by M. J. Fields
“Why are you doing this to me?” What is wrong with her? Where is her humanity?
“I’m sorry, Ava. I thought he told you. I thought you both knew.”
He didn’t tell me because he didn’t want to hurt me. He didn’t tell me because he loves me. He didn’t tell me because it’s not true. He knew in his heart both babies were his.
The door opens, and she walks behind me and wheels me out into the hallway. “If you’d like the tests run—”
“No. No, and I don’t ever want to talk about it again,” I whisper to her sternly over my shoulder.
“As you wish.”
God, T, what were you thinking? I ask him in my head.
The answer screams back at me. He loves me. He loves me so much he didn’t want me to hurt anymore because of Luke.
TWENTY-FIVE
* * *
Love isn’t all it’s wrapped up to be...love hurts.
— D. Holtry
She pushes me toward the glass automatic doors that say NICU, and they open.
My head is spinning from the information she just gave me, topped with the loss of T, the pain I am in, and the fact that I have no idea what I am about to face.
“The female is smaller but stronger. Her lungs are very well-formed for a baby born at twenty-five plus four.” My babies are twenty-five weeks and four days old. “We have her on a respirator in case she stops breathing. Your son has a heart condition called PDA. There is a great chance it will heal itself without surgery. We are also concerned that he may have necrotizing enterocolitis. His stomach is distended, and he isn’t eating well. When he does eat, he tends to vomit more than we like to see. We are monitoring him very closely. But I will tell you that expressing your breast milk will help him a great deal. NEC can cause a hole to open up and allow the bacteria to the intestines that could leak, and it can be fatal.”
When we round the corner, I see my mom and Tessa both sitting next to incubators. They look up and both stand and step toward me. Tessa stops, and I know she is trying not to overstep.
“Ava, how are you?” she asks as I start to stand.
“Ava, sit. This wheelchair is more mobile than you.” Dr. Kennedy immediately begins to tell me more about my poor children. “The beds are heated because your children are too small to regulate their body temperature. The lighted probes on their feet are to read oxygen saturation. They have intravenous lines set for antibiotics and feeding.”
“You said they were eating,” I interrupt.
“Through tubes,” she explains.
“When can I take them home?” I ask, wanting them out of here. Out of the place their father died in. Out of the place where they look so helpless.
I cover my mouth and start to cry for them, for mine and T’s babies.
“The answer is when they are eating and breathing on their own and when they are healthy, Ava,” Dr. Kennedy says, lowering her tone as she pushes me to the one wrapped in pink.
“When will that be?” I whisper back as I look up at her.
“A guess would be their due date,” Tessa answers.
“September?” I ask, looking at her.
“Your little girl is so strong, so very strong and doing amazing.” Tessa smiles. “She is a miracle, actually.”
“And the boy?” I ask, afraid to look at him, not knowing how much more I can take.
“He’s a fighter,” Mom says. “He’s going to be fine. Expect him to act just like Logan did in a few years.”
I am afraid to smile or take delight in this. The fear comes from wondering when it will all be taken away like T was.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she says firmly. “Yes, I am, because my little girl has struggled enough, and if that man loved you half as much as Harper and Maddox have said over the past week, he is up there right now, making sure of it.”
Tessa clears her throat and swallows hard. Her voice breaks when she says, “And Piper said so.”
I nod and look back at my mom. “What if I can’t do this?”
“Oh, no, that’s not my little girl talking. She can and has done anything she puts her mind to from the day she was born. You have got this, Ava.”
“And if you feel like you’re ready to walk away, you tell any of us. Someone will walk with you while the others fight over who gets to hold these beautiful, little people you created,” Tessa says.
“Me and T,” I whisper as I put my hand inside the incubator. “Me and T.”
Tessa grabs my elbow and pulls it back. “We need to scrub you up, Ava.”
After my hands are washed, I ask for gloves, but they tell me that’s not necessary. Then Mom wheels me over to my son.
“He’s bigger than her, and he has hair,” I say when I see his hair from under his blue knit hat.
“You had a lot of hair when you were born,” Mom says as she rubs her hand down the back of my head. “Both you and Logan.”
I nod and reach in, touching his tiny foot.
“Why do they have blindfolds on?”
“They like it dark, warm, and quiet,” Dr. Kennedy answers.
I nod as I count five little toes.
“His belly is big.”
“Which is another reason we are monitoring him for NEC.”
I look at Dr. Kennedy, remembering she told me it could be fatal.
“I need a pump,” I say, squinting my eyes and shaking my head, remembering vividly when T bought a breast pump online and how he tried it out on himself. We both laughed and laughed.
“He’s going to miss all of this. Why? Why did he die?”
“Ava, he was never going to pull through. His injuries were too substantial,” Dr. Kennedy says.
“But none of us ever gave up hope,” Tessa adds firmly, looking at Dr. Kennedy as if to tell her to tread lightly.
I look over at the girl. “Hope. Her name is Hope.”
“That’s a beautiful name,” Mom says. “And his?”
I rub his tiny foot and shrug. “I’m not sure yet.”
***
I spend a long time in the room, going between the two of them. It is not without pain. My body hurts. My heart hurts. My soul hurts.
“You need to rest,” Mom says, rubbing my shoulder.
“I don’t want to leave them.”
“Ava, they need you to get stronger, and the only way to do that is for you to take care of yourself. I am telling you this as your mother. You are going to rest.”
“And you’ll both stay with them?” I ask, looking between her and Tessa.
They both nod.
“And if something happens to me, you’ll both take care of them?”
“Nothing is going to happen to you,” Mom says with her brows turned in. “Do you understand me? Nothing.”
“But if, by chance—”
“Ava, your mother and I are here and will be until you kick us out. And like she said, nothing is going to happen to you.”
I nod, but I don’t believe for a minute that God—if He is real—could possibly take Thomas Hardy while leaving me here.
***
I wake up to my phone ringing and answer it.
“Hello?”
“Ava? Oh, Ava, are you okay? I am so sorry, sweetheart.” Jade sniffs. “So, so sorry.”
“Thank you,” I say quietly.
“How are your babies?”
“Thomas and my children are in for a fight. Mom and Tessa are with them. They made the doctor bring me here to rest.”
“You need to rest,” she says quietly.
I take a deep breath and hope T can hear my thoughts, that I am only saying this because it’s the right thing to do. “How is he?”
“Luke is a fighter.” She pauses and sniffs a few more times. “He has two shattered legs, several broken ribs, and both lungs are punctured but healing. He has vision loss in his left eye and”—she pauses—“he’s going to be okay.”
“Good,” I say. It’s the right thing to say, but I stop mysel
f from allowing any further thought from entering my mind.
“He wants you to know how sorry he is about T. He asked if you were okay.”
“Tell him thank you and that I’m fine.”
“And the babies?”
“They have to be okay,” I answer. “They have to be strong.”
“We would be there if we could, Ava.”
“There are a lot of people here now,” I tell her instead of telling her that Luke isn’t welcome because T wouldn’t want him here.
“But we”—she pauses—“would be there.”
“Thank you.”
“You sound tired, Ava. I won’t keep you. I just needed to hear your voice.”
“Thank you, Jade.”
“We love you, Ava, and you and your children are in our prayers. We fly out of here tomorrow morning and into Washington. When Luke is stronger, we will be there.”
“Fly safe, Jade.”
“We will.”
I hang up then drop the phone on the table, grab my button, and push it, wanting to fall asleep.
***
A week after my love has passed away, I am discharged from the hospital, but I have no intention of leaving.
T was cremated and his ashes were taken by Brody and Emma to the loft before they flew home. I told Brody— who was a father figure to T, and I could tell he felt the same about T—that he needed to put them in the babies’ room by the window so T could see the sun, and Brody agreed.
Logan didn’t return to school. Mom, Dad, and I tried to convince him to, but he isn’t leaving me and said he didn’t care, that until his niece and nephew are home, he will be with me. He can take an extra semester and play another season of football. It’s a win-win; except, it isn’t. There are no wins in this situation.
Dad and Tessa plan to fly to Washington for two days to visit Luke. Dad asks me if I can name his grandson before he leaves.
“Chance Thomas,” I say without second thoughts. I had never even considered it as an option.
Hope was always there with T and me. My little girl is hope. With our son, every time they thought something could be wrong, but there was a chance he would heal without surgery, he did, so he has become Chance. I know T would have loved it.
Maddox and Harper have no plans to leave, and on occasion, they will bring Piper to visit me.
Piper is such a light in the darkness that surrounds me. She talks about T like he is still here, and she talks about his accident in her dreams.
Harper looks bewildered. “Piper, is that what your dreams were about?”
“T and Luke and they are okay.” She smiles big at me and nods. “Right?”
I lean down and kiss her.
I wake in the rocker between my children when an alarm goes off. My first instinct is to reach in and gently pat their feet to startle them so that they remember to breathe.
It’s Chance’s monitor.
Four nurses rush in.
“Ava, you’ll need to move,” one says, and I step back as I watch them work on our son.
As soon as the alarm stops, they take more blood out of his poor little body to run a million different tests.
A few hours later, they tell me he needs a transfusion.
I’m terrified, but I tell them to take whatever they need from me. They tell me that Chance is A positive and I am O positive. Curiosity gets the best of me, and I ask what Hope’s blood type is.
When I ask the question, I see Dr. Kennedy walk in.
The nurse looks at Hope’s chart and tells me, “She is the same as you.”
When they leave to get Chance ready for his transfusion, Dr. Kennedy tells me T was also O. She doesn’t say anything more, but the woman seems to want to make my life miserable. She is putting doubt in way of healing. I know damn well Chance is T’s, as well as I know our love for each other was not perfect, but it was real and true. Unlike mine for … Luke.
“She has the bedside manner of a freaking troll,” I tell Logan, and he nods. I roll my eyes. “I may have just made a joke, Logan; the least you could do is laugh.”
“These two, Ava, they are little miracles,” he says as he rocks Hope who is now off her respirator and feeding from my expressed milk. “And you’re doing really well with them.”
TWENTY-SIX
* * *
Sometimes the weeds creep in and you need to work to get them out.
— J. Baldwin
Six weeks later, I am leaving the hospital and going to the flat for the very first time. Hope A. Hardy is a miracle. She is up to five pounds, two ounces; eats on her own; breathes on her own; and even has some hair. It’s blonde, and her eyes are blue.
When I walk out of the hospital, I take a deep breath as Dad pulls up in his SUV and Casey pulls up behind him. She jumps out and runs over to me, stopping quickly as she gets very close to me.
“Ava,” she says, trying to remain calm.
“Casey. Oh, God, I’m sorry,” I say as I stand with Hope in my arms and give her a hug. “I must have forgotten to call you, and have you been paid, and—”
“Your father and Brody have kept in touch. Thomas has”—she pauses and clears her throat— “had my pay deposited into my account. I haven’t touched it, though. I want to know what you want to do about the vehicle and, well, me. But there is time. I’m just here to see if you need anything or—”
“I want you to do whatever it is you do.” I nod. “Casey, this is Hope. Hope, this is Casey, and I really wish she would stay on with us. I’ll figure out how to pay you and all that stuff, but I know I’m going to need you. And T trusted you with me, so I know he would trust you with his children.”
“You have my number?” she asks.
I nod. “I’ll be in touch.”
Once in the vehicle, I put Hope into a seat that seems way too big for her. Dad is sitting next to me, helping me buckle her in.
“I don’t know if I’ve said thank you enough for everything.”
“Ava, we know, okay, sweetheart? We know.”
“I have no idea how I would have made it through without everyone.”
“That’s why you should move home as soon as Chance is well enough.”
I half-laugh at the idea. “We have a home. I will figure it out.”
“Ava, you are going to need us. And baby girl, we need you.”
“Daddy, did you see what he did for them? I’m not taking them away from it. Not ever.”
He looks at me and takes in a deep breath. Then he looks down and kisses Hope’s little head before looking back at me. “We’ll figure it out, Ava. All of it.”
As we pull away from the hospital, I feel a different hell than the one I have been in since the night Thomas was hit. I am leaving one of my children for the first time because the other is strong enough to go home.
“Ava,” Dad says, looking back at me in the rearview mirror. “Your mother and Logan are with him.”
I nod as my eyes well up with tears.
“He’s getting stronger.”
I nod again.
“They didn’t think he was going to make it, and he did. He will be with you and his sister soon.”
I nod as I look down at my sleeping angel who is holding my finger and sucking on a little blue-green pacifier.
For a week, she couldn’t even suck. She couldn’t even breathe on her own for a full day, and now, she is going home.
She is hope.
“Brody and Maddox contacted T’s lawyer. Apparently, he had already changed everything in his will, leaving you as his sole beneficiary.”
“Why did he have a will?” I ask myself out loud. “He’s too young to even have had to worry about such things.”
“He was also in a rock band and made more money from royalties in a month than I ever did in a year at his age. Those royalties don’t stop, Ava. Your children will be taken care of.”
I don’t respond. I look down at Hope and whisper, “And we would give it all away just to have him here with
us, wouldn’t we, Hope?”
I look at her, unable to believe she has more than doubled in size since the first time I saw her. Dr. Kennedy tells me it’s due to my milk, and she says it with an expectancy in her voice that rubs me the wrong way. I also know it pushes me to continue expressing milk regardless of how much my breasts hurt. Besides, hurt is welcome over pain, and pumping fills the quiet time.
Pain is in those moments.
The pain-filled moments when I think of him, I want to join him. I want to because life on this earth is black and white. The only color I see is in our children and in Piper.
I love my family. I love them. But my love for T, as well as his for me, is a love like nothing I ever felt. His love for me was euphoric; our home was Utopia; and nothing else will ever compare, not ever.
“Jade called this morning. Luke is coming home,” Dad says, but I don’t look up. “Ava?”
“I heard you. That’s wonderful for them.”
“It’s wonderful for all of us,” he says.
I nod.
***
Getting out of the vehicle is harder than I could have imagined. However, I force myself for Hope.
“Want to see what your daddy did for you and your brother, Hope?”
In Hope, I find strength, just like I did in her father. Like I still do in his love.
He is with me in my pain, and he is with me in our children. In our children, there is the epic and extraordinary love of two people. I will do whatever I have to for them.
I step out and can’t look left. My heart beats in my throat, and my hands tremble.
Pain. Pain lives outside of our home.
“Let’s get you inside,” Dad says as he leans in and unlatches Hope’s seat.
His arm is around my waist, and I am not sure if he is holding me up or if I am. His opposite hand has my Hope in her carrier.
Tessa, Brody, Emma, London, Lexington, Harper, Maddox, Piper, my mother’s sisters, Ally, and Alex are in the lobby when we walk in. It’s overwhelming.
“We’ll give you a minute,” Tessa says as we walk past them into the cargo elevator.
“Thanks,” Dad says since I am unable.
“I go, too,” Pipers says, starting to walk toward us.