Downstairs, Daniel paced in front of the maternity unit doors.
He asked every few minutes whether there was an update.
The nurses gave him only what they were permitted to give.
Claire is being treated.
The babies are being monitored.
Please remain available.
For a man who had spent months controlling two separate stories, waiting was torture.
He called me again.
My phone vibrated on the table beside my bed.
I watched his name appear.
I let it stop.
A minute later, a message arrived.
Claire, please.
I’m here.
Tell me you’re okay.
I turned the phone facedown.
Rachel saw me do it.
“You don’t owe him comfort right now.”
“I know.”
But knowing something and feeling it are different things.
Daniel was the father of my children.
Part of me wanted to hear his voice.
Another part remembered Vanessa’s messages and felt something inside me close again.
The monitor changed rhythm.
A nurse stepped closer.
Then the doctor came back.
Everything moved quickly after that.
She told me one baby’s heart rate was dipping too often.
The safest course was to deliver both babies.
My hands began shaking.
“They’re early.”
“Yes,” the doctor said.
“But we’re prepared.”
Rachel leaned over and pressed her forehead to mine.
“Liam and Sophie have been fighting to get here for years.
They’re not stopping now.”
I laughed once through my tears.
When the nurse asked again whether I wanted Daniel brought up before they took me in, I looked at the closed door.
“Tell him the babies are being delivered,” I said.
“Nothing else until they’re safe.”
Daniel received the message from a nurse in the hallway.
He stared at her.
“Delivered? Now?”
“The medical team believes that’s safest.”
“I need to see my wife.”
The nurse’s expression stayed kind but firm.
“She has asked for privacy.”
Those words hit him harder than the divorce petition had.
Privacy.
For years, there had been almost no boundary between us.
He knew how I took my coffee, which side I slept on, what song I played when I needed courage, and exactly how terrified I had been that we would never become parents.
Now I was somewhere beyond those doors preparing to give birth to his children, and he was not the person I wanted beside me.
He sat down.
Only then did he notice that his hands were shaking.
His phone buzzed.
Vanessa.
