"Please help them! Please! My wife, she-" pleaded Ressler as he was helped into the back of the ambulance, Liz still in his arms. He laid her gently on the waiting stretcher, his hands never leaving her as he bent over her body. The one paramedic hopped in the drivers seat and started the ambo. Lights, sirens and they were headed for the nearest hospital.
The other woman had stepped in the back with him, closing the door and reaching for the stretcher.
"Sir! Sir!" she said and her voice was very commanding. Ressler looked up at her and she calmed her voice, addressing him. "What's your name?"
"Donald. I just - she went into labor and I couldn't get her out in time. And then the babies - and I - I - Oh God - is she dying?" It was the amount of blood that seemed to trigger that question. It was enough to frightening to anyone, let alone her husband.
"Donald! Donald! Calm down!" she said, even as she opened Liz's shirt and hooked up the cardiac monitor. She had four patients from the looks of it - but the unconscious mother took precedent. "She's alive, she's just passed out from the pain and the weakness. Look" she pointed at the monitor and Ressler looked up, watching the beat of her pulse.
The paramedic gently spread Liz's legs,
"She did tear badly and she's bleeding more then I'd like, but she's not even hemorrhaging" she reported, pleasantly surprised. She did however start an IV and hang a bag of O- blood.
"Has she delivered the placentas?" she asked gently.
It took Ressler a second to realize she was talking to him. "Huh?" he asked, stupified.
"Has she delivered the placentas?"
"No, I - there wasn't time. I'm - I'm so sorry" he was crying now. His hands shook, taking in the magnitude of what had happened, including his role in it, and he was glad that the babies lay on the stretcher with Liz.
He couldn't stop the thought that he'd caused this somehow. By getting her pregnant. By letting them be kidnapped from their own home in the middle of the night. By not getting her out sooner. For not knowing what he was doing when he tried to deliver their babies. For tearing her with his stupid fat fingers.
His wrists stung but he couldn't even feel the pain of his burnt back, not with the thoughts that were stuck on an endless loop in his mind.
"Hey" said the paramedic, realizing that if he didn't calm him down it would just be worse. "Donald!" She placed her hand on his unburnt upper arm and made him look at her. "You did amazing! You got these babies into this world and you got them all out of the building before it blew up. You saved their lives! Courage like that - I - I've never seen it before."
"She's going to be okay?" he asked.
"I don't know for sure, but I think so" said the paramedic honestly, "and if she is that's because of you. She needs to deliver the placentas when she awakes or otherwise they will have to do emergency surgery. I'm giving her fluids and blood, let's help her body get over the shock and she should wake up" she assured him. She hooked up a second bag, this one of clear saline, on the same IV and covered Liz with a heated blanket as best as she could.
Ressler nodded, looking at the unconscious body of the woman he loved.
"Placenta" he said.
"Sorry?"
"It's placenta. Not placentas. They're identical twins. My fault."
"Oh. Even better." She lifted the babies bundle carefully then. Their crying had diminished enough that they could hear each other easily over top of it. "What have we here?" she asked, opening it carefully. She lifted out the baby that wasn't wrapped in the flannel, the second to be born. "Oh, boys. Definitely boys."
Ressler flushed, feeling momentarily embarrassed. He didn't know if it was normal among newborns or not, but his sons had very prominent genitalia. He wasn't embarrassed that the paramedic see it - they were babies - but the fact that she'd commented...
"Is - is that - are baby boys always that swollen?" he asked, gesturing between his son's fat thighs at the engorged flesh of his penis and scrotum.
"No" she said, "this is unusual. It's a little swollen" she reached gently for his scrotal sac, rolling it between her fingers to simultaneously see if both testis had descended, "But no more then usual. They're just blessed I guess. It's genetic. Are you?"
"I - uh - a bit yah"
"Then that's why. Both testicles have descended though - that's good. It's actually something important to check in newborns - they don't descend more often then we'd like."
"And then what?" asked Ressler.
"You wait and it usually happens. But they're at higher risk for cancer and fertility issues among other things in the future."
"Oh" Ressler found himself reaching to feel as well. Poor Luke, brand new and everyone was just feeling him up like he was some medical object.
"But they're adorable" she said. "Does he have a name?"
With their full heads of dark red hair, their long limbs and perfect little digits, their soft, cubby torsos, their button noses and full lips, their dark eyes opening huge in their faces they were about as beautiful as newborns came.
"Luke David" said Ressler, "we discussed it. Danny Lincoln and Luke David. That one was born second so that makes him Luke."
"Ooh, so cute" she said. "They look like you." They did, again. It seems that he had quite dominant genes.
"He - he got stuck" said Ressler, "I had to get him out because she couldn't push and he was suffocating. It took a minute for him to cry. Is he okay?"
"He'll be tested at the hospital but he seems good to me" she said. "His color is good, his breathing is good, I heard him scream." She found a clamp and clamped off his cord above his navel, then handed him some scissors. "Here you go Dad, make the cut." It was traditional, he knew that, but he had still forgotten all about it. He reached out for the scissors but his hand trembled so bad that he had to cradle it with his other one to cut the cord. Then the paramedic dried Luke off and wrapped him cozy in a blue baby blanket. "Here" she said "I even have baby hats. We deliver a few back here every year. We'll give him a striped one." She carefully put the hat on his head. The newborn pulled his legs back up and hunkered down in fetal position, as though he were still in Liz's womb.
The paramedic handed him to Ressler who finally let go of Liz and sat back on the bench, laying the tiny baby in his lap.
She did the same with the second one, the firstborn, "So, Daniel?" she asked.
"Danny" Ressler quickly corrected. "We'll call him Danny."
"Well, he gets solid blue. That way we'll be able to tell them apart."
Now they both lay in his lap, he cradled one in each hand, their entire skulls barely the size of his palm. It was the first time he'd really held a newborn.
"They're tiny" he said quietly, "so tiny."
The paramedic heard it and laughed softly. "They're huge" she said. "For twins - they're huge. My husband and I, we only have one and she was born smaller then either of these weigh alone. These two are decently big for regular babies, let alone twins. How far along was she?"
"She made it to 39 weeks" said Ressler, pride in his voice, "but I think it's my fault they're so big."
"Maybe" said the paramedic, checking Liz's pupils, which evidently pleased her, "they're definitely yours. But that's okay. It's better for them. Gives them a boost at life."
"Are we almost there?" asked Ressler.
"4 minutes!" came the call from the paramedic up front.
"Let's take a look at you" suggested the one in back with him, coming around to his side of Liz's stretcher.
"No, please, just help my wife" asked Ressler.
"IV fluids are wide open and she's warm" said the paramedic, "there's nothing more I can do until she either wakes up or we get to the hospital. Now, you have some nasty cuts on your wrists and some pretty serious burns on your back. Did you know that?"
She knew there was a very real chance he didn't know as yet. Adrenaline was keeping him from feeling the pain.
"I know about my wrists" he said. "I had to saw through the rope by rubbing it on a sharp corner."
"But not your back?" she asked again, her hand on the back of his neck, guiding him to lean forward.
No" he said, "I know it blew up behind me but - it doesn't hurt."
"Yet" she said, "it will soon. Can you lean forward carefully?"
He leaned forward over the babies and she bent over to inspect the damage. He had no shirt left on his back, though it still hung by the seams around his neck and under his armpits. The majority of his back, especially the shoulder blades and the two columns of muscle running next to his spine, was covered in first and second degree burns. Not bad enough to damage the skin repair centers underneath, but bad enough to cause terrible pain, a several-month recovery period, and to leave some decent scarring. There was a few pieces of his shirt stuck to the burns and she thought it best to pull them out now, before the pain kicked in.
"You have first and second degree burns on the exposed areas of your back. You are looking at two or three months for the skin to grow in again and some decent pain. There is a couple of pieces of debris left here, is it okay if I remove them? The sooner the better to prevent infection."
"Okay" said Ressler, leaning down to kiss his sons.
She gently removed those pieces and left his back bare.
"That needs to be seen in the burn unit as soon as we arrive" she said, "it needs to be dressed and wrapped. Until then we leave it."
"Okay" said Ressler, they had to be close.
"You mind telling me exactly what happened?" she asked gently, back at Liz's side. She lifted Danny carefully from his closed legs to lay beside his mother and then took Ressler's hand in her own to examine his wrists one at a time. "I can gather the birth and the explosion, but what were you doing there in the first place?"
"We're FBI agents" said Ressler honestly, "Sometimes the people we put away have friends and sometimes they come looking for revenge. I guess that's what happened, only they didn't get it. They took us this morning at gunpoint-"
"Even with your wife 39 weeks pregnant?'
"Oh they couldn't care less. Life has no sanctity to them, certainly not that of the unborn. They meant to have us killed publicly I'm guessing, but when they realized Liz was about to give birth they got called away, gassed the place, set a timer and took off. We barely made it out. I can't tell you any more then that - I'm not allowed."
"That's plenty" she said, dabbing his wrists with clean water and wrapping them in gauze. "By the way, I'm not sure if I've said it or not but my name's Sylvia."
Then the ambulance pulled up to the hospital and they both stood, Sylvia grabbing Liz's stretcher and Ressler very carefully lifting both babies to his chest, one folding from his lap, the other handed to him by Sylvia from Liz's stretcher. The doors were flung open and a team of doctors swirled around them. Sylvia handed someone who looked to be in charge a clipboard and gave the run down.
"Young family, trapped inside a burning warehouse. Mother's vitals are holding stable, slightly tachy at 107, BP 132/78, Resps 18, Temp 97.8, pupils reactive to light, but she is unconscious from the pain and very weak. Still needs to deliver the placenta. Twin baby boys. Born at 39 weeks, weigh about eight pounds a piece, APGAR of 10 and 9 respectively," she gestured first at Danny and then at Luke, "both doing well, no vitals taken. Father delivered them alone, and sustained first and second degree burns on the back and severe lacerations to the wrists."
"Okay" said the attending doctor, "get the mother up to mat-child, get Dr. Franncey to meet them there for the babies. Father to the burn unit."
A nurse reached for Ressler's sons but he refused to let go. "I'm not leaving them" he insisted, "no!" He stepped closer to Liz's stretcher.
The attending looked at the paramedic, no doubt thinking him difficult, but she just smiled and said, "he's been through hell for them Charlie, give him the benefit of the doubt. They'll do better together."
"Fine" consented the attending, "page the burn unit, have them meet us on mat-child stat."
And then the whole group started walking rapidly towards an elevator and Ressler hurried, standing alongside Liz.
The paramedics took their empty stretcher and loaded it back into the rig.
"I hope they're okay" said the driver.
"They will be" said Sylvia, climbing in the passenger seat.
"They delivered their own children under the pressure of a time bomb and then he carried his entire family for over a city block with a burnt back. Can you imagine love like that?"
"No" said Sylvia, "but that's how I know they'll be okay."