Chapter 37
Sitting on the stupid lounge chair that allowed her to be part of everything while on bed rest, Maddie McCarthy watched her sister-in-law Mallory marry Quinn James as she timed pains that could no longer be called anything other than contractions.
This couldn’t be happening, she thought, not in the middle of Mallory’s wedding, not when the twins weren’t due for another month.
Thankfully, Mac was occupied with watching his sister get married while keeping their kids from distracting from the proceedings, so he’d yet to notice his wife grimacing in pain every eight minutes. He was going to lose his mind when he realized she was in labor.
Maddie withdrew her cell phone from her purse and sent a text to her sister, Tiffany. As soon as the ceremony is over, please come here. I need you.
After Quinn kissed Mallory for what seemed like five full minutes, they turned to face their guests, smiles stretching across their faces as they made their way down the aisle to rousing applause for the newlyweds.
Carrying her daughter Addie, Tiffany stood and rushed over to Maddie. “What’s wrong?”
Maddie took a second to see where Mac was and saw him holding Hailey and baby Mac while he said something to Thomas.
“Maddie?”
She looked up at her sister. “I’m in labor.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I really am.” As if to make her point, a contraction picked that moment to take her breath away. She breathed through it as she broke into a cold sweat.
“Since when?”
“About an hour, since right after we arrived. Is Victoria here?”
“She is. Do you want me to get her?”
“Yeah, and hurry up about it.” The last thing Maddie wanted to do was anything to disrupt Mallory’s day, but her baby girls apparently had other plans.
She was terrified about them arriving early.
They were supposed to be in Providence long before the due date, not once again on a remote island, and once again without electricity.
She forced herself to remain calm, to not give in to the hysteria bubbling just below the surface.
Tiffany returned with Victoria and without Addie.
“Did your water break?” Vic asked.
“Not yet, but for the last hour, I’ve been having contractions that I thought were Braxton Hicks, but they’re eight minutes apart.”
“I need to get you inside and examine you. Do you think you could walk?”
“I can do it.”
Victoria and Tiffany helped her up.
“Be careful, Tiff,” Maddie said to her sister, who was also pregnant.
“I’m fine,” Tiffany said. “Don’t worry about me.”
Maddie whimpered when another contraction made it so she couldn’t move.
“That was only six minutes after the last one,” Tiffany said.
Time seemed to slow down at that point as others on the lawn began to notice something was going on. Maddie happened to look up and catch the exact moment when her husband realized something was wrong. The stricken look on his face told the story for both of them. This couldn’t be happening again.
Victoria and Tiffany got Maddie up the stairs and into a main floor sitting room.
“I don’t have gloves,” Victoria said.
“It’s fine,” Maddie said.
“Let me go wash my hands before I touch you.”
When she returned, Victoria performed a quick exam and discovered Maddie was fully effaced and six centimeters dilated. “Holy crap. You don’t mess around.”
“What’s happening?” Mac asked when he came into the room, his face ashen from shock and dismay.
“I think we’re going to have some babies today,” Victoria said.
“No,” Mac said, shaking his head. “It’s too soon.”
“The babies seem to have other ideas, and it’s not at all unusual for twins to arrive early,” Vic said. “Tiffany, go get your husband. Tell him to hurry.”
While Maddie contended with another contraction, Mac rushed to her side, dropping to his knees beside the sofa where she was stretched out.
“I’m so sorry,” she said as tears rolled down her face.
“This came out of nowhere. I was fine earlier.” But when she thought about it, her belly had felt tight for days, her back had been aching worse than usual and she’d been nauseated.
Perhaps she’d been in labor without realizing it.
“Stop,” he said. “Don’t be sorry. You and I don’t know any other way to have babies except the crazy way.” He kissed her and brushed away her tears. “Everything will be fine. I promise.”
She appreciated him making an effort to stay calm for her when he was probably losing his shit on the inside.
Blaine came into the room, consulted with Victoria and made the decision to call for the life flight helicopter to get Maddie to Providence, in case neonatal intensive care was required for the babies. With the power out on the island, they didn’t want to take any chances.
Just hearing those words, neonatal intensive care, was enough to spike the expectant parents’ combined anxiety.
The next few minutes were a blur of activity and people and contractions and tears and then finally the roar of the helicopter as it landed on the lawn adjacent to where the wedding had just been held.
As soon as she and Mac were loaded on the chopper, the overwhelming need to push became impossible to stop.
The first of their twin girls was born as the chopper lifted off from Gansett Island.
Her sister followed twelve minutes later as they approached the landing pad at Women & Infants Hospital in Providence.
The medics on the chopper told them the girls were small but breathing on their own, which was a huge relief, even if there were still other concerns.
Maddie was exhausted after giving birth to the twins and couldn’t seem to stop crying from the powerful wallop of emotion and the whiplash from how it’d happened.
So much for the calm, rational, well-orchestrated delivery they’d planned.
If there was any silver lining to the babies coming early, perhaps it was that they wouldn’t have to be separated from Thomas.
“Are you all right?” Maddie asked Mac.
“I can’t believe you’re asking me that. You’re the one who just gave birth to twins on a helicopter.”
“I know how these crazy births freak you out.”
“The only thing I care about is that you and the girls are okay. And the good news is, this is the last crazy birth we’ll ever have.”
“Snip, snip,” Maddie said, referring to the vasectomy he was scheduled to have in September.
“After this, I’m actually looking forward to the snip,” Mac said.
“Go with the girls,” Maddie said when they landed. “Stay with them until you know how they are and then come find me.”
He bent to kiss her. “You’re amazing every day, but today in particular. I love you so much. Thank you for all our children.” And then he was gone in a rush of action that had the babies being whisked off the chopper in a flurry of movement and people and urgency that had her anxiety flaring again.
As Maddie was taken off the helicopter, she prayed their babies would be okay.
Mac was in a state of disbelief. One minute he’d been telling his son that he had to be quiet for a few more minutes, and the next he noticed something happening with Maddie.
The realization had left him briefly frozen in shock before he shook it off, passed his kids to his parents and ran for his wife.
The episode reminded him too much of the night Hailey was born in the middle of a tropical storm, on an island, in a power failure, with the only doctor off-island—or so they’d thought until Janey remembered her ex-fiancé, Dr. David Lawrence, was in town.
That time, David had come to the rescue. Today, the helicopter had saved them.
If you’d told him that morning he’d be at Women & Infants, separated from Maddie and waiting to hear that his daughters were okay, he wouldn’t have believed it. But nothing in his life with Maddie had ever been predictable, so why should this be?
He paced in the hallway outside the NICU, his phone chiming with texts from worried friends and family on the island, and waited impatiently for news about the babies. He took only one call, from his father.
“Hey.”
“How are you holding up, son?”
“I’ll be better when we know how the babies are.”
“They were already born?”
“On the helicopter.”
“Holy shit. Is Maddie okay?”
“She seems fine. She was incredible, as always. We’re just waiting to hear how the babies are. They’re a month early…”
“I know, but we have to have faith that they’re going to be all right.”
“Hope so.”
“Let me know the minute you hear anything, and I’ll keep everyone else in the loop.”
“Will do. Tell Mallory and Quinn we’re sorry for disrupting their day.”
“Don’t give it another thought. She already said they’re thrilled to share their birthday and their wedding day with the twins. Everyone just wants to hear that the girls and Maddie are fine.”
“I’ll be in touch as soon as I know anything more.”
“We’ll be waiting to hear, and don’t worry about the kids. Mom, Francine and Tiffany have them covered. Ned and I are helping, too.”
“As long as you and Ned are on the job, they’re in good hands.”
“That’s what I say, too!”
Leave it to his dad to make him laugh, even when he was stressed. “Love you, Pop.”
“Love you, too, son. Tell Maddie we’re thinking of her and the girls and that we already love them.”
“Will do.”
Mac waited another hour, pacing from one end of the small room to the other a thousand times before a nurse came to find him.
“Mr. McCarthy?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to see your daughters?”
“Yes, please, and if possible, I’d like to know how my wife is doing.”
“I’ll see what I can find out.”
Mac followed her into a room where he was provided a gown, mask, gloves and even booties to put over his shoes.
When he was ready, she led him into a large room full of incubators and beeping machines.
The girls were in side-by-side incubators, hooked to numerous machines and monitors, a sight that completely overwhelmed him.
“Are they…”