A great unearthly cry echoed through the house and Jo feared she was too late – the baby had come and she was missing it all!
Tripping over her skirt for the fifth time since she'd ran out of Orchard House for the Dovecote Jo managed to bumble her way into the small house with her heart somewhat higher than its rightful place. Marmee had gone ahead with Hannah the night before but when the clock chimed three in the morning Jo had stumbled home for sleep knowing the child would arrive well and good when she woke up. Poor Meg had no such luxury and Jo quickly realised it was her cries that filled Dovecote so strangely.
Jo slowed her step in the hall, passing a weary-faced Brooke who smiled nervously in greeting. "They won't let me in." Jo frowned running a hand along the arm of the man she'd come to call 'brother' with all the affection it entailed.
"Not 'til the baby's born," he winced, hands on his hips as Meg screamed behind the door at the end of the hall. Jo's brow furrowed with worry at the note Meg ended on. She had not been like that last night. Jo let John go as she headed for the room, Brooke's heavy steps filling the eerie silence between the unholy wails of his wife.
Cracking the door open Jo peered inside and was met with the ghostly countenance of her sister nestled in the bed she last saw her in. Meg looked wild and broken as she gasped for air between the women around her bed – Jo hardly recognised her from the sister she'd left and she hurried in, forgetting the door her mother closed with a dark look.
"Meg," Jo breathed, kneeling at her sister's side, taking a pale hand between hers unflinchingly, even when the woman squeezed so hard she shook. "What has happened?"
"She's lost a lot of blood," her mother answered at Jo's look about the room. "Some time after you left we called for the doctor." Marmee's trembling hand found her shoulder as Jo looked on desperately at Meg.
"She'll be alright."
Her mother said nothing but the doctor spared a glance from his position at the end of the bed. Jo frowned at his brief communiqué over his spectacles and repeated herself. "She'll be alright."
Meg's cry tore through her.
"Won't she?"
The doctor cleared his throat and there was a bustle about the big bed as encouragements of "Almost dear", "Nearly there" and "Ya' bah-bee's comin'!" all came at once and Jo's grip went numb. She watched her sister in poorly masked confusion, the pretty blush of Meg's natural complexion looking like doll's rouge against her sweat-soaked brow.
Meg hollered once more and another smaller cry answered her at long last. A communal sigh went through the room and with tears down her face Meg asked in a voice as shaky as her smile, "Is it a boy or girl?"
Another cry replied and she strained to see the child but fell back against the mountain of pillows behind her, exhaustion claiming hold. Jo stood to see, Meg's hand still firmly in her, wondering at the stunned faces of the women around the doctor.
"You have a little mannie," she whispered with awe, collapsing on her knees at the feel of tears down her cheeks. She turned to Meg, kissing her hand as she beamed, "And a little lady dear Meg!"
"Twins," the doctor announced, handing the wrinkly red creatures over, one to Mrs. March and the other to Hannah as Lotty scrambled for the basin of water the doctor pointed at. Marmee carried her precious cargo to her firstborn – a smile softening the lines of worry across her brow. "Twins my dear."
Meg smiled dopily as she pulled her hand from Jo's to touch her son. "John Laurence." Hannah placed the girl in her mother's arms and Meg took a shaky breath. "Margaret." Both babies were nestled in her embrace and Jo thought the scene was sent straight out of a picture as she looked down at her sister, her hands clapped to her chest.
The doctor coughed again and Jo's mother whispered in her ear, "Take the babies to John." Jo turned to her bemused, shaken out of the spell created by nature's tenderness. "Follow Hannah, quickly now."
Jo frowned but took the little squealing boy looking across Meg to Hannah whose stern brow was not questioned. Stepping into the hall she met an impatient Amy and John whom she handed the baby to with a smile though she felt strange. "Your son, John Laurence."
John took the child with serious eyes, his face alight with the wonder of a new father. "Hello my man," he whispered as Amy fixed a blue ribbon on the blanket that covered the small chap. Hannah stepped in, her smile as wavering as Jo's though she meant the moment to be touching. "And this is ya wee Margaret, yer daughter."
John's expression would not soon be forgotten as he looked at the little girl in complete shock.
"Two!?" he laughed, amazement winning the brief battle of emotions in the narrow hall. Amy held up a pink ribbon with a short giggle, "I brought both not knowing which it would be!"
A sharp cry cut through the halls happy astonishment and Jo spun back to the door knowing her mother's voice anywhere. She ran into the room without breath spying in one look the doctor's closed eyes, the hand on her mother's open mouth and worst of all Meg's completely still form.
"No," her voice sounded as though it had been pulled out of her very soul as she fell by her sister's side, shaking her arms.
"Meg!"
Her mother's sob sliced through her heart and Jo couldn't breathe. Meg's eyes stared blankly out at the room and her lips were chalked silent. Amy gasped in the doorway with her limp ribbon and John fought to see in. Jo stepped back, feeling the ground spinning under her heels as she watched that horrible unblinking gaze, Meg's hands cold and empty reaching across the rosebud sheets speckled with scarlet not of dyed thread.
Jo pushed her way out of the room wanting to be as far from that sight as possible. She ran as the babies' cries filled her ears.