Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Seth
“You the father?”
Those three words caused a desire to bloom inside of me until it was burning as bright as the sun.
I wish, I wanted to say.
I paced the waiting room for half an hour with no news of Ella and the babies.
How long did it take for this sort of thing?
I knew that labor could take hours, but her water had broken in the car, so that made it seem like she’d been further along and hadn’t realized.
She’d been complaining of hip pain the past two days in our group text, but I’d Googled it and learned that pain was normal, especially with twins.
There was something called “round ligament pain” that caused discomfort in eighty percent of pregnancies.
After reading that, I hadn’t been worried, but now, I was.
Lord, let her be okay. Let both babies be okay. Please, I prayed.
I never got to see my daughter. She died in Scarlett’s stomach, so I prayed feverishly now that I’d get to see Ella’s babies healthy and alive.
I’d grown so attached to Ella’s happiness, whether that involved me in her life or not.
I just didn’t want any more hardships to befall that beautiful woman.
Even though it killed me to know that she wanted to raise her children in Paris with her mom for the first year, I recognized that it was probably best for her and the babies.
She wanted her mother; she wanted comfort and familiarity and support, and that’s what she deserved.
I feared she’d fall in love with France and never come back, but again, I just wanted her to be happy.
The door to the ER burst open, and Maggie came rushing out with mild alarm on her face.
“No.” I nearly collapsed right there.
“Everything’s okay.” Maggie put her hands out to calm me. “But one of the baby’s hearts is in distress every time she has a contraction, and they want to do a C-section. Ella wants you.”
I could barely process her words. Heart distress. C-section. Ella wants…me?
“What?”
Maggie grabbed me firmly by the underarm like she had when I was a little boy and started hauling me towards the doors. “She’s really scared, and she wants you there, Seth,” Maggie said, and a protective need roared to life inside me.
I burst through the doors and came face-to-face with a tiny nurse who slipped a gown over my clothes, booties on my shoes, and then a hair covering on my head.
“We’re in OR two,” she said.
My heart was racing. I wanted to ask her a million questions, and I wanted to panic, but I knew I had to be strong for Ella.
“She wants you.”
Those three words beat like a drum inside my chest, and warmth spread throughout my heart.
The nurse pushed the doors open, and I took in the scene before me.
I was behind Ella, and a blue curtain had been pulled up to cover her lower half. There were about six other people in the room, and I had no idea what their purpose was. There were two incubators with nurses beside each one.
I stood next to Ella and peered down at her tear-stained cheeks.
“Okay, Ella, your friend is here. Can we start?” the doctor said.
Ella looked up at me, and my heart nearly stopped beating when she slipped her hand into mine and squeezed, seemingly mustering strength from what I was hoping was the confidence in my face.
I reached out and brushed the tear from her cheek. “It’s going to be okay,” I told her calmly.
She nodded, and then the doctor began.
“I tried to push the babies out, but I wasn’t able to do it right, I guess, and now they have to cut them out quickly,” she told me.
I nodded. “And they’re going to be fine,” I said firmly. I was speaking life over these babies and expecting nothing less.
Lord, she’s been through enough. Have mercy, I begged.
Ella nodded and held my gaze, not looking away, not looking at anything else but me, and it felt like time stopped. It felt like there was an entire conversation going on between us, even though we weren’t talking.
I knew she was scared and wanted James here by her side more than anything.
I knew she was happy to meet her babies but also sad that her husband wasn’t here to meet them.
I knew she was thinking of my loss and about how I hadn’t gotten to do this with Scarlett, that we shared an invisible thread that tied us together.
We were both widows, yes, but I’d lost a child, and she’d found out she was having one in the midst of her grief. We had a deep bond.
Ever since that day I’d caught her hurling insults at God and driving the axe into the ground, I’d felt something for her.
I’d vowed that day to see this woman spiritually healed, and now she was.
I’d vowed not to let one of God’s precious sheep go astray, and now Ella was back to leaning on God and going to church, and there was a softness about her that hadn’t been there when I’d first met her.
Something shifted in her gaze as she glanced at my lips and then, for the first time, looked away from me and at the doctor.
“Alright, Ella, baby A, your little boy, is coming out. Get ready to meet him,” he said.
Ella squeezed my hand, and I squeezed hers back, silently praying the babies would be healthy. That Ella would be healthy.
Then a wild wail rent the air, and a tiny screaming baby peeked over the top of the blue curtain. He was red-faced and beautiful and appeared healthy.
“Do you want your friend to cut the cord?” the doctor asked Ella.
Ella looked over at me, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks, and nodded. “Will you?”
I had tried to hold my emotions in this whole time, but when Ella asked me to do such an honor, I couldn’t any longer. I burst into tears and nodded.
The doctor handed me some scissors and pointed to where I should cut.
The cord was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen in my life, like a twisted blue-and-red candy straw with clamps on the end.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my arm and cut through it.
Then I handed the scissors back to the doctor as the nurses whisked the baby over to the incubator and began to weigh him.
“Go with him. Don’t let him be alone,” Ella begged me.
I nodded, slipping away from her side, and followed the baby. He was crying as the nurses wrapped him in a swaddle and made notes on a paper. They listened to his lungs and pricked his finger, squeezing a drop of blood onto some machine.
“Is he okay?” I whispered.
“Perfectly healthy,” the nurse said. Then she walked the bundled baby over to Ella and placed him on Ella’s chest just as the doctor delivered the next baby.
“Baby girl is here, Ella!” the doctor exclaimed as Ella cried tears of joy and held her son.
The doctor held up the little girl, who started crying, and her coloring looked good to me, but she was a little smaller than the boy.
I cut the cord and then followed the baby over to the nurses. They weighed her, listened to her lungs, and pricked her finger as well. The machine beeped in alarm, and the nurses exchanged a look. One of the men who’d been standing around watching it all swooped in then.
“Start an IV and push four ML of D10. I want to monitor her in the NICU,” the doctor said just as Ella and I both asked, “What’s wrong?”
The doctor, an Asian man in his fifties, turned to Ella. “Your baby has low blood sugar, which is very common in newborns. Because she’s a little small and premature, I’d like to monitor her in the NICU for a few hours until her sugars stabilize.”
“Okay,” Ella said in a shaky voice as she held her son to her chest. Then she looked at me. “Don’t leave her side.”
It was a command I would take seriously.
They moved with the baby in a wheeling incubator, and I moved with them.
We all boarded the elevator as the nurses poked the smallest needle I had ever seen into the baby’s hand.
There were little holes in the incubator where the nurses could reach in and touch her.
I noticed a hole that was unoccupied by her foot.
“Can I touch her?” I asked.
“Yes, you can hold her foot. We just need access to her arms.”
I reached in then and gently grasped her tiny foot, my heart thumping in my chest as if beating for the first time in my life.
She was so small. So precious. Was this what it would have been like had Scarlett given birth to our little girl? Would she have had Scarlett’s red hair? Tears blocked my vision as the elevator doors opened, and we were rushed into the NICU.
The nurses quickly got her into a room and pushed something into her IV as another lead nurse came in and asked for information on Baby B.
After ten minutes, they pricked her tiny finger again, which sent her wailing. Her chest puckered as she cried. I massaged her tiny toe and told her everything was going to be okay.
They placed a drop of blood on a glucose meter and smiled. “Normal,” he nurse said. “Now, we will check in another half hour,” she told me.
I nodded, relief spreading through my limbs. The nurses left the room, so it was just me and the baby, and I quickly shot Maggie and Ella a text on our group thread.
Seth: Glucose is normal now. She’s healthy. Just monitoring now. Don’t worry.
Ella’s reply was instant.
Ella: Don’t leave her. They won’t let me go up there.
Seth: I will sleep here if I have to.
I promised her.
Then I set the phone down and peered at the sweet face of Ella’s daughter. I wanted to tell her something, something important, something that would matter and help her fight and stay strong.
I massaged her little toe, and then, with my other hand, I reached in and touched her palm. Her fingers clamped around mine, and then she looked right at me, seemingly with sharp clarity, which gave me chills.
“Hey, sweetie. You don’t have a name yet, but I’m your mom’s friend, Seth. And there are some things I want to tell you.”
She held my gaze.
“Your dad, his name is James. Unfortunately, he can’t be here to meet you.” I started just speaking from my heart. “He’s up in heaven with my wife and my daughter.”
The baby squeezed my finger with surprising strength, and tears pricked my eyes.
“Your mom’s name is Ella, and she loves you so much,” I told her. “She’s had a bit of a rough few months, but you and your twin brother have been the one bright light in her life. You also have a sister named Honey, who is a chicken,” I added.
“You’re going to go live in France for a while with your grandma, who is crazy about you,” I told her.
“I’m gonna miss seeing you grow in that time, but I hope to get to know you and spend time with you and your brother when you get back.
” My voice caught, and slight terror rushed through me as I thought of not being able to watch her grow, of never seeing her again if Ella decided to stay in France forever.
It was hard to explain, but she…felt like mine. Like maybe God wanted me to be in her life and guide her and her brother, too. Maybe it was my own selfish desire, but it felt like more than that.
There was a knock at the door, and I cleared my throat, letting go of her foot to wipe at my eyes.
“We’re going to give her her first bottle and then test her sugars. Do you want to feed her?” the nurse asked as she held out a bottle with the tiniest nipple I’d ever seen.
“I—” Would Ella be okay with that? She was so small. I wasn’t sure if she wanted to breastfeed, but this was an emergency situation. “I’d love to,” I told her.
Five minutes later, she was swaddled into a little burrito and suckling greedily on the bottle as I held her to my chest. These precious few moments with her just solidified the fact that I wanted this.
I wanted children. I wanted to be a dad.
A protector, a provider. For a while after Scarlett’s death, I hadn’t been sure if I’d ever want any of it again.
It was too painful to think about “replacing” them.
Because they couldn’t be replaced. But now, I didn’t see it as a replacement.
I saw a wife and children as a way to live out my time here on this earth with purpose.
That wasn’t everyone’s feeling, but it was mine.
I had a purpose alone, but my life didn’t feel complete without children.
Without Ella, my heart whispered.
Oh, Lord, I was so in love with her. How had I let this happen?
Of all the women to come after Scarlett, I had to fall for one who was emotionally unavailable.
The sweet baby girl cradled in my arms eventually stopped sucking, and then her eyes closed as she fell asleep.
I’d held my nephews when they were born, and I’d loved them the second I met them. But they were family. Now, I felt that familiar love blooming in my chest as I began to sing her a lullaby.
“Jesus Loves Me” had been a staple in my home growing up, so I sang it to her until the nurse came back in and tested her sugars.
“Stable. We’ll observe her for another two hours, and then she can go be with Mom and brother,” she told me.
I nodded and relayed the information to Ella.
Ella: Thank you for staying with her.
Seth: Of course. How is baby brother?
Ella: He’s good. They need names… I wasn’t ready.
I smiled.
Seth: You almost gave birth in my truck.
Ella laugh-reacted to the text.
Ella: Would it be weird if I named him Paul? It’s James’s middle name. I want him to have something of his father.
My heart pinched for her.
Seth: Not weird at all. That’s very sweet. And for her?
I stared at the beautiful little girl in my arms.
Ella: The name June just came to me. Her birth month.
Chills flushed my entire body. That was the name Scarlett and I had picked for our little girl.
June.
Lord, what does this mean? Tears lined my eyes as I stared at baby June.
And I was reminded of Maggie’s dream. The one where the Lord had told her He would restore all that had been taken from me. And then, when the Lord had told me to wait for Ella.
Was this little girl in my arms going to be mine one day?
I could only pray that was true.