October 3rd, 2016
While Ivy had conducted numerous phone calls with her agent and publicist and a bunch of other Hollywood types I didn’t understand, I’d been painting the nursery. She’d chosen the paint color, and to be honest, to me, it just looked like we were repainting the walls white. But if you asked Ivy, she’d adamantly disagree and tell you it wasn’t white; it was the perfect shade of cream. Warm, cozy, baby nursery cream.
I couldn’t tell the difference, but I knew when to pick my battles with a pregnant Ivy.
And questioning the color of the nursery wasn’t worth the risk to my balls.
So, I’d painted all morning and kept my mouth shut.
Once I cleaned off the brushes in the utility sink near the garage, I walked into the kitchen to find Ivy standing near the stove.
“Hungry?” she asked as I sat down on one of the barstools near the island.
“You making lunch?”
“Yep.” She reached down to the lower cabinet to pull out a pan, and instantly, I knew what our lunch would most likely entail.
Some sort of variation of eggs. Since eggs were a food she’d been eating daily for years, I’d have thought she wouldn’t be able to take her obsession with them much further. But I’d been wrong. Her pregnancy diet was like her regular diet on steroids, and we ate fucking eggs all the goddamn time.
Scrambled. Over easy. Fried. Hard boiled. In an omelet. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
She had a few other foods that made appearances from time to time—green pepper, string cheese, tortillas—but they were nothing more than secondary characters in a play about eggs.
None of it made sense, but I just rolled with it.
“What are you making?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
She walked over to the fridge and started pulling out items and setting them on the counter beside her. First, the carton of eggs. Then, a bag of shredded cheddar cheese and a green pepper. And the million-dollar prize goes to? Levi Fox.
“What did you say?” she questioned once she’d gathered everything she needed to make an omelet.
“Well…” I paused and grinned. “I started to ask what you’re making, but I’m pretty sure I have that figured out now.” I nodded down toward the items she’d rearranged near the stove on the kitchen island.
She looked down, and a smile crested her pretty cheeks. “Am I that transparent?”
“Just a little bit.”
“Apparently, pregnancy makes me a creature of habit,” she responded and switched on the stove.
“Yeah, but in your defense, eggs were already your thing before.”
“Could you imagine if these babies didn’t like eggs?” she questioned, and her eyes widened in shock. “What in the hell would I have done for nine months?”
“Eat chicken,” I teased, and her lips turned down into a scowl.
“Ew.” She grimaced. “For the love of God, don’t even talk about chicken unless you want me to hurl across the kitchen.”
I grinned, and she lifted her right hand to flip me off, before refocusing her gaze on the task at hand. Eggs.
With a crack of four shells, she filled a small white bowl with the egg whites and yolks. But after she added the milk and started to whisk it all together, I noticed that her free hand moved to her lower back. She rubbed and pressed against a spot I assumed was tender, and that was when I decided to hop up from my barstool and take over.
“Why don’t you go sit down, and I’ll finish this?” I questioned, but it wasn’t really a question since I would not take no for an answer.
“I’m fine, Levi,” she said, voice one hundred percent annoyed, but when her brow pinched together in discomfort, I placed my hand to her belly and looked down at her in concern.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded. “I’m fine. Promise. Just a little uncomfortable.”
“What do you mean by a little uncomfortable?”
“Because I’m carrying around two freaking babies,” she retorted, her tone all sass.
“Are you having contractions?”
“No,” she refuted, but I wasn’t all that convinced.
But what in the hell did I know? I wasn’t an expert in pregnancies. Especially, a multiples pregnancy.
“Go sit down, and I’ll finish lunch.”
“But—”
“That wasn’t a question, baby.”
The free hand to her back moved to her hip. “Are you bossing me around?”
“Only because I’m worried about you.”
She groaned and handed me the whisk. “God, you’re such a caveman sometimes.”
I kissed the top of her nose and grinned. “For you, yes.”
But she didn’t even make it to the kitchen table before she paused and gripped her belly.
“Ivy?”
She waved me off with a hand. “I’m fine,” she said, but her face said otherwise. Her lips were pursed, and her face was tight with discomfort.
“You don’t look fine,” I said and set down the whisk to walk over toward her. With gentle hands, I guided her toward the chair and urged her to sit down.
Ivy sighed and leaned her back against the chair, but a few moments later, she hunched over slightly, and her face turned pained.
“Baby, I don’t think this is normal.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so either.”
“You want me to call the doctor?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
I didn’t waste any time and snagged her phone off the counter. I scrolled through her list of contacts, and the instant I spotted Dr. Morrow, the obstetrician she’d found as soon as we’d moved to town thanks to a recommendation from Dr. Macintosh, I tapped the screen to call.
With the phone pressed to my ear, I looked over at Ivy and saw her situation hadn’t gotten any better. She groaned and held her belly tightly again, her lips pursed as she breathed through the pain.
My heart dropped at the sight of it.
Fucking hell, the mere idea of something going wrong during Ivy’s pregnancy had my chest growing tight with anxiety.
“Dr. Morrow,” the doctor greeted on the third ring.
“Hey, Dr. Morrow. This is Levi Fox, and I’m calling because Ivy is having a lot of discomfort. It seems like she’s having contractions.”
“Are they painful enough that she has to breathe through them?”
“Yeah.”
“And how long has she been having them?” she asked, and I looked at Ivy.
“How long have you been having contractions, Ivy?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged and groaned again. “A few hours or so, I think. But they just recently got this painful.”
Jesus Christ. A few hours? Even though I wanted to tell her she shouldn’t have waited so damn long to tell me, I kept my mouth shut and focused on the task at hand.
“She said it’s been a few hours,” I told the doctor.
“And just remind me, is Ivy seven or eight months along?”
“She’s just a little over seven months.”
“I want you to go ahead and come to the hospital. I’m here now doing a delivery, and I can check Ivy out and make sure everything is okay.”
“Okay. Thanks, Dr. Morrow. We’ll see you soon.”
After three hours of monitoring and two examinations by Dr. Morrow, we sat inside one of the triage rooms in the maternity ward waiting for the doctor to come back in and talk to us.
Ivy lay in the hospital bed, her body finally relaxed and her contractions slowed to a complete stop.
The doctor stepped inside, Ivy’s chart in her hands.
“How are you feeling, Ivy?” she asked.
“A lot better.”
Dr. Morrow stepped over to the contraction and fetal heart monitor and scanned the pages upon pages of recordings.
“Well, it looks like the medicine stopped your contractions, and both babies are doing just fine,” she updated. “When you got here, you weren’t dilated at all, but on my last check, you were a little over one centimeter. So, it’s very apparent you were definitely having preterm labor. Luckily, we were able to stop it.”
“Preterm labor?” I asked, and Dr. Morrow nodded.
“Yes,” she answered and set Ivy’s chart down on the table to give me her full attention. “This is very common in a twins pregnancy, and to be honest, I expected this to happen.”
“So what do we do now?” Ivy asked.
“Well, now, you have to stay on bed rest until you deliver.”
“Bed rest?” Ivy asked, and her lips turned down in a little frown.
“Yes, you’re going to have to stay off your feet as much as possible and let this guy right here do most things for you,” the doctor said and smiled over at me. “But the good news is that you don’t have to stay here to do that. You can still be in the comfort of your own home.”
Ivy sighed. “Well, I guess that’s better than nothing, huh?”
“Yeah.” Dr. Morrow smiled. “It’s better than having to live in the hospital for the next few months. Trust me, I have to sleep here when I’m on call, and it’s no beach resort vacation.”
Both Ivy and Dr. Morrow laughed.
But I couldn’t find the energy to join in.
As I sat there, listening to Ivy talk to Dr. Morrow about her bed rest restrictions, I couldn’t stop my mind from drifting to worrisome territories.
It was like, all at once, it hit me.
Sitting right there, on that hospital bed, was my entire life.
Ivy. My babies. My whole fucking world.
I offered up a silent prayer.
God, please let everything go okay. Please keep Ivy and the babies safe. Please let the rest of this pregnancy go smoothly.