There was no peace for him that night. He was kept on the fringes of the ward, away from his wife during the delivery. He wrung his hands incessantly, pacing back and forth. He'd called Diane, talked to Michelle and Lucas, perhaps only to take his mind off of the events at hand in the very next room. Oh how he wished he could be with her. Both parents knew what to expect with childbirth, but that didn't make it any less nerve-wracking. Add the tacked on anxiety of it being a double delivery, and Tracy felt like he was about ready to pass out.
It wasn't unlike the night that Michelle was born. He recalled the anxiety ripping through his chest when Rae was taken from him the very first time, and even that was nothing like this, knowing that so much could go wrong. Twins were so uncommon among Fairy parents, thought not perhaps so among human parents. He leaned himself against the wall near the door and prayed to Mab that she could better handle twins than Fairy Folk.
When a Fae became pregnant, the fairy child drew it's magic from its parents. The magic helped them grow, integrating itself into the baby's body and making it a magical being. The magic helped the child to survive; indeed, fairies could not live without magic.
Rae had none.
Tracy had assumed that the existing capacity for magic already found in his DNA and the fact that Rae lived in Fairy Land, surrounded by raw magic, accounted for the their two healthy children, but even Fairies with an abundance of magic in their bodies sometimes couldn't handle bearing two children at once. It frightened him.
The anxiety was not calmed, however, when the door suddenly flew open, a nurse running out, down the hall. He seemed in a hurry, not bothering to even gesture that he'd heard Tracy's terrified questions. He looked back to the ward room, the door swinging shut. He knew he was not admitted into the room during the delivery, but how he wished he could be with her right now, to hold her and tell her that it was all going to be allright, that things were going to be fine and that they were going to have healthy twins.
He wished he could tell her this, to convince himself as much as to convince her; he wished for a lot of things that night. He wished that nurse would come back, take a moment to tell him how his wife and his prospective children were doing in the next room. And yet he found, that when the nurse finally did come back, he wished that he'd remained off running errands or something of that nature. The man came back, bounding at full speed back towards Rae's ward room, with at least four other nurses in tow. His heart sank in his chest and his stomach felt like it had dropped into oblivion.
What the nurses in her room needed with so much extra help, it scared him terribly. They approached quickly, and Tracy fought to find his voice, to demand someone tell him that she was allright, that the twins were fine, to tell him why in Mab's name they were filing so many nurses into her ward room. He croaked out his question, only to be ignored by the nurses, one by one as they filed past him. Some avoided his gaze.
He pitched forward at the last second, reaching one long arm out and grabbing hold of the last nurse in the procession, fist clamping around his upper arm and jerking him backwards, anxiety and anger in his eyes and he loomed over the woman. "What's happened," he asked, his voice greatly contrasting with his figure, soft and vulnerable.
There was a wail from the other side of the door, and Tracy looked from the woman, hearing his wife. It steadily grew in volume and urgency; the nurse ripped her arm from the man's grip, and he merely stood there, dumbfounded for a moment.
"I'm sorry, sir, you're just going to have to wait," she said, closing the distance between herself and the other doctors that had already filed into the room, and before Tracy could even get a word in, the door clicked shut, the lock turning and barring him from his wife. He threw himself forward, hoping to catch the door before it closed, but he wasn't fast enough. He could hear her from the other side, and he drew his wand right there, in the middle of the ward, pointing it decidedly at the lock, hoping to magic the door open again. To all his efforts, he figured the locks must have been reinforced. He was denied entry again and again, and was made to wait outside as he listened to her in there. She sounded like she were terribly in pain, and every note that drifted through the door stabbed at his heart.
One woman came up to him and tried to lead him from the door, knowing that he ought to leave, to let the nurses take care of his wife, but he would have none of it. He remained by the door, steeling himself when each new note rang through the hall.
Eventually they stopped.
His footfalls, his pacing, stopped as well. He listened intently for any noise she might make, any sign that she was still conscious, any noise at all.
There was silence.
Rae had been in labour for several hours. Though the fluorescent lights erased any difference between the night and day hours, the suns had risen over the horizon a few hours earlier, when one nurse slipped out of the room, not at all surprised to find Tracy there, still. He looked down at her, wide eyed and breathing heavily, still so uncertain, when she touched him gently at the elbow and gestured for him to follow her into the ward room.
The room was hot, choking almost, and crowded. Tracy spied another door off to the left of the room, but the bed in the centre was what caught his attention first and foremost.
She was pale and her head was tilted to the side, but her chest fell and rose steadily, and he let out a choked cry. He didn't dare disturb her sleep, not after the night she'd had, but he resolved that the moment she woke up, he would hold her. For now, he sat at the foot of the bed, watching her, wishing she didn't look so deathly.
Almost reluctantly, he looked away from her, at one of the nurses. Many of them had begun to leave the room, taking with them their papers and files, and leaving without so much as a word. "Well?" he whispered. "Is everyone allright?" he asked.
The only remaining nurse smiled at him, a genuine, happy smile.
—-
It was several hours later, Tracy sitting further up the bed and talking quietly with his wife when she woke. He brushed the hair from her eyes when she woke and she grabbed immediately for his hand, humming in confusion. She focused in on him and smiled. "Glad you could make it." she said quietly. He kissed her forehead, beaming down at her. "Where are the twins?" she asked.
"The nurses took them over to the next room," he said, nodding towards the door to the far left. "To make sure they're allright, give them their Bath. They'll be back, luv." he said, shushing her as she tried to sit up. She was terribly exhausted from the delivery, and Tracy could see it. She didn't fight him, but remained there on the bed with him, chatting softly, their hands never separating.
It took another hour or so for the nurses to come back, the door swinging open and the two striding up to the bed, each with a small blue bundle in their arms. One of the little boys was handed to Rae, who propped herself up on her pillows wearily, and the other was handed to Tracy, who took the child carefully, his hands trembling.
Rae moved a bit of blanket from the boy's face, and smiled down at her son. "Hi, Merry. It's mommy and daddy. Where's your brother?" she asked, looking up at Tracy. He got off the bed and kneeled at her side with Daniel, pulling the swaddle down so that his wife could see his face, quietly sleeping.
He looked up at her and could see tears running down her cheeks. He reached up carefully and thumbed them away, making her laugh.
"Twins," he said gently, smiling back at her.