AN: Well, here we are, another chapter here. (Are you surprised?)
I'm hoping that not everyone has left. I'm hoping to keep up momentum to get through to the end. I greatly appreciate all your comments/reviews as help with that.
I'd also like to give a super special thanks to a friend who (just in case she doesn't want to be named) helped me finish plotting everything out from here to the finish line and helped me get back my motivation to continue.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Carol did not want to relinquish her babies—not at all—and Daryl didn't hold that against her or take it personally. She was still visibly trembling with fear when Alice asked her if she could pass them off to Daryl, for just a bit, so that Alice could help her.
"They don't leave the house," Alice assured Carol in a voice that was uncharacteristically soft and even. "They stay right here. They meet their Daddy and he can keep them in the room, if you like, so you can see them. I just need a few minutes with you, Mama, OK?"
Carol frowned at Daryl. She looked like she might start crying again.
"I'll hold 'em," he assured her. "Won't put 'em down or—or let nobody else get to 'em."
Neither Alice nor Melodye were making any kind of move toward the infants. In fact, they weren't making any sudden moves at all. They'd covered the bed to keep the sheets from getting stained with blood, and they'd gone about unpacking everything that Alice had ordered to be brought to the house from the clinic, but they hadn't made any sudden moves in Carol's direction. They'd left her to have a few moments to top off the babies and let them get a little more of the milk that they seemed positively greedy to have.
"Daryl…" Carol said.
Daryl's chest ached at the anguish in her tone. He nodded at her, hoping he could convey some reassurance and confidence.
"I got 'em," he said again. "Nobody comes through me."
There was no threat. Even Daryl could feel that. His gut, for the first time in a while, was calm. He didn't feel the prickling feeling between his shoulder blades or at the base of his neck that made him feel like he could sense some quickly encroaching danger. He understood, though, that Carol's fear wouldn't fade soon.
She nodded, though, and allowed Alice to lift one bundled baby from her arms. Daryl stepped forward to take the baby—their son. Alice rested him in the crook of Daryl's arm.
"You got him?" She asked.
"Yeah," Daryl said. "He—uh—he don't weight nothin'."
"They'll gain weight," Alice said. "Twins are usually a little small. There's only so much room in there for growing. Here we come, Daddy…let me get your girl."
Carol allowed the second baby to be taken away, but she reached after them like she might change her mind. After a second, though, she settled. She watched Daryl. He was aware that she was watching him as Alice settled the second bundle into the crook of his other arm. He couldn't help but smile.
"I got me a full load now," he teased. His teasing made Carol smile, and that relieved him a little. He expected her to have to deal with her trauma—dealing with trauma was what they did, these days, as a hobby. He was happy to see, though, that she hadn't permanently lost her ability to smile.
Melodye had brought a chair from the kitchen and she moved it where Daryl could sit near the bed so that Carol could see him and, reaching out a hand, could touch his arm and the top of their baby girl's head. The two babies were sleeping—exhausted, no doubt, from the trauma they'd already been asked to digest at such a young age, and full from their mother's milk.
"OK—Mama—which hand do you want your IV in?" Alice asked. "Do you have a preference?"
Carol shook her head, but then she offered Alice the arm further from Daryl—so that she could, presumably, go right on rubbing the baby's head with her fingertip.
No matter what was being done to her, Carol's eyes never left Daryl and the babies. She faced them the entire time. She smiled, in spite of everything, a soft smile when Daryl smiled at her and winked his eye at her to try to make he feel better.
While Alice worked, she talked. She told Melodye what she needed, and Melodye helped her, but she spent the rest of her time talking to Carol. She maintained, at all times, that calm and gentle voice that she'd adopted for the time being.
The fluids would make Carol feel better. The medicine would make her feel a lot better—and don't worry, it wouldn't hurt the babies. She could still nurse them, and she should nurse them just as much as they wanted, and just as soon as she was free to do so. The medicine would make her drowsy, maybe. It might make her loopy. Daryl would take care of her, and he reiterated that he would do just that. Carol tried to argue against it for a moment, but Melodye was already administering it into her IV while she told Carol that a little relief, really, would be best for her and would make her ready to offer everything she possibly could to her babies. She needed to take care of herself in order to properly take care of them.
Daryl actually saw the relief on Carol's features as the medicine—which he assumed to be some kind of pretty decent pain killer—hit her bloodstream. Her eyelids sagged for a second, and the relaxation in her muscles was visible.
If the medicine didn't make her drowsy or loopy, the sudden relief of all the tension she'd been carrying certainly would.
She dropped her hand from petting their daughter's head, but rested it heavy on Daryl's arm.
Alice talked to Carol, apologizing for her work—which must have been at least a little uncomfortable despite the medication—as she undid the poorly done stitchwork of the hospital doctors and did her best to make repairs to Carol's body.
"Al's amazing at stitches," Melodye offered to Carol. She was holding her other hand. She was affectionately stroking it and her arm while Alice worked. Any time she wasn't getting something that Alice needed, Melodye was comforting Carol—and Carol seemed to appreciate it. "She doesn't brag about it much, but it's really one of her specialties."
"Don't get your hopes too high," Alice said. "Shit—I'm sorry for everything right now. This was a chop job and a half."
"He didn't even give a shit," Daryl said, his stomach tightening up as he watched Alice work with sincere concentration on her features. He remembered the horror he felt at how the man had treated Carol. "I don't know nothin' about delivering the babies and bringin' 'em into the world, Alice, but he didn't have to be so damned rough the whole time. He didn't treat her like an animal—he'da been more damn decent to an animal. He ain't had to hurt her like he did—as much as he did."
Carol shushed him. She tried to soothe him.
"Daryl—don't upset the babies," Carol pleaded.
For her, Daryl forced himself to relax. To keep from upsetting the babies, he forced himself to relax. But he was never going to feel OK about the way that the doctor had treated Carol and about the way he'd been helpless and forced to watch it happen—knowing that he'd risk all their lives if he tried to stop it.
"No," he didn't have to act like he did," Alice confirmed. "And I'm a hundred percent certain this episiotomy was unnecessary. But it is what it is, and it's done now. All we can do is fix what we can and help Carol as much as we can now. You jerked on me, Mama. You need me to numb you some more?"
"Please, no," Carol said. She laughed to herself. Daryl didn't really believe it. The hand over his arm tightened and trembled slightly. Carol tensed a little and Melodye double-timed her efforts to comfort Carol by petting her arm and hand. "Those needles hurt as bad as this does. I'd really rather you just—finish it as it is."
Alice accepted Carol's decision and desire without protest. She focused on her work, finished up, and then carefully cleaned and bandaged things.
"I'm not going to sugarcoat things," Alice said. "that's going to be a bitch while it's healing. I've got some ice packs for you we're going to freeze, and I've got some supplies for you to keep that clean. When you're cleaning it, let it get some air, OK? Just lie like you are, maybe while you're feeding the little ones, and let it get a little air. I'm staying a bit with you, too, while you settle in, because I'm keeping you on this IV for just a bit and I want to top you up with a little relief when I can."
"Thank you—for everything," Carol said.
"It's my pleasure," Alice said. "And I'll do it again, if I have to." She excused herself to wash her hands, again, and quickly returned. "Do you trust me enough, now, to let me see these little ones? Make sure nobody needs anything from me?"
Carol looked better already. In the few moments since Alice had finished with her, Melodye had helped her find herself a more comfortable position, and she'd propped her up with pillows. The pain medication, especially in the absence of fresh and ongoing pain, would have the chance to work its magic and help her truly relax now.
Carol nodded her acceptance of Alice's proposal to look at the babies, and Daryl was thankful for Alice's careful consideration of Carol and her feelings at a time like this.
"Thanks," he muttered quietly to her as she reached for one of the babies. She winked at him and smiled.
"Let me see this big boy!" She said. "Do we have names?"
"Not yet," Daryl said.
"You've got plenty of time," she said.
Carol watched every single move that Alice made like a hawk. Even though her eyelids looked heavy and she practically puddled against the pillow, she wasn't taking her eyes off her babies—and it was clear, in her demeanor, that she would use everything she had left in her, if she had to, to go after them if any sudden moves were made at all.
Alice seemed to fully respect that, and she made no sudden moves. Just as she'd talked to Carol about what she was doing with her the whole time that she'd worked with her, she talked to her about her assessment of the babies. She examined one and then the other thoroughly. She talked about their little umbilical cords and their reflexes. She talked about how their eyes looked, and she talked about the way she felt good about the fact that, upon waking, their first instinct was to do something where they thrust their little tongues out at her and somewhat turned their heads a little before launching into loud complaints about the fact that she was examining them. She talked about how clear their lungs sounded, and how good their hearts sounded, and how she was certain she hadn't seen babies that were more beautiful or stronger than these in a very long time.
When she was satisfied with how they looked, she weighed each of them with a small table weight she'd had brought over with the rest of her collection of items. Each of them weighted somewhere in the neighborhood of four pounds. The baby boy was a decent bit bigger than his sister, and Alice suggested that he might have taken a little more than his fair share in Carol's tummy, but it could all be settled out here. They were healthy, though, she assured Carol, and that was all that mattered. She had been most worried about their lungs, she'd admitted, and those sounded perfect. Weight could easily be gained.
And then, once they had been carefully inspected, Alice returned the boy to Daryl's arms while she paid special attention to Carol's technique for attaching the baby girl to her breast. Satisfied with that, she borrowed the baby boy again and helped her attach him. Then, for what seemed like a long time to Daryl, they discussed different ways that Carol could feed the little ones—one at a time or both at the same time—and different positions that she could try. Daryl had never realized that there was so much to discuss, or so many possible ways to nurse babies, but he was certain that Alice and Carol covered them all.
And both babies were easily persuaded, by nothing more than the very proximity of their mother's nipples, to have another meal.
That was how they all left Carol—finally looking truly happy and genuinely relaxed—with a baby comfortably arranged to feed at each breast and nobody standing by that even looked like they might disturb her little ones.
Daryl walked Alice and Melodye to the door.
"I'm going to be back in like a half an hour," Alice said. "Maybe an hour. I hate to be a party crasher, but I'm going to hang around a bit before I take her off the IV. I might try to get another dose of antibiotics and some extra pain meds in her before I go for the night."
"You're welcome here," Daryl said. "Stay the night if you want. Whatever you need to get her what she needs—it's the only damned thing I can do to provide for her…tell you to stay and get her what she needs."
"Might be better," Melodye said to Alice. "I mean—you'll be here late. I could bring clothes in the morning. Sometimes the night guards at the gates get a little shaky."
"We'll see," Alice said. "For now—spend some time with her and the babies. Just relax as a family. I'm going to find Sammi while I'm out and I'll bring Sophia back when I come. Talk to Carol and figure out how you want to—you know—handle the introduction with Sophia, OK?"
"Yeah," Daryl said. "We'll figure it out."
"And—Daryl?" Alice said, her hand on the doorknob. He hummed at her. "Remember—even if you feel kind of like you don't know what you're doing right now? You're a super important part of this. Mama's going to need your help. Those babies are going to need you. And Sophia's going to need you, too."
Daryl smiled to himself. His stomach tightened. It was a little overwhelming to think of so many people needing him for anything but, on the other hand, it made him feel wonderful. It made him feel loved and important.
"Don't worry," Daryl said. "You just—keep 'em healthy and comfortable. I got everything else."
Alice smiled at him.
"I know you do," she said. "I can tell. Congratulations, Daddy. I'll see you in about an hour."
Daryl bid her goodbye, said goodnight to Melodye, and stopped by the kitchen to make a surprise snack for Carol. Feeding babies, he assumed, might be hungry work. He might not be able to do everything for her that he wanted, but he could certainly do everything that lie in his power.
Being this damned necessary felt pretty good, and Daryl couldn't wait to get started taking care of his newly-expanded family.