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The nurse sidled up to the shared cot at the end of Tilda’s bed and smiled brightly, foolish with hope. It wouldn’t last. Ducking her head the nurse cooed at the small babies, both pink and writhing.
Tilda tore her gaze away, studiously avoiding the other occupied beds in the ward. Her refusal to touch them had been frostily tolerated, but the hospital staff had outright denied her request for the cot to be moved elsewhere. At least for now the pair were quiet.
“They are doing so well!” The nurse proclaimed joyously, head turned towards Tilda as she wiggled a finger in the cot. Impossibly small hands grabbed for it, one of them closing around the offending digit in a fist. “Has Mama decided on names yet?”
Tilda looked away again and snorted. “No point. I’m not keeping them. Whoever wants them can do it.”
The nurse untangled herself and stood looming over the bedside, one had on her hip chidingly, as if she were Tilda’s own disappointed mother. “You know we can’t complete the adoption paperwork until they have names.”
“Call them whatever you like,” Tilda snapped, and swallowed back the rest of what she wanted to say. People only named things that were theirs, pets, cars, things. They were not hers. Could not be hers. It had been hard enough to have them ripped from her body. If she named them it would just be that much harder to give them away.
After turning her frown upside down, the nurse straightened her spine and set her shoulders. “No matter,” she continued blithely, pulling a small book from her breast pocket and waving it in front of her. It was pale yellow and taller than it was wide, ‘Baby Names’, the cover said in jaunty blue and pink letters.
The nurse set it down pointedly on the small cabinet next to the jug of water and box of tissues.
“Take a look,” she ordered, giving the book a patronising pat. “You never know!” She practically sang the words.
The optimism and fake cheer grated on Tilda. She knew. She had known. She’d known from the moment she saw those two stupid life changing stripes on a test that she couldn’t keep them. She’d known that their father could have been any number of Johns that she had seen in the past months to pay for her latest fix. She knew she hadn’t been entirely honest with the doctors about her sobriety and that it was her fault they were so small, had arrived so early, were probably already fucked up before they’d even been born.
She was a Minyard, and everyone knew that Minyards didn’t get higher than rock bottom.
A small trembling cry lifted from the end of the bed, and twisted Tilda’s insides.
The sound frayed her temper and her patience broke. She snatched the book of names from the nurse, who jerked back with surprise. Flipping the cover open to the first page of names, Tilda read outloud, “Aaron.”
The nurse’s mouth hung open like she wanted to say something.
A second warbling sound joined the cry. Impossibly small.
“And you—” Tilda snarled, hurling the slim book at the nurse and collapsing backwards into the pillows.
The nurse took a step back, clutching the book to the chest like it was a bible and Tilda was possessed by some sort of demon and in dire need of priest.
“Andrew,” the nurse breathed. “Okay.”
Tilda flung her hand in the air dismissively and closed her stinging eyes, turning away, wishing, as she had the past 9 months, that this nightmare would end. She couldn’t wait for the screeching parasites to be taken away.
Tilda had thought the nurse suitably satisfied and had left. Until Tilda heard her voice, softer this time, clearly not speaking to her. “Hello Aaron, hello Andrew.”
And Tilda’s heart tied itself into impossible knots.
The wails receded into hiccuping breathing and the nurse cleared her throat. “I’ll let the ward sister know,” she said coldly before leaving.
When Tilda woke again she was not alone. Her brother was perched stiffly in a chair beside her, intently reading some loose sheets of paper.
“The ward sister told me you finally named them,” he said, disapproval tinging his words.
Tilda nodded, throat tight.
“About time,” he sniped. He shuffled the papers in his hands. “These aren’t good Christian names Tilly. What about middle names? Saint Michael? Saint Joseph?”
“Sure,” Tilda said without argument.
Luther’s pen scratched on the paper as he added the names to the forms.
“I’ll get these back to the agency. Pastor Lantom says he can be down in the morning to christen them before they go.”
In the morning? So soon? Tilda’s eyes drifted from her brother to the cot at the end of the bed. She thought about the small bodies that were hidden inside, wrapped up already like parcels inside their blankets, all ready to be delivered. She had made them. Two of them, not just one. If she couldn’t have them, at least they would have each other.
Wouldn’t they?
It was a foolish hope. She knew it was a stupid, but she had to ask. Had to know. “Do you think the agency will keep them together?”
Luther frowned pityingly before he shook himself, his expression turning remote and condescending. He cleared his throat.“Well, they haven’t found a family yet to take them so they’ll be going to a state operated facility first.”
Tilda repeated the words in her head. A state operated facility. It sounded so clinical. So cold. She stared at the cot at the end of the bed where a small foot waved in the air. Icey doubt flooded her veins.
Wrapped up like presents, due on Christmas day. The day of the birth of our lord God Jesus. Her brother had said it was just another sign from God that they were special. The same way he had said that she shouldn’t need to be reminded that under the eyes of God if she didn’t see the pregnancy through it would be murder. And also that he would arrange for them to be adopted into some happy family.
But they hadn’t arrived on Christmas, and Luther had just said that they weren’t going to a happy family.
The sharp sound of a hand smacking against a thigh jerked Tilda out of her thoughts. Luther was rising to stand, papers gripped tightly between his hands as if he was about to do a reading.
“You know you can’t keep them Tilly, not with your…” his mouth twisted in disapproval as he struggled to come up with a suitably Christian word to describe Tilda’s drug habit and the lengths she would go to fund it, eventually settling on, “lifestyle,” as if it pained him. He shook the pages, “I’ll get these to the sister and then—”
“Wait, could you—” Tilda was drowning in cold fear and adrenaline now, her hands twisted in his crisp shirt sleeve. “Luther, please, listen, you could take them? They’d have a proper life. A good family. You know—”
Luther sighed. Impassively unclawed Tilda’s grip from his arm and looked very, very tired. “You know my hands are full right now, and Mary has her hands full with Nicholas. The menace has started walking and is getting into everything.” The hint of a smile tugged at his mouth, but Luther caught it behind his hand before it could grow. When his face was suitably stern again he continued. “Tilly, we don’t have the space, and anyway, it’s all set up.” With a nod to the bed he twisted on his heel leaving her before she could formulate a reply.
Her heart raced and ached. He was right, he was right. They had set this all up months ago. Made a plan. She had agreed. And it was a good plan. What did she know about being a mother?
Except that she had made them. Two of them. Perfect and whole. Despite everything. Like diamonds in the dark, she had made them.
They were hers.
The next morning, after Pastor Lantom’s 7am blessing of Chrism and words and water where the boys had remained silent through it all, proof that they were good. Tilda watched as a man and woman dressed in smart suits with clip on name tags were escorted into the room by an orderly.
“Matilda Minyard?” The woman asked brusquely. Tilda wrinkled her nose, the woman smelled like ash. And anyway, the strange man who had come in with her had removed the blankets from her babies and was jotting down notes from the hospital bands around her son’s ankles.
“Ma’am. Could you please confirm that you are Matilda Minyard? Date of birth 3rd of May 1964?” The woman asked again.
Tilda nodded distractedly. The woman, apparently satisfied she had found the right mother of the only twins in the hospital, was droning on in the background about who they were and explaining the adoption process. Tilda had heard it all before. The only thing she cared about right now was that the man had turned away from the boys and not covered them back over with their blanket. It was bitter cold November. It wouldn’t do.
“No one else here with you?” The woman said, apparently finished her spiel.
The pair gave each other unsubtle looks with raised eyebrows. Judgement. She couldn’t be the first woman to do this by herself.
“We’re going to give you some privacy now while you say your goodbyes and then a nurse will bring them down to us.”
Tilda nodded and watched their backs as they left the ward. She stood, not to say goodbye to her babies. Just to cover her boys back up with their blanket. Would the agency let them keep the blankets?
Slipping her feet into her slippers and wrapping her cardigan tighter around herself, she shuffled forward to take a better look at the pair of them. They were… beautiful. Impossibly small. Impossibly perfect. One of them had thrown off a mitten and his tiny hand had tiny fingers each tipped with an even tinier fingernail. Her heart clenched and ever so carefully she tucked the blanket securely around them protecting them from the winter chill.
The fake cheery nurse came striding across the ward toward her, her fake smile dropping from her face as she grew closer.
“You’ll be pleased to hear that I’m taking them away now,” she sniped callously.
Tilda swallowed, nodded.
“You’ll need to let go of the cot.”
Tilda nodded again but her hands wouldn’t work. The nurse huffed and moved around her, unclicking the locks on the wheels with the heel of her foot, and then she tugged the cot out of Tilda’s grasp.
She stood frozen as she watched the nurse pass off her babies to an orderly. Frozen as he walked them down the corridor. But as he turned the corner disappearing from view her heart leapt into her throat and she moved without thinking.
Every step hurt and no matter how she tried, she couldn’t make up the distance. When he vanished into an elevator she felt tears spring to her eyes.
Frantically, she pushed the button for the second elevator. She looked at the doors to the emergency stairwell, but she was in no fit state to take on any stairs. Mercifully, the door to the elevator slid open. She jabbed the button for the ground floor and hastily stuck the close door button as well.
In the confines of the elevator shaft time stretched infinite.
She couldn’t do this.
She couldn’t let them take her babies. Hers. The first good thing that she had ever done in her life and she had let her brother convince her to give it away. If it was God’s will that she have these babies, then it was God’s plan for her to keep them.
A sharp cry struck her ears as soon as the doors slid open again. She marched towards it, a woman on a mission. She would change her ways. She would do anything. Please God, just let her have her babies back. Please God let it not be too late.
When she reached the foyer of the hospital, she spotted the orderly first, leaning sleazily across the counter, talking to the nurse manning the computers. Tilda’s eyes scoured the wide room. No hateful, thoughtless agency workers. The woman had been a smoker, they were probably outside.
A heart wrenching sob called her attention to the cot left unattended against the far wall. It had been hidden behind banks of seats.
With single-minded determination, Tilda headed towards her sons. She cooed over her babies hushing them. Picking up the one whose bottom lip trembled, cradling his tiny body in her arms. She shifted him around, trying to figure out how she could pick up the second, when a loud ‘hey’ from behind her startled her. She didn’t wait to find out if it was meant for her. Without thinking, she ran. One half of her heart held tight against her chest.