The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,82

nurses had taken our babies into. The nurses came back out without the twins and went to the door where Adam stood. He said something. The younger nurse looked at the older one, who shook her head at Adam. The older nurse pointed back to the room where they’d left the twins; she began to shut the door. Adam put his hand out to stop her, his brow furrowed in protest. He stepped into the nursery. Both nurses stepped back.

“Back in a minute, Momma,” I said.

She looked up and saw Adam, too. I waved away her question.

I waddled over to the other side of the nursery to join Adam.

An unfamiliar hardness resonated in his voice. “No blood tests. We don’t want any blood tests. No tests of any kind. My daughters are fine. You can’t do that to our children without our consent.”

The nurses exchanged looks. The older one brushed past us as she strode out of the nursery and down the hall. The remaining nurse smiled weakly and said, “Twins.”

The older nurse returned with a doctor. He held a chart and seemed surprised when Adam reached out to shake his hand and formally introduce himself. “I’m Adam Hope, father of the twins your nurses are examining. There’s no need for any tests.”

The doctor shook his head and raised his hand, dismissing Adam’s objection.

But Adam continued. “Their reflexes are normal. Lungs and heart normal. They have taken some formula.”

The doctor’s face hardened with each statement as Adam’s voice grew more firm. “Mr. Hope, I am not even sure your children are female. We need to discuss some options. There are procedures for children like yours.”

“They are girls. They look exactly like our other two daughters did when they were born.” This registered in the doctor’s eyes, but his face remained set. One of the nurses shifted beside us and cleared her throat softly.

I squeezed Adam’s arm to shut him up. It took effort to think through the lingering veil of anesthesia, but his tone alarmed me.

“We don’t want blood tests. We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses,” I lied.

The doctor snorted. “No tests,” he said to the nurses.

“They’re fine.” Adam’s voice dropped. “And we want to take them home.”

I slipped my hand into Adam’s. “As soon as possible.” I stared back at the doctor, who regarded us as if we were demented.

The doctor opened his mouth, snapped it shut, then quickly scrawled something across the chart. “These babies should be examined by pediatric urology. But I’m signing for early dismissal. Tomorrow.” He thrust the chart at the nurses and marched away.

I went back to my room while Adam stayed to argue the nurses into letting me keep Jennie and Lil with me for the night.

They were good babies, crying so softly and infrequently that they did not wake the newly delivered woman who shared the room with me. I ignored the bottled milk and let them relieve me. I held them close, willing them to become normal girls.

The next morning, we checked out of the hospital without blood tests and without incident. Tired, sore, and happy, I took my ugly carrot-tops home.

Then the shit hit the fan of domestic life—the shit and the laundry and the spit-up and the spills and the scraped knees and the shoes and the holidays and the biscuits and the grits and the cats and the dogs and the rain and the manure and the weeds. We had tilted toward chaos with two kids, a farm, and a stable full of horses, but the addition of twins tipped things straight into the gutter. The next years were a blur of babies and work. They were probably the happiest years of my life.

We needed more assistance on the farm than family could supply. For the first time, we hired regular help, Wallace, Granny Paynes’s nephew. A natural stable hand and an otherwise quiet man, he muttered to the horses as he worked, a deep, rhythmic chatter that calmed them. His daughter, Macy, sometimes helped me in the house.

In temperament, Lil and Jennie fluctuated between Gracie’s calm and Rosie’s natural-born outrage. More than any of the other girls, they were left to their own devices. All energy and wide eyes, they calmed and excited each other in turns. As babies, they burbled contentedly at each other for hours until one of them bit, hit, or scratched the other and all hell broke loose. Each added to the other’s wails in an endless cycle. If they were left unattended, their cries reached