I think I have food poisoning actually. I should call the doctor, but first I’ll get back in the shower and shave my legs. I forgot to do that. Then I might feel better. And on and on it went, calmly, stupidly, until Nick took the razor out of my hands and told me the hospital was ready, and my Go Time bag was in the boot of the waiting car.
“Oh, okay,” I said, and then I threw up in the sink. “I think I ate some bad cheese, Nick.”
“Whatever gets you downstairs,” he said.
My cramping was getting stronger. I concentrated on breathing and on not vomiting all over the back of PPO Stout’s car, which we were taking to the hospital’s private entrance. When we got there, I was hustled into a wheelchair, pausing once to puke in a waste bin near the elevator.
“I mean, okay, it probably is labor, but I also might have had bad cheese?” I said hopefully, as a kind nurse handed me a gown and instructed me to change and lie down in our very posh hospital room that I hoped we did not actually need yet. I did as I was told, while Nick finished filling out some paperwork and called my mother.
“Let’s check to see what the situation is here,” the nurse said, delicately turning up the gown as Nick jogged back in the room. She nodded thoughtfully. “Right. Well. Do not push, love,” she said.
“Hell no. I am not pushing until I have had all of the drugs,” I said.
She smiled at me. “We’re too far along for that, I’m afraid.”
“I’m sorry, what? No,” I said. “We cannot have missed the drug window.”
“You are ten centimeters and most definitely in labor,” she said. “These babies are coming now.”
“Now?” I said, looking from her kind face to Nick’s ashen one. Panic gripped me. “Like, now now?”
“Now enough that I can tell you Baby A is not bald,” she said. “Your doctor is on the way.”
“No. Sorry. I’m not done being pregnant yet,” I said nonsensically. “I’ve only just started being able to rest a full dinner plate on my bump. We haven’t decided on names. We haven’t even talked about names.” I grabbed her hand. “Please. I’m freaking out. We could do a couple of drugs. I won’t tell anyone.”
“I would also like some drugs at the moment,” Nick said, disentangling me from the nurse. “But I don’t think it’s going to happen. Take a deep breath, Bex. It’s going to be okay. This is all absolutely under control, right…” He peered at her name tag. “Brenda?”
“Absolutely, Your Royal Highness,” she said.
Nick shook his head. “No titles,” he said. “No formalities. We’re Nick and Bex, and we’re proper frightened right now.”
Brenda pulled out a machine and did a quick scan of my belly. “Solid heartbeats,” she said. “That’s very promising.”
She scurried out to get an update on the whereabouts of my medical team, leaving me and Nick clutching at each other, pale.
“Did you call Mom?”
“Yes.”
“Lacey?”
“Yes.”
“And I have a meeting with Bea tomorrow, you need to let her know I can’t come to work.”
“I’ll sort it,” Nick said.
“And call Cilla.”
“Roger that.”
Brenda popped her head back in. “Good news on the drug front,” she said. “You’re going to do a C-section. The doctor thinks it’s safest since we don’t know why the twins have decided to come early. Sir, er, Nick, go scrub up, and you’ll meet her in the operating theater.”
“I love you,” Nick said to me hastily as he was pulled away and disappeared from my eyeline. Things were moving very quickly—too quickly—as Brenda wheeled my bed out into the hallway, where a few other nurses helped pull me toward the room where I would meet my babies for the first time.
“I’ve never been early for anything in my life, Brenda,” I babbled. “This doesn’t make any sense. Is this because we went on a plane? Should I have stayed home?”
“No, luvvie,” Brenda said firmly. “You can’t go blaming yourself for what biology decided to do. Twins are early all the time. They’re probably eager to meet you, and soon enough, they will.”
She parked my bed in a small OR, where they erected a curtain across my chest that obstructed my view. The anesthesiologist got to work with my IVs, and I stared at the ceiling, blinking in time with one of the fluorescent lights that was flickering. Brenda turned it off and on again, and it steadied. My breathing did not.