Chapter 6 Martin
MARTIN
I pause outside the door, doing my best to put into words everything I know I need to say to her. But where the hell am I meant to start, when I just delivered the children of a woman I had sex with nine months ago?
It still sounds surreal, even in my own head.
I haven’t spoken to anyone about it, of course; my shift finished an hour ago, and I’ve been hanging around at the hospital, making up errands and admin tasks that need to be taken care of before I can go.
In truth, I’m waiting for her to wake up so I can go and confirm the suspicions that have been torturing me since the instant I laid eyes on her.
Lila. Lila King. That’s her name. The name on her chart, the one that was hooked over the end of her bed when I stepped in to take over from the maternity ward doctor on call.
I’ve been rolling the name around and around in my head ever since I found it out, trying to make sense of it, of her, of what the fuck all of this means.
I know what it means. I might not have the DNA tests in my hand to confirm that the twins—one girl, one boy—are mine, but I could tell from the way she looked at me when I walked in that I was about the last person on earth she had been hoping to see.
No doubt because she’d been hoping she could keep all of this under wraps.
We never got each other’s names, and it’s not like she left a forwarding address when she took off the morning after, but still, she could have found me if she wanted to.
Which leaves me with the belief that she must really, really not have wanted to.
It makes my head spin, to think that I could have had kids out there that I knew nothing about. If I hadn’t happened to be called away from my break to cover for Justine, Lila could have come and gone from this place without me knowing a damn thing about it.
But as it is, she’s going to have to explain herself to me, even if I feel a little guilty about confronting her on the matter so soon after she’s given birth.
Finally, I put my hand on the door and push it open. No point holding back. She will be expecting this visit.
Shit, maybe she thought I would just dodge my responsibility here, pretend that I don’t know anything about this and let her get on with it. I know a few men who would jump at the chance to be a deadbeat. But that’s not who I am, never has been, never will be, and I refuse to start now.
Inside the room, she jerks upright. Her hair is splayed out around her on the pillow, her eyes ringed with dark circles, but she looks pretty good otherwise. The doctor in me scans her for anything that might need addressing, but as far as I can tell, she’s well.
“H-hello,” she greets me, her voice strained and nervous.
I nod in greeting. “Hi.”
I glance over to the small beds beside her, where both of the twins are slumbering. She follows my gaze, and despite the tension of the situation, she can’t help but crack a smile.
“They’re perfect,” she gushes, reaching over to tuck the covers down slightly on her sleeping little girl. “I…I still can’t get over it.”
“Have you named them yet?”
She nods.
“Mathilda, Matty for short,” she replies. “And Ross for her brother.”
I pause for a moment, casting my gaze over them as they sleep in their cribs before me. There they are. I already held them briefly when they were born, but this feels entirely different, entirely more insistent.
“Thank—thank you, by the way,” she offers me nervously.
I glance over at her. “For what?”
“For helping to bring them into the world,” she replies. She must know why I’m here, but she’s still trying to deflect, to pretend like this isn’t the biggest mess that either of us have managed to land ourselves in.
“It’s my job.”
“I—I know, but still,” she adds. “Given the circumstances…”
And there it is. The part that we’ve been dodging so far. Her eyes widen, as though she’s planted her foot on a landmine.
“The circumstances?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
I glance behind me, to make sure the door is shut. Last thing I need is some intern with too big a mouth to hear about what is happening here and turn it into the talk of the hospital. I lean on the door to make sure nobody will burst in and disturb us, and then turn my attention back to her.
“What, that we had sex nine months ago and now you turn up at my hospital giving birth to twins?”
She bites down on her lip. I can see the same flash of fear that was in her eyes the first time we met, and guilt nags at me for an instant.
I don’t want her to be scared of me. I don’t want her to feel as though she has to hide this from me.
I need to know what part I have in this, if any, before I get dragged into something I might have no business being in.
“I’m sorry,” she blurts out. “I—I thought about telling you, I really did. But we hardly knew each other, I didn’t even know what your name was, and it just didn’t feel fair for me to turn up after we’d slept together once and tell you that—”
“That you were pregnant with my children?”
She nods. The room spins as the confirmation hits me like a ton of bricks.
So, that’s the truth of it, then—I am the father of these children.
I look down at the twins before me, stomach twisting into knots.
This should be a joyous moment, a moment where I lift them into my arms and gaze into their eyes and marvel at the miracle of bringing new life into the world.
The same way I did with my son—no, my first son now. That’s how I have to think about him. Since I now have a second son, along with a daughter.
“You’re sure they’re mine?”
“I wasn’t with anyone else,” she whispers, shaking her head. “They couldn’t have been—there was nobody else they could have belonged to, Martin.”
It’s the first time she’s called me by my name. My hand flies to the tag on my coat, trying to make sense of how ridiculous this is, how backward. She just gave birth to my children and she didn’t even know my fucking name.
“Were you ever going to tell me? If I hadn’t found out like this?” I ask her gruffly. I don’t want to blow up at her, not in front of the kids, not when she’s clearly in such a vulnerable state, but I know I deserve answers. She can’t just brush this all off, make like she has no part in this.
“I—I didn’t want you to think that I was trying to use you or something,” she blurts out. “I wasn’t—I thought you would—you know how some girls get pregnant because they’re expecting child support—”
“You really think that’s how I would have reacted to this?” I demand, waving my hand around the room. I can barely bring myself to look at the twins.
Twins. I know that came from my side of the family; my father was a twin, as were two of my aunts on my mother’s side. Looking at them now, it feels wild to me that these two tiny bundles could be connected to my old life back in Ireland, but they are.
“I had no idea,” she fires back. “I didn’t know you, remember? I had no clue who you were or how you might react…”
“I took care of you that night,” I tell her, voice dropping. “That wasn’t enough to convince you that I would have taken care of you and the children too? If you had given me the chance?”
I run a hand through my hair. Anger is tossed up with confusion inside of me, none of it making sense. She’s had nine months to get used to this, I’ve had barely twelve hours since the moment I walked into her hospital room and found out that she was giving birth.
“I’m sorry,” she blurts out. “But isn’t this…this could be a good thing, right? Now that you know?”
I close my eyes, the weight of it all too much for me to take. She has no idea—no idea what it means for me to have more children, not after the last kid I brought into this world.
I can still recall just how hopeful Martha and I were the day our son was born. My little bairn, that’s what I had called him, just like my Scottish grandfather had referred to me when I was a boy.
And he had looked up at us with those stormy gray eyes and I had seen so much potential in his future, so much hope in everything he might be, everything he might do.
I was so determined to do everything I could to give him the life he deserved, but at every turn, I feel as though I must have fucked it up.
He had everything we could give him—we spent plenty of time with him, gave him opportunities to come to us with no blame if something was bothering him, put him in therapy, treatment, supported living, all of it.
But it didn’t seem to matter how far out of our way we went to make him better, he was just…
there just always seemed to be something in him that we couldn’t reach.
Something that had come from us.
No, not from us. From me. I know it.
I knew Martha too well, even then, to think that she would be capable of instilling such a thing in our son.
She had been the perfect child, kind and giving and thoughtful, and I had been the one running all over town, crashing stolen cars, driving my parents insane before I finally came to my senses and applied for college.
I thought I had exorcized that part of me then, but now I can see it was only waiting, ready to pour itself into my son the first chance it got.
I swore, when he was a teenager, that I wouldn’t have any more children. I clearly don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to raising them right, or maybe there’s some gene inside of me that leaves them unable to function in the world at large.
Why would I want to inflict that on more children?
Martha and I split not long afterward, as though she could sense it.
As though she knew that it was what was in me that had done this, not her.
My son even gave up on my name after that, returning to his mother’s maiden name as a surname, doing everything he could to put distance between us like he wanted to prove to me how little he needed me in his life.
And now, I’m a father again. Like it or not.
A fresh batch of my genes sitting right in front of me, slumbering in two cribs as their mother looks on.
She has no idea what she’s gotten herself into.
And I don’t even know if I have the heart to tell her what she’s in for. It was hard enough with one, but two?
“Martin?” she prompts me, trying to bring me back to the moment.
I blink and shake my head. “I have to go.”
“You’re just going to leave? Like that?” she retorts. I hate the tone in her voice, the pain that she can’t hide. I wonder if, for her, I’m just another in a long line of men who have screwed her over and left her when she needed them most. I hate that I might be, but I have no choice.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, and I turn and head for the door. My head is a mess. I can’t do this again, go through the pain of loving children only to see them struggle and hurt the people around them. They might only be babies now, but time passes all too quickly, and when the reality sets in…
I don’t know if I’m going to be able to cope with it.
Even as she calls after me, I keep my head down and close the door, ignoring the anguish in her voice, and praying that she can find it in her heart to forgive me one day.
Even if I’m not sure I will ever be able to offer the same grace to myself.