a hallway, past several open doors that Knox tried not to look into. So many doors, some leading into dark rooms, some into rooms that looked almost coldly bright and crowded with people. He was talking mainly to Knox’s mother, who hung at his side, making it clear with her posture that if he were to pause in his speech he would be forced to resume it again, to answer questions she had at the ready. Bruce and Knox’s father walked together, behind Knox. Dr. Boyd, with his gin-blossom nose, his pocked cheeks, his blunt, bluish hair, said that Charlotte had done well, the twins would be groggy from the anesthesia but most probably unaffected, their breathing was being watched, particularly that of the first one out—that would be Ethan, Knox thought; how arbitrarily he had become the oldest!—the perinatologist had been called, Charlotte was being given something called oxytocin to help her uterus contract. “We’re watching that,” Dr. Boyd said. He spoke with an energy that felt close to glee, Knox thought.
He reached for a metal door handle, pulled it like a trigger, ushered them through one of the closed doors. The room wasn’t small or large; it was sectioned into areas by curtains that could be drawn shut. Charlotte’s bed was at the far end of it, closest to the window. She looked up at them when the door opened, and smiled as they moved toward her, past the only other occupied bed in the room. Knox couldn’t help glancing at the sleeping woman in the near bed as she passed by. The woman’s mouth was slack; her massive head listed to one side. Knox felt a twinge of pity for her without knowing why.
“Well, look who’s here,” Charlotte stage-whispered. “Come here, you guys.”
Knox had forgotten. She had forgotten again just how Charlotte was, was struck by all the ways Charlotte’s outlines, so bright now, matched and didn’t match the duller ones in her memory. Charlotte’s forehead and cheeks were high with color, as if she’d been slapped or had ducked in from the cold. Her head was propped up on some kind of ergonomic pillow, the rest of her prone; a fuzzy strand of hair clung to her left temple. She was beautiful. Wearing earrings of glass, etched-glass triangles, a fact that surprised Knox, until she told herself, Of course she is wearing earrings, it wasn’t as if any small vanity would be thrashed off, lost in the linens, incompatible with birth, with this room. A sheet stretched from below Charlotte’s breasts to a hanging point beyond the foot of the bed; the intern Knox recognized from the reception desk was reaching under the sheet, kneading at some part of Charlotte’s swollen lower body that none of them could see.
They ranged around her like she was fire. There was a slight smell of shit in the air. Knox’s father moved to touch Charlotte’s face, push the hair to one side; then he backed up again to make room for Bruce, who slipped into the space by the bed.
“Kid,” her father said, soft. “This is nice going.”
“Have you seen them yet?” Charlotte asked. She was grinning.
“Not yet,” her mother said, “but—”
“They’re … you’re not going to believe it,” Charlotte said. Her voice, even as it rose over the words being exchanged between Dr. Boyd and the intern and nurse, still carried the friction of a whisper in it. “You are not going to believe.”
“Oh, honey, and they’re both going to be fine,” her mother said. She craned upward, smiling, in her navy travel pantsuit and printed scarf, so Charlotte could see her better.
“Yes,” Charlotte said. “I know they are. I—” She looked up at Bruce. “My heart’s still beating fast. It’s beating really fast.”
“Let’s keep this short,” Dr. Boyd said from the other side of the bed. He peered into the clear bag that hung on an IV stand next to him. “We’re still waiting for the medication to kick in.”
“They’re massaging my uterus, Knoxie,” Charlotte said. “Isn’t that lovely?”
Knox wanted to lie down on the bed beside her sister and learn all the new fat and blood that had crept into Charlotte in the four months since she had last seen her, trace the borders of this puffy, blurred body and learn it by heart. “Nothing like a good uterus massage,” Knox said. “I prefer mine first thing in the morning.”
Charlotte laughed once, in a kind of cry. She held Knox’s eyes with hers.