Chapter 30 Willow
WILLOW
Induction is a clock with teeth. As usual, Declan was right. Dr. Patel assures me that thirty-four weeks is good for triplets and that the NICU is ready for us before I even have time to think about what “induction” really means.
The Pitocin pump ticks like a metronome that forgot it’s supposed to be neutral.
My cuff hisses, deflates, hisses again. The room smells like lemon hand gel and warm plastic.
A nurse who I’ve learned is never wrong—Marta, hair in a braided crown, voice like a lullaby—adjusts the belly bands and points to the triple green heart lines streaming across the screen.
“A’s happy. B’s showing off,” she narrates. “C is…opinionated.”
“Opinionated,” I echo numbly. “They keep saying stuff like that about her.”
“So you know the sex?”
“I have an idea,” I say shyly, even though it’s all inferences.
Declan sits where I can see him without turning my head, one ankle hooked over his knee, a posture that looks casual until you see his knuckles. “Contraction coming,” he says, before the machine does. He’s right; a cramp climbs, tight and mean, then lets go like it remembered its manners.
Cheyenne fluffs my pillows and tells me I’m handling this like a champion. “You can do this,” she coaches. “You’re right there.”
“In for four, out for six,” Sean says over me, his hand stroking my forehead. “Mabel would be proud,” he teases, his voice as soft as his hazel eyes and his touch.
I nod, jaw clenched. The curtain of the IV tubing sways when I breathe too hard.
Rowan shows up with a cup of ice chips, something I had forgotten to want but that I’d heard of people wanting before.
He kisses my forehead in front of my mom and sister, who know better than to say anything right now.
“Those little dips when the bands get loose,” he says, still looking at the glass, “they read scarier than they are. Reposition, water, oxygen. See?” He points to B’s line as Marta shifts the monitor. “Back to baseline.”
The contractions sharpen. The world shrinks to the inches around my body, to the faces I’ve gathered like talismans.
When Dr. Patel returns, she takes in all the faces and nods.
“Mom?” she asks my mom, who nods gratefully.
“Okay, Mom, nice to meet you. I’m Dr. Patel. We’re all doing well. We keep going.”
We keep going.
The next contraction has teeth and a grudge.
I count, breathe, count again. Sweat slicks the back of my neck; Cheyenne swabs it with a washcloth that smells like our kitchen.
Sean presses the heel of his hand against my sacrum.
Declan watches the mountain rise on the screen and says, “You’re not doing anything wrong,” in a tone like a wall.
The cuff inflates. The machine beeps. The contraction lets go.
Then B’s heart rate takes a breath and doesn’t give it back.
At first it’s the usual dip, a little slide, the monitor’s version of a sigh. Then it keeps falling. The room turns into a new place—same walls, different gravity. My own heartbeat flares into my throat.
“Turn her,” Dr. Patel commands, and Marta’s already rolling me to my side. Oxygen mask. Cool plastic over my face. “Deep breaths, Willow.”
I do. In for four. Out for—no, too fast. Try again. A second nurse is already at the IV.
Sean’s hand slips from my back to my shoulder. “Hey, hey. It’s alright.” His voice is soft, scared around the edges.
Dr. Patel is calm but her voice is sharp. “Okay,” she says, and it’s a change of weather. “We’re calling it. Decel not recovering. We’re going to the OR.”
“The…?”
“A C-section,” Rowan mumbles against my ear. The word hits me like I was already falling and just realized it. C-section. Now. All the air leaves my chest, and I grab for anything, landing on the front of Rowan’s chest, a handful of buttons.
“Willow,” Declan says, close enough that I can see the little crescent scar near his eyebrow. “Look at me.”
I try. The oxygen mask fogs. My eyes sting.
“You’re not failing,” he says. “We’re pivoting. This is the plan changing, not the plan failing.”
I nod, but it’s not my head moving, it’s the world. The lights. The ceiling. The nurse is already handing me a consent; it’s a blur of bolded risks and black lines. “We have your prior signature,” Marta murmurs. “This is just the update. We’ll take care of you.”
I sign. My name looks like someone else’s.
“Can everyone come?” I ask. The mask turns my voice into a dream, and Marta’s shaking her head. A panic builds in my chest. “I need them!”
The men all push Cheyenne forward, silently appointing her the position of support person.
“Sean,” I try, but he’s already nodding like a metronome and pulling a ridiculous blue cap over my hair, his hands suddenly gentle like they were made to do this one silly task.
“You’re going to meet them in about ten minutes,” he whispers, eyes bright and unsteady. “We’ll be here for you.”
Rowan hasn’t moved. The tendons in his wrist jump under my grip. He looks down at my hand like it’s someone else’s decision. Then he folds his fingers over mine, squeezes me once, and lets me go as the bed starts rolling.
“Sweetie, your sister says good luck. You’re going to do great.
Cheyenne will take care of you. We’re going to be right outside waiting for you.
” My mom’s voice wobbles as tears well in her eyes—green like mine, a starburst of yellow around the pupil.
The bed starts rolling, and she’s chasing me, her hands clinging to the blanket, and that panic in my chest is only getting louder and sharper.
“Tell me what to expect!” I cry out as they all walk down the hallway with me, like we’re in a parade. “Talk to me. Anyone.”
Rowan’s voice is right by my ear. “You’ll feel cold when they scrub your belly. The light will look like a spaceship. Your arms might be out to the side. That’s normal. They’ll test you before they start. You might feel pressure, not pain.”
“You’ll hear crying,” Declan continues. He swallows. “You’ll hear three cries.”
In the elevator, Declan’s hand is on the rail above my head like he can hold the whole box up by himself. The attending is a steady block of calm across from him. Sean stands at my feet like a guard dog that learned to smile. It’s absurd, this convoy. It’s the only thing keeping me from shattering.
The OR is a different country. Air colder, voices brighter, everything stainless and blue. The overhead light is exactly like a spaceship. The anesthesiologist is there with a name I forget twice. The NICU team is already in the corner—three Isolettes, three tiny hats, three teams in matching blue.
Declan squeezes my shoulder as they wheel me in. “Everything we talked about, see? Bright lights,” he says. “That’s what this is. Just a different plan, not a failure.”
“Say the part about the cries again,” I call out as they close the door.
“You’ll hear them,” he calls back. “One, two, three.”
And then there’s a needle in me and then there’s a blanket blocking off my sight and a screen if I really want to see. “Okay, Willow,” the surgeon says from the far side of the blue, voice pure ballast. “Pressure now.”
It’s a sensation like someone stacking books on my ribs. Not pain. Gravity. I breathe in the mask and, without meaning to, reach for the hand that isn’t supposed to be mine.
Cheyenne is at my shoulder, her eyes wet, looking at me like I’m some sort of marvel, like I’m the northern lights. I reach for something, and she slips her hand in that place without hesitation. “You’re doing it,” she breathes. “You’re doing it right now, Willow.”
I glance out the tiny glass window in the door and see Rowan standing there, tears and focus fighting in his eyes.
He gives me a thumbs-up, and I laugh around tears.
He holds my gaze for two breaths, three, and in those seconds I understand something I’ve been refusing to know—I depend on him.
On the way his voice flattens panic, on the way he turns information into a ladder I can climb.
On the way he anchors me without touching me at all.
The man who promised me distance is the one I’m using as a lifeline.
“Here we go,” someone says, and I have one horrifying thought: am I ready? The thought can’t last too long because then all I feel is pressure, pressure, pressure—and then the world tilts toward sound.
A crackly cry peels the air open, and a baby is lifted over the drape, a tiny little shrimp-shaped baby, curled in on herself and bright red.
She’s placed on my naked chest, and I laugh and sob at once.
Another cry screaming through the space and then another baby, quieter but just as red, lifted and placed onto me.
And another, and all the weight on my chest is a reminder of the responsibility of all these lives.
The names I don’t have yet land in my throat like birds anyway.
Cheeks like petals, eyelids purple, mouth a perfect O. “Hi,” I say, uselessly. “Hi, hi.”
Cheyenne is at my side, holding up the one that’s sliding off my chest. She looks at me, and we burst into laughter at the strangeness of it all. “Should we let your baby daddies in?” she asks, dropping her forehead to mine.
“How about just us for a minute?”
“Us like you and the babies, or us like you and me and the babies?” she asks with a laugh, and her question gives me goose bumps.
There are all kinds of ways to be us now.