Chapter Forty-Four Double Take
“Twins,” Jennie repeated, the word arriving strange and enormous in her mouth, like she was testing whether it would hold her weight.
“You’re telling me there are two.” “Two,” Dr. Chen confirmed, turning the monitor slightly so they could both see it properly.
“Two separate sacs, two separate heartbeats, both looking strong. Fraternal, most likely, given the positioning — you'll have released two eggs this cycle instead of one, which happens more often than people realize, especially—” she paused, choosing her words with visible care, “especially in pregnancies that follow a loss. The body sometimes does unusual things, trying again.” “Two,” Lin Xing said again, still staring at the screen, his composure, usually so reliable, entirely absent. “I confess I had prepared myself, extensively, for a wide range of possible complications. I had not prepared for this particular one.” “It’s not a complication,” Dr. Chen said, amused despite herself.
“It’s a healthy, if slightly more complicated, pregnancy.
We'll want to see you more often — every two weeks instead of monthly, an anatomy scan a bit earlier than usual, some extra attention to growth for both babies as we go. But right now, today, everything looks exactly as it should. You’re simply having two of it instead of one.
” Jennie found she couldn’t stop looking at the screen — two small, stubborn flickers, side by side, sharing the same space, the same warmth, already, somehow, together before either of them had even properly arrived.
They sat in the car afterward for considerably longer than they had after the first ultrasound, neither of them quite ready to drive, both of them simply staring at the two new printed strips of grainy black-and-white images now sitting in Jennie’s lap.
“I need to say something out loud,” Jennie said finally, “and I need you to just let me say it without immediately problem-solving it, because I know that’s your instinct and I love you for it, but right now I just need to say it.
” “Go ahead.” “I’m terrified.” Her voice wobbled.
“Not the good kind of terrified from before. The kind where some part of me is already bracing for something to go wrong, because it went wrong once, and now there are two of them, which feels like twice the risk, twice the room for something to go wrong, and I don’t know how to just be happy about this without that fear standing right next to it, taking up exactly as much space.
” Lin Xing was quiet a moment, visibly resisting the urge to immediately offer statistics or reassurance, and Jennie loved him a little more for the visible effort of it. “I’m terrified too,” he said finally.
“I wanted you to know that before I say anything else. Not smaller than your fear. Exactly the same size.” He reached over and took her hand.
“But I find, sitting here, that I’m also unbelievably happy, in a way that surprised me the second I stopped being purely shocked. Both things are true at once. I’ve stopped expecting that to resolve into just one feeling. I don’t think it’s supposed to, anymore.
Not for us.” “There’s room in us for this,” Jennie said simply — the old phrase underneath every word of it, worn smooth from months of use. “All of it,” he agreed. “Fear, joy, twice the worry, twice the love. I think we’ve had enough practice at this particular skill by now to manage it.”
They told Sophia and Emma that evening, over a dinner Jennie had been too distracted to properly cook, which meant it was largely takeout arranged around the good plates in a halfhearted attempt at ceremony.
“Okay,” Sophia said, when Jennie finally worked up to it, sliding the two ultrasound strips across the table, “I need you to know that whatever this is, I am emotionally prepared. I’ve had a very stressful year of preparation.
Hit me with it.” Jennie watched her count the flutters on the printed image, watched her count them again, watched her face go through approximately six distinct stages of comprehension before landing, finally, on something like reverent horror.
“There are TWO,” Sophia said, at a volume that startled the takeout containers.
“There are TWO BABIES. Jennie. JENNIE. You are having a LITTER.” “They’re not puppies, Sophia.
” “I didn’t say puppies, I said a LITTER, it’s a medical term, I looked it up specifically for multiples—’ “That is absolutely not a medical term for twins.” “It should be. It’s efficient.
” Sophia was already crying, laughing, reaching across the table to grab both their hands at once.
“Two godmother applications. I need to file two. Do they come with double the qualifications requirement or does my original application cover both?” “I believe your original application,” Lin Xing said gravely, “specifically referenced ‘excellent taste in gifts,’ plural, so I imagine it was always built to scale.” Emma, considerably calmer but visibly just as moved, studied the images with the careful attention of a woman who understood, better than most, exactly what this particular pregnancy meant after everything that had come before it.
“How are you both, really?” she asked. “Not the easy answer.” “Terrified,” Jennie said honestly.
“Happier than I’ve let myself be in months.
Both, exactly the same size, like usual.
” “That sounds about right,” Emma said gently.
“For you two, that’s probably always going to be the honest answer to everything important.
I think that’s not a flaw. I think that’s just what it looks like to actually feel things all the way through instead of picking one. ”
The calls home that night ran long, predictably, and predictably loud on one particular end of the line.
“TWO,” Rosamma said, once the news landed, her voice climbing an octave Jennie hadn’t heard from her since the wedding announcement.
“Two grandchildren, at once! Molé, do you understand what this means for the naming?
We will need twice the discussion, twice the — oh, your grandmother is going to be insufferable, she already thinks she predicted this, she’s been saying ‘twins run in threes’ for years and nobody has ever understood what that means, including her—’ “Amma, we haven’t even started thinking about names yet—’ “You have nine more months! Plenty of time! I already have several ideas—” “Rosamma,” Jennie’s father cut in, gently, “let the children breathe. Twice the joy, twice the worry.
We'll help however you need, whenever you need it. That’s all that matters right now.
” Lin Wei, on his own call, absorbed the news with his usual quiet steadiness, though Jennie could hear, even through the phone, the small catch in his breath before he spoke.
“Your mother used to say she always wanted more than one,” he told his son softly.
“We tried, for years, after you. It never happened for us. I used to wonder if she’d have been sad, knowing you’d only ever have the one sibling you never got.” His voice roughened.
“I don’t wonder that anymore. I think she’d say this is simply her getting her wish a generation late. Two grandchildren where she always wanted two children. I think she’d find that very fitting.”
Lin Xing didn’t answer that right away, and Jennie, watching his face carefully, saw exactly what it cost him to hold steady through it — not sad, this time, she realized.
Something gentler. Something that had finally, fully, learned how to let grief and joy occupy the same sentence without either one flinching.
“I think so too,” he said finally, voice thick.
“I like that very much, Ba. Thank you for saying it.”
Later, once the calls had ended and the takeout containers had been cleared away, Jennie found herself standing again in the doorway of the small yellow room — properly open now, properly theirs again, the crib still standing patient and white, the little elephant still keeping watch, the small embroidered cloth still folded safe in its corner.
“We’re going to need a second crib,” she said, mostly to herself, working through the practical enormity of it for the first time.
“A second everything, really. I don’t think this room is big enough for two. ”
“We'll make room,” Lin Xing said, coming to stand behind her, arms circling loosely around her waist, chin resting against the top of her head the way it always did in this particular doorway.
“We seem to have gotten fairly good at that, lately.” “Two,” Jennie said again, still turning the shape of the word over, still finding it strange and enormous and, increasingly, wonderful.
“I keep trying to picture it and I can’t quite get there.
Two of everything. Two heartbeats at once, two futures starting at exactly the same time.” “I find I can picture it rather easily, actually,” Lin Xing said, something warm and steady in his voice. “I’ve had considerable practice imagining impossible things becoming ordinary, lately.
An elephant. An apartment. A whole unlikely life, built one improbable piece at a time.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
“Two seems, by comparison, like exactly the kind of impossible thing we’ve gotten rather good at making room for.
” Jennie leaned back into him, hand resting against her still barely-changed stomach, and let herself, finally, fully believe it — two heartbeats, two futures, twice the fear and twice the love, arriving together in a small yellow room that had already, somehow, learned exactly how to hold whatever came through its door next.