Chapter 11 Sage #2
“You finish this,” he says, his voice low and controlled. “One more. That’s it.”
The contraction hits, hard and immediate.
“Now.” He takes my hand, and I grip it tightly.
Then, I push.
Everything in me strains at once, pain and pressure colliding into something blinding as my body gives everything it has left.
“Again,” he says, steady as ever. “Don’t stop.”
I don’t stop. I can’t. There’s nothing left in me except this, nothing left but the need to finish it. I push again, sobbing, my grip slipping as my entire body trembles under the effort, the pressure peaking into something unbearable—
And then it breaks. The release is immediate, overwhelming, and a cry fills the room, louder and stronger than the others.
“Baby three.”
The words barely register at first, distant and unreal, because my body is already collapsing back against the bed, every muscle giving out at once. The tension drains so fast it leaves me shaking, my chest heaving as the reality crashes down on me all at once.
I did it.
Right after the last cry fades into the rhythm of the room, a nurse presses firmly down on my abdomen, and the relief I thought I’d earned shatters into a new, dull pain that makes me flinch.
“I know, I know,” she murmurs, her hands working with practiced pressure to help my uterus contract, to keep me from bleeding too much.
Or so she says. I’m pretty sure she’s torturing me for fun.
I barely have time to process it before another wave rolls through—not a contraction like before, but something deeper, heavier—as my body shifts again, pushing out the placenta with a strange, slippery release that feels both foreign and final.
There’s more movement between my legs, quiet instructions, the clinical cadence of voices checking, counting, assessing.
I lie there shaking, half-aware of hands still working, of the nurse continuing that steady, unrelenting massage, grounding me in the reality that even though the babies are here, my body isn’t done yet. But when she’s done, I’m convinced things will go back to normal.
I’m wrong. So wrong.
The world doesn’t snap back all at once.
It comes in slowly, in pieces, like my body isn’t ready to hold all of it at the same time.
The pain is still there, but it’s different now—duller, distant, no longer the only thing I can feel.
In its place is something else, something heavier and softer all at once, settling deep in my chest as the sound of them reaches me.
Three separate cries.
I turn my head, slow and unsteady, my neck barely cooperating as I try to see them.
Everything feels far away, like I’m looking through water, like I haven’t fully come back into myself yet.
There’s movement everywhere—nurses, doctors, hands working quickly but no longer in that sharp, frantic way. Controlled now. Measured.
“They’re stable.”
“They’re strong.”
The words tap somewhere deep, somewhere that makes my chest ache in a completely different way than the pain did. My eyes burn, tears slipping sideways into my hair as I try to focus, trying to catch a glimpse of them through the blur of motion and exhaustion.
And then I see Ronan again.
He’s already moved away from me, standing near where they’re working on the babies, his attention split, tracking everything at once. He’s not rushing. Not hesitating. Just steady, the same way he was through all of it, like nothing in this room exists outside of what needs to be done.
This is him in his world, in control of everything around him, making sure my babies—our babies—
No. I shut the thought down so fast it almost hurts. My babies.
That’s all they can ever be. My chest tightens anyway.
“Careful with that line,” Ronan says, stepping closer, adjusting something with steady hands. “Good. That’s it.”
He doesn’t even look at me. Not once. I don’t know why that stings. It shouldn’t. This is his job. This is what he does. He’s not here for me in any intimate way. I’m a patient in his hospital. I needed someone with his skill set.
That’s it. That has to be it.
But I can’t stop thinking about the way his voice sounded when he said my name the first time. The way he didn’t hesitate, didn’t treat me like I was anything less than capable of getting through it, even when I was falling apart.
“You did well.”
The words pull my attention back to him, my gaze snapping up as I realize he’s moved closer again, back at my side.
Up close, he looks the same. And completely different.
The whole world looks different now. I’m a mom.
There’s something more contained about him now, something pulled tight beneath the surface, like whatever cracked when he recognized me has already been locked back into place.
Professional. Controlled. Untouchable.
My throat feels dry when I swallow. “Are they okay?”
“They’re great,” he says, and his tone is even, measured, like it was before, like it’s always been. “They’ll need monitoring, but they’re strong.”
I nod, even though it feels like too much effort, tears slipping quietly as I let that sink in. “Thank you.”
It’s not enough. It will never be enough. But it’s all I have.
His gaze holds mine for a second—just one—and something shifts there, something I don’t have the energy to understand. Then it’s gone.
“They’re going to take good care of you,” he says, already stepping back, putting distance between us like it belongs there.
I’m exhausted and aching and full in a way I don’t know how to process, listening to my babies cry and trying to convince myself that this—whatever just happened between us—was nothing more than what it had to be.
“Can I—” My voice falters, rough and unfamiliar. “Can I see them?”
“You will,” he says. “They’ll bring them to you briefly before transport.”
Relief loosens something tight in my chest. I watch him as he speaks, the way he holds himself, the way everything about him has shifted back into something controlled and contained.
It’s like the version of him from before—on the plane, in that narrow space where it was just us—is gone, replaced by this one.
The doctor. The man who belongs here.
The man who doesn’t belong to me.
“Thank you,” I say again, softer this time, because the words still feel too small but I don’t have anything else to give him.
“You did the hard part,” he says with half a smile.
A nurse moves into my line of sight, speaking gently about next steps, about recovery, about what to expect in the next few hours.
I try to listen. I really do. But my attention drifts. Back to my babies. Back to him.