January 4th 2022
Chapter 4
Our Life With Routine
Maya slept. It took her about forty minutes of lying in bed wide awake before she got there, and once she did get there it didn't last much more than fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, but she slept.
All those days in the hospital, the one thing she would keep thinking about would be... this. Back home, her and Lucas and their daughters, starting this next great chapter together... All those days in the hospital, and all those months before, as they grew within her, actually, and now it was finally happening. They were home. She could turn her head, look across the hall into the nursery, and see the first crib, the one where all three babies were resting. If she wanted to see them, she could look to the monitor on her nightstand. They were there, they looked okay, cozy together...
They were okay, right? She couldn't help but wonder, which would then make her struggle against the urge to get up and go check on them... every minute or so. She must have fought against that urge about two dozen times before she finally gave in.
It wasn't near as bad to get up as it had been in the beginning. There would still be those moments when a movement would catch her off guard and she'd stall in place for a beat, catch her breath... She never made a big deal of it, didn't want anyone to fuss over her like something was wrong when it wasn't, not really. Was she fooling anyone? Never, but at least they knew her well enough to catch on that she wanted them to leave it alone. If she was really in trouble or if she needed help, she would say it, she had. There had been a number of small incidents in the early days after the birth where she'd had to park her dignity at the door, but that was just how it had to be. She didn't mind.
In the quiet of late morning, she could just hear low voices downstairs. Eliza, Emma, Ella, and Tori... A few times across her sleepless minutes, one of them had come up, checked on the triplets. They'd checked on her, too, she knew. Whether they'd bought her keeping her eyes closed as having been genuinely asleep, she couldn't say, and they didn't call her on it.
That should have been enough for her to be reassured, to tell her that she could go ahead and sleep, but... no, she needed to see them for herself.
They were asleep, all three of them, breathing, just as she'd left them. Her heart lightened, and she let out that breath she'd been holding back all this time, back in her room.
They always did their best not to single out Lucy, and they made a habit of not highlighting that she was not identical to her sisters. Most of the time it wasn't even something they did intentionally, it was automatic, like they figured that if they started doing it now, they would grow up that way, knowing it as normal. Just now, Lucy lay between Kacey and Remy, and they all looked very satisfied with this arrangement.
Maya stood there, watching them, for a few minutes. She didn't need to reach out, touch them... They slept, and she didn't want to risk disrupting them. Just looking at them right here, it was enough. Had they been bigger, she might have considered bringing them across the hall with her, found a way to have them by her side as she took her nap, but no... Someday they would be bigger, and they wouldn't feel so fragile, but that wasn't this day.
"You're not fragile though, not really," she told them, in little more than a whisper. "You're my tiny but mighty girls, huh?" she smiled. "You've got this."
The creaking of the hallway floor made her look back just as Eliza came up to the door. She'd looked into the other room first and had a surprised look on her face at not finding her big sister there, but then when she turned...
"Are they okay?" she quietly asked.
"Yeah, yeah, everything's fine," Maya promised her as she moved to join her and led her back to her room.
"Did we wake you?"
"No, I..." Maya started to say, then, remembering how she'd been 'sleeping' on their previous check-ups, she cleared her throat. "I had to..." she gestured but thought against it in the end. "Going back now, I just wanted to see them for a minute."
After sitting and lying down on her bed, she motioned for her sister to follow. Eliza smiled and did as she was asked. Maya put her arm around her, held her like a live stuffed animal, and her little sister merrily complied. She had a vague notion of asking what she and the others were up to downstairs, but if she was given the answer, she didn't remember it. She just dozed off, and when she woke again, Eliza was gone. She might have thought that she'd imagined the entire visit if her sister didn't bring it up later on, explaining that she'd extricated herself once she knew that Maya had fallen asleep.
When she woke up again, she had no Eliza, but she had something just as good.
"How was it out there?" she asked. Lucas looked up from where he sat at his desk. His laptop was open before him, and he shut it down before moving to sit with her.
"Fine," he hummed, scratching at the hairs on his chin. It wasn't time yet for the 'Santa beard' to be allowed to grow, but then he hadn't gotten around to shave much in the time since the girls were born, so there it was. She must have had 'you need to shave' written on her face, with how he chuckled and nodded at her.
"Just fine?" she challenged. "Did you stay..."
"An hour, we did," he promised with a nod. "We could have been longer."
"You should have," she kindly pointed out.
"No, but if we did, we might have been out there all day," Lucas explained.
"Something happen?" she guessed, and so he told her about Polka, Caramel, Thunder, and Turtle. She had sympathetic eyes all the way through, though she did laugh when he told her about Marianne picking the last horse's name.
"They love her already, I think."
"Yeah, they tend to do that," Maya nodded. She reached over, tugged at his arm so he'd lie down with her, which he did, the better to allow her to lean against him.
"She's downstairs now with your dad. The girls went out to make a grocery run."
"My dad's here?" Maya blinked. Of course, one of them was going to come back. She'd expected it... Actually, she wouldn't be surprised if they all did, sooner or later today. If they didn't, then she could absolutely expect a phone call.
"Yeah, he arrived just after we did," Lucas revealed. "Marianne's telling him all about the new horses. She's just happy about having them there, she doesn't understand how they ended up with us, but it's good this way."
"Yeah..." Maya agreed. Quietly, she just went on trailing her fingers along his arm. The notion of mistreated animals was only ever going to weigh on his mind, and she understood it well. It was one of those qualities that made him shine the most in her heart.
"What about you?" he finally had to blink and focus back on her. He cupped the side of her face, looked into her eyes like he was seeking an answer. "Did you sleep okay?"
"Barely," she admitted before recounting her reflexes, how they prevented her from drifting off until after she'd gone and looked in on the babies. "I tried, honest," she gave an innocent smile.
"I know you did," he smiled back. "Want to try again? I'll stay."
"I don't know, it might help, or it might keep me awake," she suggested with a mischief-tinted smile.
"I could leave, too," he offered, knowing full well what would happen when he did.
"No, no, no, hey, let's not lose sight of the mission, here, Huckleberry," she came closer, so he put his arms around her.
"There, is that good?" he asked, which she knew to partially mean 'I'm not holding you too tight, am I?'
"It's perfect," she assured him. He kissed the top of her head.
After all the activity of the last few weeks, and this morning's return home, this... This was actually the first proper moment they had, him and her, to be at peace, for however long they would get, and it felt great. It was what they'd both needed, whether they realized it or not.
"We need to come up with a plan," Maya declared, even as her voice sounded like she wasn't long for the waking world. "A new one," she amended. "Like in the hospital, but... for here."
They'd developed a routine out there, kind of had to, for their personal stability. Being out there all this time, it would have been so easy for them to grow restless, or to fall down the rabbit hole of wondering if the girls would suddenly take a turn for the worse when they had been the absolute picture of health from day one. Their routine had helped them make it through the days then, and they knew they would need it here, too, not as a coping mechanism but in order not to let things descend into chaos, with their loaded household and its newest, smallest residents.
"We'll work all that out," Lucas agreed, casually drawing his fingers through her hair. "We'll write it all down... get it laminated or something..."
"I know what you're doing, you know?" Maya mumbled.
"Is it working?" he smiled but got no answer. She had gone back to sleep.
Lucas stayed with her all the while, for the next hour, until he thought he heard what sounded like someone else had woken up, in the other room... more than one someone... After carefully removing himself from the hold without waking his wife, he got up and walked across the hall. As expected, he found all three girls were awake, all of them looking like they were about to raise the alarm.
"Hey, now, what's the matter?" he quietly asked, reaching in to touch one hand and another, to do whatever he could to calm them down if he could. It was one of those situations, as both he and Maya had come to discover, where they were in dire need of a third hand which they unfortunately did not have. Luckily, this time around, his two hands were sufficient. No one cried. He let out a breath. "You need to eat soon, I know," he told them. "Let's just give Mommy a few more minutes, okay? Yeah?"
Maya had been awake since he'd gotten up. She'd played it well, enough that he didn't realize it, and from there she was able to stay just as she was, to watch him as he comforted and interacted with their daughters.
She'd always known he would be wonderful with them. It was part of who he was. Still, it felt good to watch him. He was excellent at the 'baby scoop,' allowing him to pick up one and then another and then the third of the girls, bringing them to rest against his chest. Once he had them all, they could never be anywhere better secured. He held them, waiting to bring them to her, and he just gently swayed with them, like a dance. It wasn't the first time she'd caught him doing this, as various pictures and videos could show. It took her back to when Marianne was a baby, constantly prodding at his face. She had that image, inked to her arm, and someday she knew she would have this one as well, of Lucas 'dancing' with Lucy, Kacey, and Remy.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
