Chapter 8
About seven months later, Hazel was heavily pregnant. The trio had closed the clinic for Hazel’s last two weeks of pregnancy. Her due date was only a day away and she was excited to meet her babies. About three months into her pregnancy, she had found out that she was expecting twins.
“How are you feeling?” Marshall asked as he walked into the living room and kissed the top of her head. She smiled and tilted her head upwards so their lips could meet. They kissed for a moment as Allen walked into the room, sitting down next to her.
Hazel smiled and leaned down against his chest. She was amazed at her own ability to find a perfect harmony between the two men. At some point, she had feared that she would give more attention to one and not the other, but now that she had moved in with them, it seemed natural to her to have two lovers.
They were like two parts of a whole for her and she loved having them both by her side. “Good,” she finally murmured into his chest. He smiled and wrapped an arm around her shoulders as Marshall sat down beside them.
He turned on the TV and looked for something to watch. As he did, Hazel’s hands moved down to her stomach, slowly rubbing it as she thought about the babies she was about to meet.
She gasped at the sensation of one of the babies kicking. The men quickly looked at her, forever anxious as the due date closed in on them. “What is it?” Marshall asked, concern in his eyes. Hazel grabbed his hand and placed it on her stomach. He smiled feeling the babies’ subtle movements.
“I’m excited,” he whispered against her stomach as he rubbed it tenderly. Hazel smiled at his words. To think that at the beginning of her pregnancy, he was nervous and hesitant about the whole thing. Now he couldn’t wait to become a father.
“We should head to bed,” Allen said, noting the time. He didn’t want Hazel to exhaust herself. As she nodded and tried to get up, she gasped once again.
Allen’s eyes grew large as he saw the wetness gather between her legs. Marshall saw it too and froze for a moment. He quickly took her in his arms and comforted her while Allen was grabbing their bags.
About half an hour later, they arrived at the hospital. There was a layer of sweat covering Hazel’s body as she tried to cope with the contractions she was now experiencing.
The doctors, seeing her state of labor, rushed to place her in a wheelchair. They put her in a room where Marshall and Allen stood by her side, each one holding a respective hand.
“You’re doing great,” Allen whispered, gently caressing her hair. She nodded and took deep breaths in order to calm herself as the contractions became more and more frequent.
Marshall observed everything with careful eyes as excitement and nervousness swirled inside of him like a vortex. His heart threatened to burst out of his chest.
He looked down at Hazel and they made eye contact. They stared at each other for a moment. He blushed slightly, before leaning down and kissing her gently.
Their kiss was broken by the sound of someone entering the room. Allen released her hand as he stepped forward, reaching his hand out to the man that now entered the room.
“Hello, I am Dr. Andrew. I will be delivering your baby today.” He looked at Allen, assuming he was the father, but as he noticed the mother to be, he was a little unsure. There was another man standing beside her. Could it be a brother maybe? They didn’t look related, however.
“She’s having twins,” Marshall corrected him. The doctor raised an eyebrow before looking at the clipboard he was handed by one of the nurses. He inspected it for a moment before nodding his head.
“It seems you are right. And you are?” he asked, curious as to the man’s relationship with the woman.
“I’m Marshall,” he introduced himself, his palm sweaty. The doctor just got more confused. This man was showing much more fatherly symptoms than the other man. Nonetheless, it wasn’t the time or place to worry about such things now.
He had babies to deliver. With this, he started the standard procedure of setting things up. A couple of nurses entered the room and began buzzing around him, making sure everything was perfect.
Soon the room was filled with tense excitement as Hazel groaned with the efforts of childbirth. She gripped her lovers’ hands tightly as she tried to cope with the associated pain. Eventually, however, the room was filled with the sound of a baby crying.
“Baby A is a boy!” announced the doctor. The first baby was then taken by one of the nurses. She moved him to the back corner of the room where she began to clean him up and assess him. A few minutes later, another cry called out as the second twin breathed in for the first time.
Another nurse grabbed him. “Congratulations! You have two, healthy baby boys!” the doctor finally exclaimed, removing his gloves. Hazel smiled to herself, glad that this first step to parenthood was over.
She waited anxiously for the nurses to finish their duties with the newborns. Finally, they walked over to her and placed one baby in each arm. She looked down and gasped.
One baby looked up at her with dark eyes, just like Marshall’s, and the other had lighter eyes, just like Allen’s. Could it be that she had conceived a child by both men? Hazel knew it was a rare occurrence, but it was still possible.
“Would you look at that,” Allen whispered, noticing that the babies’ differences. “Looks like we each got our own baby.” Marshall seemed rather shocked, but smiled, knowing that he would love both the boys as if they were both his own.
*****
THE END