Chapter 4

When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears

When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears

And I held your hand through all of these years, but you still have all of me

The last reddish glimmer has now vanished from the sky and I stretch a bit to see if my destination is already visible, because left and right everything is dark.

I walk past a house and its entry is decorated with balloons and a poster saying "Welcome home baby".

I am smiling again and remember the moment when a similar poster had been over our door when we could finally bring the twins home, after months in the hospital.

My stomach is still in knots just thinking about this pregnancy.

We had been so happy when Lorelai found out that she was pregnant. We had worked hard for it, if you want to put it that way, since we had been back together. After endless minutes of waiting the strip had turned pink and we had hugged each other hard. If we would have known what had been ahead of us, we probably would have barely smiled,

Immediately after the honeymoon the problems had started and Lorelai had only been in her second month.

She was sick constantly and not only in the morning, but thw whole day. She couldn't eat anything without throwing up afterwards. We both felt that this wasn't normal, but the doctor told us that it was no big deal and that she would give her some medicine if it would get worse and everything would be over. However she was wrong. A Sunday morning Lorelai couldn't get out of the bathroom anymore and I brought her to the emergency room where they finally helped her.

Yet the problems weren't over. In her third month they told us that we would have twins and I would be lying if I say that we were jumping for joy. We starred at each other and didn't know what to say. We needed some time to get used to the thought of having two babies at once.

Finally, after Lorelai remembered her crazy dream from years before that. We could be really happy and were looking forward to it. This wasn't a bad thing after all.

The happiness lasted two months and then Lorelai started to get sick again. She was throwing up, got dizzy and she had a constant headache.

I am looking down on the back of my hand and I can see that my hairs are standing and I probably have goose-bumps all over my body.

It took me over two weeks to convince her to go and see another doctor. I remember that he took blood, measured her blood-pressure and then called an ambulance to ger her to the next hospital.

She had developed a form of pre-eclampsia and that wasn't only dangerous for the babies but also for her.

They gave her some medicine and put her on bed-rest and she really followed their orders.

She was so unhappy and desperate back then and she was crying a lot. Partly because of the hormones but also because of the sheer fear of losing the babies. You could see the fear in her eyes all the time and I was barely able to work anymore, scared that something would happen to her while I was gone.

We were driving each other crazy with our fear and argues a lot what didn't help her blood-pressure.

What made it worse was that she didn't get better. Die medicine didn't help the way it should, she was sick and became depressive from lying on bed all day long. She didn't accept any help though and even send Sookie and Rory away, yelled at me and cried herself to sleep.

Back then I though this could be the end to a very short marriage, but at the same time I knew that we couldn't be without each other.

My offer to move out for a little while so she wouldn't get as upset anymore backfired badly and she became hysterical.

I don't remember what I told her or what she said, because we never talked about that incident ever again, but I remember that I carried her into the bathroom, sat her in the tub and switched on the cold water. I didn't know what else to do.

I yelled at her that I was as scared and worried as she was and probably even more because I could not only lose my kids but also my wife.

It helped somehow and I was able to calm her down and soothe her afterwards.

At the time she was in her seventh month and just a few days later I found her unconscious on our bed.

The pre-eclampsia had turned into eclampsia and they had to perform a caesarean immediately to save the kids and her. After they delivered the babies Lorelai was still fighting for her life, because her liver had been already damaged.

Anthony and Layna were born 22nd May 2008, three months before the due-date.

Lorelai was finally able to meet them three days after the delivery, because she had been in intensive- care before. They were so tiny and I was scared at first to touch them.

I stop and catch my breath, the picture of those small human beings burned forever in my brain.

Even back then, when they had the size of my hand, you could already tell what different characters they had.

Anthony has always been a calm and canny but ailing boy and that never changed. He eats healthy, makes sport and is out in the fresh air as often as possible but he was always the first one to catch whatever virus was in the air.

He had needed artificial ventilation for a long time and refused to eat. And for a while we thought he would have a damaged retina.

Layna was so different already back then. She was the carbon copy of her mother and even inherited her scary healthiness and her iron stomach. She was released quickly from intensive care, kept crying and wailing the whole day and whenever Lorelai nursed her she drank greedily until she feel in an exhausted sleep.

Altogether they stayed nearly three months at the hospital, just as long until they reached the normal due date.

Lorelai had to stay as well and still needed medication and during that time I felt really lonely in that huge, new house.

My thoughts still lingering at the medication I start walking again, because at one point the old man that is me wants to arrive.

The day we were finally allowed to take them home with us was something like a religious experience and we were treating them like raw eggs for a long time. Our whole life was revolving around them and we refused to let them out of our sight for just a second. Lorelai and me even considered that one of us would quit his job and stay at home, but in the end we decided against that.

It was less a financial decision and more because we had both worked or whole life and couldn't not work anymore all of a sudden.

In hindsight that was a good decision, although we often doubted it, when we hurried back and forth with the stroller and all the baby stuff between the Inn and the diner.

When they turned three and started pre-school we slowly started to relax. We didn't freak out anymore when they hit their heads and we didn't run to the emergency room anymore when one of them had a cold.

We even started going out again and Lorelai dragged me to the movies or we took a weekend off, just the two of us. The kids stayed with Rory or April who nearly started fighting over who could watch them.

The next shock came though when Lorelai got pregnant again three and a half years after the twins birth. She was on the pill and we will never know how she could get pregnant, beside the obvious reasons, bit it happened and we were really shocked.

After the complicated pregnancy and birth of the twins we had decided against more kids, because we weren't willing to take the risk another time.

We both thought about it and had a long discussion and finally both decided that we didn't want an abortion.

Another decision we never regretted.

Although Lorelai was 44 years old by that time this pregnancy was without any complications and was the most incredible thing we ever experienced.

She went through all pregnancy stereotypes you can imagine: She had morning sickness, she ate the strangest things and had the most disgusting cravings, she was all hormonal and I have to say I enjoyed parts of that.

Anthony and Layna painted her belly with colours and they loved it to feel the baby move inside of her.

Like the pregnancy the birth was just as smooth. Lorelai's water broke in the diner, although I had told her to avoid that and we hurried to the hospital. After hours of cursing, yelling and crushing my hand Joshua was born and was started crying furiously the second he was out.

This time I wasn't crying out of fear, but out of joy.

Even now while I make my way through the town, panting and wheezing, my eyes are tearing up when I think about the moment this little person leaving her body, screaming furiously and then looking at us with his big blue eyes when he was lying contently on his mother's chest and didn't have a clue that he was our little miracle.

TBC