Chapter 21

Julia

“It looks like the doctor is going to release the babies tomorrow,” the nurse said as I was wrapping up my visit for the night.

“Really?”

“Yep, they are doing fantastic. Neither of them need breathing assistance and they have been gaining weight steadily. You’ll need to set up an appointment with your pediatrician for one week from today.”

“Oh wow, I don’t even have a pediatrician yet,” I said realizing that there was one more thing that I hadn’t prepared for.

“No problem. If you’d like I can set you up with one that we recommend?”

“Perfect, that would be wonderful.”

As I left the nursery to head back to my apartment for the night I couldn’t stop worrying about all the things I still didn’t have situated. I hadn’t even been staying at my condo; the times I was there I had very little energy to get things situated.

I’d ordered some baby stuff for the nursery but I hadn’t even made the beds up yet. I also had two bassinets for my bedroom for the boys to sleep in the first couple of nights but neither of them were assembled at all. There was a changing table, rocking chair and swing that had to be assembled to. Basically I felt totally unprepared to be bringing the boys home already.

I should have had more ready by now. They had been in the hospital for weeks and even though I stayed at the hotel most of the time I had come home several times over the past weeks. I was just exhausted.

The truth of parenting twins hadn’t even started to set in yet and I was already barely able to walk straight I was so tired. I was visiting the boys and taking care of them during the day. I was able to breast feed them when I was there but then I pumped in the night time and they received bottles from the nurses.

My level of exhaustion felt like it couldn’t possibly get any worse and yet I knew when the boys came home it was going to get worse. I wasn’t going to get enough sleep unless someone was at the house to help me. There was no way I could manage alone. All my confidence about being a single mother was gone. As I stepped into my condo and saw the mess of things everywhere around the living room I just collapsed onto the ground and started sobbing. It was so overwhelming, everything was so overwhelming.

I planned to stay up late that night getting as much ready as I could possibly manage. I would start with the small bassinets that were in my room and then work down my list by what I felt was most important for when the babies came home the next day. Well, at least my plan had been to stay up late and get things done, unfortunately I fell asleep right there on the floor of my entryway.

When I woke up to my phone ringing I was so disoriented that I couldn’t even figure out how to answer the darn thing. It was morning, I could tell that by the light shining in through the window, but I had no idea how long I’d been sleeping.

“Hello,” I said as I finally clicked the right button to answer the call.

“Hello, Miss Rivas. I just wanted to let you know that the doctor has written discharge orders for the boys. When do you think you’ll be in this morning?”

“I’m on my way,” I said without skipping a beat.

I was still in my clothes from the day before and I probably smelled horrible, but I grabbed a sip of orange juice and headed back to the hospital. On the ride over I sent a text message to Sarah, Kendra and Teddy to let them know what was going on. The last few days they were all harping on me to keep them in the loop.

When I arrived back at the hospital it looked different to me. Before I’d been engulfed with sadness as I came to visit the boys each day and that sadness made the hospital look dreary. As I walked through the halls on this morning everything was brighter and full of life. I was bringing my boys home and I couldn’t wait.

“Good morning, Julia,” the nurse for my boys greeted me as I finished washing up and made it back to their corner of the room. “The boys are both hungry if you haven’t pumped recently.”

It was then that I realized I’d slept all night long and hadn’t pumped at all. My breasts were so full that they were starting to leak through my nursing bra. I quickly grabbed a spot in a rocking chair and the nurse handed me Brody to feed first.

The nursery they were in now was the regular nursery. They had moved there a day before in preparation to go home. Neither of them had any special needs at that point; just the basic baby care like all the other infants in that room.

I was the only mother in the nursery with her babies though. Most of the women just had the babies in the rooms with them. A few of the babies would stay in the main nursery if their mother needed some sleep or if the baby was going to have to see the doctor soon.

After feeding Brody the nurse handed me Benjamin. I had been worried that I wasn’t going to be able to tell the boys apart, but I was able to tell them apart from the first day I saw them. They were identical twins, but I could still see a different in them. It was hard to describe but I saw it.

My phone was buzzing in my purse as I fed Benjamin and I didn’t reach for it. Whoever it was would leave a message if it was important. Somehow I’d gotten on some new mother calling list and I’d been getting a lot of sales calls for baby stuff.

“Do you have someone coming to pick you and the boys up?” The nurse asked.

“I was just going to take an Uber,” I laughed.

“That’s fine.”

“Well, maybe I’ll get my friend Teddy to ride home with me,” I said as I reconsidered how much stuff the boys had and how hard it would be to get them loaded into an Uber.

“The car seats you have will carry really nicely and should be easy to strap into a cab or Uber. But it would be nice to have a second set of hands, especially for your first couple of trips. Is the father not in the picture?”

It was the first time a nurse had flat out asked me about the father of the babies. Most of the nurses skirted around the issue. Sometimes they would ask about my partner or other random questions to see if I would spill the beans, but this was the first time the father of my babies was brought up.

I did need to figure out what my answer was going to be when people asked me such things. I was certainly going to get asked it a lot. A young woman with two new babies and no man by her side; people would be gossiping about that every time I showed up at a mommy and me event.

“He’s not in the picture,” I said without giving any further details.

“Well, maybe one of your friends could help,” she said in a freshly upbeat voice.

“Yes, I’ll give my friend a call.”

When I finished feeding Benjamin I tried dialing Teddy, but he didn’t answer right away. I then saw that I’d missed a call from Sarah so I tried calling her to see if she knew where Teddy was.

“Hey,” Sarah answered her phone. “I’m going to drop some stuff off at your place. Is it cool if I let myself into your apartment?”

“Of course, that’s why I gave you and Kendra a key. You two are always welcome there. By the way, do you know where Teddy is? I think I’m going to need someone to ride with me and the boys home from the hospital.”

“Teddy, can you go to the hospital and ride home with Julia and the boys?” Sarah asked him. “Yep, he’s right here helping me out. He is on his way. He says he can’t wait to help.”

“Now you’re just making things up,” I laughed. “Teddy is never excited to help.”

“You’re right, he normally isn’t, but I think he’s making an exception for those boys. I have a feeling he would do anything for them,” Sarah said before she was distracted by a loud noise in the background.

“What’s going on there?” I asked.

“Nothing, but I better get going. Will you be home soon? I could wait for you there.”

“Yeah, maybe after we get everything sorted out and loaded into the Uber.”

“See you then,” she said and quickly hung up on me.

Sarah seemed off. I wasn’t sure what was going on but she seemed like she was up to something. Hopefully the loud crash I’d heard wasn’t her breaking something at my condo. She was notorious for breaking things and then getting rid of the evidence. Then I’d spend weeks wondering where I put something only to find the broken pieces stuffed in a bag somewhere in the back of my closet. The last time she had broken a picture frame right after I moved into the condo and I looked through all my boxes thinking I’d lost it.

When Teddy showed up at the hospital we spent a whole hour getting the boys ready to leave. I fed them both again and we put them into a couple of cute outfits I had waiting for them. Teddy was a huge help to have around and he was much better with the babies than he gave himself credit for.

“I think I’m doing this wrong,” he squealed as he tried to change Ben’s diaper after a big blowout. “Help, I need help.”

“You’re doing great,” the nurse said as she stood next to him and encouraged him.

I was busy finishing up with Brody and had just finished getting him latched into his baby carrier when he blew out his diaper too. I had a feeling all my money was going to go to diapers in the near future.

When we finally managed to get both the boys fed, cleaned and loaded into the carriers it was time to head out. The nurses filled a cart full of the miscellaneous items that the boys had at the hospital. They gave me the rest of the formula that was in their drawers, diapers, little blood pressure cuffs. Pretty much everything that the boys had used during their stay was put into some bags and loaded onto the cart for me to take home.

“We have the car seat guy waiting downstairs. He will help you load them into the vehicle and show you how to make sure each seat is in right.”

“Wow, thank you so much,” I said a little shocked that they were going so above board for me.

“Yeah, Doctor Cooper requested it the other night when he stopped by,” the nurse said just as we got out to the Uber.

“Doctor Cooper?” I asked a little confused.

“Yeah, he’s been checking on the babies most evenings. He must be working all sorts of crazy hours because he usually stops by after regular visiting hours.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, not knowing what to say to the information I had just heard.

“Let’s get these babies loaded,” Teddy cut in and lifted Brody up to the big SUV he had waiting for us.”

The car seat guy went over all the little details that we needed to know and helped me connect both of the car seats. He showed me where a lot of the new cars had the extra safety clips for car seats and we talked a little about safety in the city in particular.

When I finally had the boys loaded in, Teddy and the nurse finished loading everything else into the back of the vehicle. Teddy sat up front with the driver while I climbed into the middle seat between the boys. I could already tell that traveling with these two was not going to be easy at all. I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like if I needed to take them to a doctor’s visit if they were sick.

“Teddy, did you hear what that nurse said about Mike visiting the babies?”

“Um, yeah.”

“What do you think about that?”

“I don’t know. It seems like a nice thing to do. What do you think about it?”

“I thought he didn’t want anything to do with us. It’s just weird that he would be stopping by to visit the boys and he didn’t ask me first.”

“From what I’ve heard, you haven’t been returning his calls,” Teddy said as he looked back at me knowingly.

It was true. I hadn’t been returning Mike’s calls or his text messages. I didn’t have the energy to fight with him and I just didn’t want to deal with all that emotion at the moment. I had planned on calling him back eventually but then he just stopped trying to reach me.

“So what have you heard?” I asked.

“Not much, that’s about it,” he said and turned back to the front of the vehicle.

“Teddy, you know something and you’re not telling me. I can tell when you’re lying, don’t even try it.”

“I don’t know a thing,” he replied without turning around. Just confirming that he was lying to me.

I was too tired to push him for more information. I leaned my head back on the seat and closed my eyes for a few minutes on the ride home. Both of the boys had fallen to sleep almost instantly after being put into the carriers. I did like how that worked so quickly to get them to sleep and I wasn’t opposed to using it sometime in the future.

When we stopped in front of my condo I sat up and started unbuckling the boys from the car. Each of the carriers were strapped in with a regular seatbelt and another latch that ensured the seats didn’t fly out of the car.

Teddy and the doorman loaded up a cart with all my stuff and Teddy was standing next to the door waiting to take one of the boys as soon as I was ready for him. There was no way I would be able to take the boys out alone unless I had a stroller that the baby carriers could lock into. Then I could just take them out of the car and move them to the stroller. I mentally put that on my list of things that I needed to buy in order to survive my new life.

“Which one do I have?” Teddy asked as he looked at the baby carrier.

“That’s Ben.”

“I still don’t know how you can tell them apart. I think it must be a nature thing since you are their mother.”

“Probably. Even the nurses who cared for them for weeks sometimes had a hard time telling them apart.”

The doorman came up in the elevator with us to push the cart full of hospital items and gifts that people had sent the babies. All of my brothers had sent flowers and gifts throughout the time the boys were in the hospital. Rob had managed a short visit one afternoon, but then promised he would come to the condo and visit more often once we were home.

None of my family really understood what I had done or why I decided to have these babies on my own. Even my mother didn’t seem to care much anymore because she was so in love with the boys.

“Here let me hold him,” Teddy said as he grabbed Brody’s carrier from me so I could unlock the door.

“I thought Sarah was staying here until we got back?” I asked as it took me forever to get the door unlock.

When I finally managed to get the door opened I looked into my condo and it didn’t look like my place at all. The living room was organized and beautiful. The boxes had all been put away and even the pile of items I’d ordered online weren’t sitting in the room anymore.

“Surprise,” Sarah and Kendra yelled from the nursery.

“Guys, you put all this stuff on the beds and organized the living room. Oh, my God you are the best,” I said as I hugged them.

Everything was done. They had opened up all the bedding and put it onto the beds. The rocking chair and changing table were put together. Everything looked absolutely perfect and I felt like a huge weight was off my shoulders.

“We had some help,” Kendra said as she turned me around and pushed me to walk toward the bedroom.

As I got closer I could see that both of the basinets were set up in there too. My whole place was cleaned and organized and I had the fresh start I’d been hoping to have when I brought the boys home.

Then I saw him.

My heart skipped when I saw Mike standing next to the baby swing in the corner of my room. He was holding two white roses and one red one. He looked so handsome with his blue t-shirt on and sweat literally covering half of it.

“You helped them?” I asked as the girls pushed me into the room with Mike and shut the door behind us.

“Julia, I love you. I’m not going to wait another second to tell you that. I love you and I want to be with you. I have wanted to tell you for a long time and only held back from saying it because I didn’t want to push you. But now I can’t hold it back anymore.”

“Mike…” I started to say before he stopped me.

“You can tell me to go to hell in a second. I just have to get this out so you know exactly where I’m coming form. I’m sorry I had to leave the hospital the night the boys were born. I thought I was going to lose my medical license and was trying desperately to save it. It’s not an excuse but I did want you to know.”

“Mike…” I tried to interrupt him again.

“I promise to make it up to you if you let us all be a family. I have taken six weeks off from work and I’m ready to be here with you every night and every day as we get to know the boys. I will get up and change them for you and feed them if I need to or do anything else for them because I love them. I know we signed this contract and if you want to keep it we can, but if it was up to me I’d tear it up so we could be a family.”

“Mike…” I tried one more time to stop him.

“No, no, I have to finish. Julia, I knew that first night that you were someone special. I knew that I was going to be different after meeting you and it was true. I am different. I am a better man for having you in my life and even if you don’t want me to be involved in raising the boys I will always cherish that we made this decision. And…”

“Mike,” I put my finger up to his mouth and held it there so he would stop talking for a moment. “I love you too.”

Instantly all the stress and worry that I had disappeared when I saw his smile. It took us a long time to get to this spot but we were in love and I knew that deep down long before Mike confessed his love for me.

There were no more words to be said. Instead, Mike wrapped his arms around me and pressed his lips into mine. Softly we stayed intertwined as we kissed and held onto one another until Kendra opened the door a little to see what was going on.

“Do you want to meet your boys?” Kendra asked as she brought one of the carriers into the room.

“Oh, I’ve met them,” Mike said as he leaned down and started to take Brody out of his seat. “Me and Brody have had some long man to man conversations over the last few weeks.”

“You know that is Brody?”

“Yeah, I could tell them apart from the first time I saw them in their incubators.”

And in that moment I knew that Mike and I were going to work out just fine. He was their father and not just biologically. I could tell by the way he held Brody that Mike had done that before too.

“So you didn’t think you should talk to me before hanging out with the boys?” I asked a little playfully.

“Oh, I tried to wait for you to say it was okay, but I just couldn’t stay away from these guys. I had to see them every night. I just had to come visit them so they knew who I was and that they were loved very much.”

“I’m glad you did,” I said as I picked up Ben from his seat.

The four of us stood there together rocking back and forth and cuddling like the family that we were. I’d dreamt about having a perfect family. I’d tried to make my own perfect family and fate took over and twisted everything around to make things even better than I could have imagined.

“And they lived happily ever after,” Kendra said as she stood in the doorway with Sarah and Teddy and took our first family picture.