “mmmf?” before I was shaken again.

  “Miss, it’s your turn,” a low voice said, and I jumped up as if electrocuted.

  A burly woman with a flyaway bun stared at me, and I tried a smile.

  “Yes, I’m ready.”

  “Okay. Right this way,” she said.

  I followed her out of the now half-empty room, past all the other people who’d have to wait who knew how long.

  Inside a white and clean-looking room, she instructed me to sit down.

  “So, Miss Combs, you say you are pregnant?”

  I shook my head.

  “The two tests I took said I am, but they’re wrong. I can’t be.”

  She arched one bushy brow.

  “So you haven’t been sexually active?”

  My face reddened as I shook my head once more. “Well, no. I mean, I have been, but it’s just… I can’t be pregnant.”

  Her brow fell as a knowing look came into her eyes.

  “So I just want you—a doctor—to confirm that I’m not pregnant.”

  Another nod and she disappeared out the door.

  She returned with an irritated-looking doctor I recognized immediately.

  “Frank!”

  At the sight of me, his thin-lipped scowl became an open-mouthed smile.

  “Alex! Didn’t think I’d be running into you like this of all things.”

  I felt myself reddening once more. Frank was an old school friend I hadn’t seen for years. I would have bet he was sure surprised to see me there, worried about being pregnant, when I had been the most driven girl at school.

  “Yeah… It’s a long story. It’s just…I’m worried I might be pregnant.”

  I hung my head, and next thing I knew, Frank was beside me, his hand on my belly.

  “Don’t worry,” the gruff nurse said. “Frank’s hands are magic. Word round the ward is that he can detect just about anything.”

  Frank laughed but didn’t argue with her. His touch on my belly was firm yet gentle.

  Then, after a minute of slow, gentle feeling, he turned to the nurse and said, “Linda, can you get Alex ready for an ultrasound?”

  “Sure thing.”

  The door closed behind her with a sharp click, and I glanced at Frank, my heart falling.

  “Really?”

  Moving away from me, he nodded.

  “Afraid so, Alex. You said you just missed your period, right? And that your…encounter was a little over a month ago?”

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded again.

  “Right. Usually four weeks is way too early for an ultrasound, but…I don’t know, I’ve got a feeling about this one. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong and we can do the more standard urine or blood test. But if I’m right…”

  I said nothing, just stared at the white-tiled floor. He didn’t have to say it. If he was right, I was pregnant. If he was right, then my life as I knew it was over.

  The next second the door was opening. Linda, the nurse, bustled in, a water bottle in hand.

  “Go to the bathroom,” she instructed me, “and then drink this. Then, after an hour, we’ll see you and do the ultrasound.”

  I took the bottle without a word. Halfway out the door, Frank stopped me.

  “Hey, Alex? It’s going to be okay.”

  With a nod, I tried to smile.

  “Thanks.”

  Then I headed to the bathroom. I went through the motions fast enough, emptied my bladder, went back into the waiting room, gulped down the entire water bottle, and then filled it up again. The numberless line clock on the wall ticked extra slowly for me, but, after a while, it had no choice but to admit that an hour had passed. And, sure enough, a few minutes later Linda poked her frizzy head out the door and said, “Alex Combs, please.”

  I trudged behind her like a prisoner on death row heading to the electric chair. As I passed through one door after another, I thought, This is it.

  And it was.

  The tall white machine with the screen on top was already all hooked up and ready to go. I stared at the black screen as I climbed onto the bed.

  So, that was what was going to decide my fate.

  “I’ll leave you with our sonographer, Dr. Bailey,” Linda said.

  I turned to see a well-mustached man in the corner I hadn’t even noticed when coming in. He nodded to me, I nodded back, and Linda disappeared.

  After instructing me to lay down and pull up my shirt so my belly was exposed, Dr. Bailey got out a bottle of clear gel.

  “This gel is going to help the machine do its job,” Dr. Bailey said.

  He squirted some cold, clear goo onto my belly. Then he placed a hand-held device attached to the ultrasound machine over it and started rubbing it around.

  I strained to look over at the screen, but from where I was lying down, it was difficult to see anything; the screen was tilted away from me.

  “Hmm,” Dr. Bailey murmured.

  Then, a few seconds later, he laid the hand-held device to the side and picked up a phone on the wall.

  “Yes, Linda? Can you have Dr. Somnabellus come here? There’s something I think he needs to see.”

  Another minute passed, then Frank strode into the room.

  “Hello again, Alex. This should just take a minute,” he said in a soothing tone that terrified me.

  What had Dr. Bailey seen?

  Next thing I knew, Dr. Bailey was rubbing the hand-held device over my belly once more while Fra
nk clucked approval.

  “Yes. Yes, just as I thought. Alex, can you see this?”

  He tilted the screen toward me, and I felt my heart drop to the pit of my stomach.

  There, in the sonic picture of my uterus, it was unmistakable: three black blobs.

  “Triplets,” Frank said, his voice a hush. “You’re pregnant with triplets.”

  As he and Dr. Bailey spoke, I lay there, the word “triplets” ping-ponging around my head. Then I let my horrified gaze stop on Frank a moment before I tore myself off the hospital bed and ran out of the room.

  As I ran, calls of my first and last name dogged me. It was all footsteps behind me and turned heads before me and nurses dodging out of the way just in time. This, however, was all background noise to the real soundtrack, the refrain playing in my head, appropriately in threes: triplets, triplets, triplets.

  The waiting room was empty now except for a woman in the corner who looked like me but couldn’t be. She couldn’t be because I was me, though not anymore, not really. I was a vessel for three other lives, and I was hopelessly alone.

  Even finally making it to my car in the parking garage offered no relief; that which was chasing me was inside me. There would be no escaping this. With a strangled cry, I slammed my palm into the horn, enjoying the blaring as it mingled with my scream—my howl of rage and injustice and despair. There were now three sweet little heads to which I would have to explain how I had put their daddy away for good, had gotten him killed. Three little needy mouths to feed when I couldn’t even feed my own stupid one.

  I beat the steering wheel over and over again until my fists were red and stinging.

  My phone rang. It was Tiffany.

  “Alex, hey. Are you okay?”

  I pulled down the sun visor, looked in the mirror at the teary, red-faced wreck staring back at me, and gave the only answer I could: “No. No, Tiff, I’m really not.”

  It took a minute before she answered. “Come home, Alex. Come home. I’ve got a burrito with your name on it from your favorite, Cotijas.”

  My laugh ended in another series of tears, but nonetheless, I said okay.

  I went back to Tiffany. I drove until I saw the familiar black garage door, until I was at the lion door-knockered house I knew so well. I got one foot in the door and Tiffany swept me into the Yellow Room. It was hard to cry when surrounded by canary yellow curtains, a pineapple rug, some decorative butter pillows, and a yellow china chickadee that stared insolently at me, but I managed.

  I cried and cried and ate Mexican food when it was offered to me, and then I cried some more. At some point amid the crying and the burrito, I told her. Her eyes went grave and she nodded. She hugged me and said, “I know you know, but I have to say it. It’s your decision, and I’ll love you no matter what and all that, but, Alex, I’ve never regretted anything in my life, but that—that I will regret as long as I live.”

  I nodded dully and took my biggest bite of burrito yet. I didn’t need to be reminded of Tiffany’s abortion. I had been there. It hadn’t mattered, somehow, that she was only in college with her whole life ahead of her, or that her on-again-off-again boyfriend, James, had skipped town. It hadn’t even mattered that it was the only practical thing she could’ve done. All that mattered was that, after it, she had lost a child.

  She had lost a child and a year. It had been a year of black. Black clothes, black hair, black, dark, sobbing isolation. I had done for her what I could, even gotten a therapist to come to our apartment. But the loss had still nearly killed her.

  No, I couldn’t undergo what she had. I couldn’t kill a part of him, a part of myself. I would just have to endure this, for better or worse.

  Chapter Fourteen

  So, I looked into adoption. I listened while Cherie, the adoption specialist, rhymed off the process in a bird-chirpy voice of how I would “get to meet the adoptive family, get to be updated about my children, and maybe even get to visit them after!” She mentioned how I was “doing a very generous thing for a family in need!” Then she handed me a bright, glossy pamphlet with the same sort of bright, cheery information and the same sort of smiling families on the front cover that I had imagined in my head.

  The babies rustled angrily in my stomach, but I ignored it. They may have wanted a life with me, but they didn’t know any better. They didn’t know that Mommy had no idea where Daddy was, and had maybe even gotten him killed through her poor choices.

  When I told Tiffany about my plans to give the triplets up for adoption, she was tentatively supportive, although she clearly didn’t agree with my choice.

  “I don’t know,” I overheard her saying to Kyle one day. “I feel like things come into our lives at a certain time for a certain reason. I think this happened to Alex now because she can handle it, even by herself, because it would be good for her.”

  After, I had walked out the door, spurned on by a sad sort of restlessness. I’d strode without stopping to the forest nearby and kept on walking through it, directing my furious glare at the uncaring tree limbs.

  It was easy for Tiffany to say that this was meant to be. She wasn’t facing raising three children alone. And yeah, sure, she and Kyle would be there for me, but would they always be there? Would they be there for every outing, every vacation, every day when I’d have endured all I could? No. No, of course they wouldn’t be, couldn’t be. They had their own lives to live.

  I plunged deeper and deeper into the forest, my thoughts circling in on themselves, swooping down upon me like birds of prey. Who was I to think that I’d make a good mother? Me, who had never even given having children much thought at all. Pretty much anyone would’ve made a better parent. Tiffany and Kyle would’ve made better parents, easily, but having them as a support wasn’t the same.

  Tripping over a stick and coming face-to-face with a mossy log brought me the answer: Tiffany and Kyle would make better parents. Tiffany and Kyle could be their parents. That way, I could visit them all I wanted, watch them grow up, give them a good home, good, reliable parents.

  I marched out of the forest and back to Tiffany’s with the answer on my lips. And yet, when I told her, she didn’t react with the jubilant smile I’d imagined she would. Instead, she looked worried, uncomfortable.

  “This is a very big decision you’re making,” she said in a small voice. “And thank you, Alex, for thinking of me. It’s a very generous offer you’re making, but I can’t take it. Not yet. Can you think about it for a week and then tell me?”

  “But, Tiffany—”

  She shook her head.

  “One week, Combs. You have that long.”

  So, with a sigh, I agreed and trudged to my room.

  That night I awoke empty.

  It was dark, everything was dark, made up of sensations and not sights. The quiet was oppressive, and my belly, my once-rounded belly, was shrunken and shriveled like a prune.

  My babies were gone. I could feel it.

  I got up and raced into a wall. Then I went the other way and hit another wall, invisible in the blackness.

  I cried out, screamed, clutched at my horrible, empty sack of skin where they had been.

  My babies. My three little darlings—gone, unattainable, forever. A part of me ripped away and lost.

  “Please!” I cried into the dark. “Please, give them back to me! Please, I’m begging you! I’ll do anything! Please give them back to me. I can’t bear it!”

  But the dark only echoed back my hopeless cries until I collapsed to my knees and then onto my back, thrashing back and forth, incoherent moans drifting out of my lips.

  I awoke crying.

  I clutched at my stomach and breathed a sigh of relief. Full. It was still full. My babies were still there.

  It had only been a dream, thank God.

  And yet, lying there in the dark, the tears continued rolling down, and the breathless fear still clutched my heart.

  If that was what it was like not having my babies with me, being separated
from my children, how would I be able to bear adoption even if it were with Tiffany and Kyle? What was I supposed to do?

  Staring into the dark, I whispered, “Please, show me a sign. Please. I don’t know what to do. Please, show me what to do.”

  Then I fell back asleep.

  I awoke to tapping, a sharp “tut-tut-tut, tut-tut-tut” coming from my window.

  I drew aside the curtains and found myself face-to-face with a chickadee. It cocked its head at me, blinked, and then flew off.

  It looked like I’d just gotten my answer. In a daze, I flopped back onto the bed, surprised by how relieved I was at the sign I’d just seen, at Brock’s and my bird tapping on my window for my attention.

  There was no denying it; I had asked for a sign, and a sign was what I’d gotten. It had revealed what I had secretly wanted anyway: to keep my children. No matter the difficulty, no matter the hardships, I needed my children to be mine. I needed to be there for them. I couldn’t take it any other way.

  Tiffany was supportive and unsurprised by my change of heart.

  Hugging me, she said, “I know you, Combs. I think you’re making the right decision.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.”

  The next eight months passed better than expected. Tiffany and Kyle kept me busy, got me picking out baby names and hauled me around Ikea in a baby-furniture-buying flurry. I found out I was having two daughters and a son. I moved back into my apartment, cramming as much baby furniture into the small space as it could handle. I even got a few jobs, locating a missing wallet and a long-lost son.

  And then there was Brock. Funny, that his absence was the biggest presence in my life. And yet I kept seeing him—on street corners, in malls, on passing buses just out of reach. His face haunted me, and yet whenever I approached him, he turned out not to be him at all, but strangers who were politely surprised by my interest. No matter how I searched, Brock had disappeared. Russell Snow wasn’t happy either.

  He showed up one day when I was halfway out the door of my apartment.

  “You,” he said, and I froze.