Another pain racks Gianna’s body. She grips my hand tightly, clenches her jaw, and breathes deeply, in through her nose and out through her mouth. Beads of sweat cling to her forehead and upper lip, and her hair, swept up onto her head to keep her cool, is damp with the steam from the birthing pool.
But between contractions, her wide smile is all for me.
I mop her face with a cool wet towel and raise a cup of water to her lips. Her cheeks are flushed, and I can see the pain etched around her pinched lips, but her eyes are the brightest I’ve ever seen them, filled with anticipation.
“Shall I call the obstetrician?” I recognize the panic in my own voice, something I’ve never experienced before, and warn myself to keep it together. For Gianna’s sake.
“No.” Gianna slumps back against the side of the pool, and I cradle her in my arms. “I’m fine. They’re just … getting stronger.”
“Stronger? Is this normal? We’ve been here for ten hours already.”
“Gianna, you’re doing brilliantly.” Valerie, our doula, flashes me a warning look from the other side of the pool. “Breathe, that’s it, you can do this.”
Gianna insisted that she wanted the birth to be as natural as possible, and Valerie spent months during the pregnancy practicing hypnobirthing with her and helping her to write a birth-plan that we both felt comfortable with. I was skeptical to begin with, but I’ve seen how Gianna’s entire body relaxes whenever the doula speaks to her.
This time though, before Gianna can gather her strength in preparation for the next wave of pain, she moves forward on to all fours, and the noise that emits from her is so animalistic, so feral, that it raises goosebumps on my arms.
“Printzessa?” I rub her lower back, fear spiking through my chest. “Is this normal?” I ask Valerie because Gianna’s eyes are squeezed tightly shut, and she doesn’t even acknowledge me.
“Yes.” Valerie’s voice is low and so fucking calm that I want to throttle some sense of urgency into her. “She’s entering the second stage of labor.”
“I’m going to find the obstetrician.” I’m already on my feet.
My shirt is damp with sweat, and the knees of my pants are saturated with water from the pool, but I don’t give a fuck how I look. Ten hours of watching Gianna suffer while the obstetrician and midwives tell me that ‘everything is progressing exactly how it should be’, and my cup of patience has run dry.
Before I cross the room, the door opens and the obstetrician, a young woman with olive skin and jet-black hair slicked back into a tight ponytail comes in. “How are we doing?” Her gaze flits between me and Gianna, her expression neutral even when she hears the howling noise my wife is making.
“She hasn’t made this sound before.” I hesitate between dashing back to Gianna and getting down on my knees and begging this woman to get my babies out and end this torture.
“Gianna?” Dr. Fernandez pulls on a pair of sterile latex gloves from the counter on the wall and prepares the equipment she’ll need to monitor the progress of her patient’s labor. She waits for the contraction to pass and says, “How are you coping?” while she and Valerie ease Gianna around the pool so that she is facing me.
“That one was … tough.” Gianna is still smiling at me, her eyes searching mine to check that I’m doing okay.
“Do you feel like you need to push?” While she talks, Dr. Fernandez angles a tiny mirror in the water so that she can see what’s going on inside Gianna’s cervix.
I go back to the side of the pool and place the cool towel on Gianna’s forehead. I kiss the top of her head. Right now, I have no words.
“No, I don’t think so.” For the first time since we got here, I see the fear in her eyes when she raises them to meet mine. “Should I?”
“Let’s turn you around and sit you down so that I can check on our babies.” The obstetrician’s tone is kind and efficient, but I just wish someone would tell us that the hard part is done and it’s all a doddle from here on in.
She places a strap around Gianna’s swollen belly and connects it to a machine that turns my blood to ice in my veins. It’s several beats before she picks up on the babies’ heartbeats, and I swear I die and come back to life before the rapid blip-blip-blip reaches my ears.
“Is everything okay?”
“The cervix still isn’t fully dilated.” The doctor addresses both of us at the same time. “I would’ve expected it to be by now with the strength of the contractions.”
Before she has even finished, Gianna hauls her body back onto all fours in the water, the eerie unnatural sound issuing from her throat again.
I lean over the side of the pool and stroke her back, letting her know that I’m still there even though the pains are so strong now that she’s sliding into a personal zone of concentration where nothing else exists.
The obstetrician studies the monitor, one hand placed over Gianna’s rock-solid belly
When this contraction finishes, another one starts. The doctor’s lips are pressed into a thin line, and she doesn’t speak. Two more contractions follow in rapid succession.
I wish I knew what the lines on the monitor meant. I wish there was some way for me to take the pain away from Gianna, but she was adamant that she wanted a natural birth, and I respected her wishes. But fuck me, I don’t know how much longer I can watch this going on without yelling at someone.
“Gianna.” The obstetrician finally moves away from the monitor and moves around the outside of the bath to speak to us both. “I’m concerned that the babies are in distress.”
“Are they…?” Tears well in Gianna’s eyes and I find her hand in the water and cover it with mine.
“They’re both fine, but I want to get you into the operating room and perform a C-section.” She pauses. “I know you wanted a natural birth but I—”
“Do it,” I blurt out. “I’m not risking their lives or Gianna’s.”
The doctor’s dark eyes skim mine and return to Gianna. “I want you to understand that this is in the babies’ best interests, but I need your consent, Gianna.”
I sense the contraction mounting inside Gianna’s body even before she starts howling. All eyes are on her while she rides the pain, and I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.
“Okay,” she whispers, tears streaking her face.
That’s all it takes.
The rest happens in a blur.
I lift Gianna out of the bath and onto the bed, her face contorted into a grimace of pain. I walk alongside the bed as they wheel her to the delivery room, holding her trembling hand in mine and whispering all the way, “I love you, printzessa. I’m right here. I’ve got you and our babies, and everything’s going to be okay, I promise.”
I pull on a sterile gown and mask and cover my shoes and try not to think about the promise that isn’t mine to keep. It should be. I vowed to always look after her, to protect her and keep her safe, and here I am relegated to the role of onlooker.
It doesn’t sit well with me. In fact, it strikes every shade of wrong inside my gut, but I force a smile and hold her hand and remind her how much I love her, over and over, until the sound of our babies’ squally cries fills our eyes with tears.
While Gianna sleeps, I sit in the visitor’s seat in the private hospital room and cradle our baby daughters in my arms. They are perfect. Identical twins, but already I can spot the tiny differences that make them unique.
Anya, named after my grandmama, has a tiny, almost imperceptible freckle tucked into the corner of her left eye, while Liliya’s fair hair curls the opposite way to her sister’s right on the crown.
Liliya is going to be the feisty one who takes after her mother. Even in slumber, she keeps opening one eye, just a fraction, enough to keep an eye on me and make sure that I haven’t put them back inside the clear-sided cribs provided for them. Anya’s hair is a shade darker than her sister’s. Swaddled inside the pink thermal blanket, her head nestled on my chest above my heart, she hasn’t stirred, as if she has already learned that she is protected.
I kiss their foreheads. “I love you,” I whisper.
“They love you too.”
I raise tear-filled eyes to meet Gianna’s gaze. She looks more beautiful than ever, with her hair fanning the pillow, and her cheeks still flushed from the exertion of labor. Looking at her, no one would ever believe what she’d just endured, and I rise carefully, crossing the room in easy strides so as not to wake our daughters.
I settle them in her arms and kiss her forehead. “Thank you, printzessa, for making my world complete.”
She smiles. “You’d best not let Marvel hear you say that.”
“He has three little sisters to protect now. He’ll be exhausted trying to keep an eye on them once they start crawling.”
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” She can’t take her eyes off our babies, and I can’t blame her.
Right now, I can’t imagine ever letting them out of my sight, and if anyone ever dares to touch them… The world will not have experienced rage like it. “Of course, they are. They take after their mom.”
“Mika was right—she knew they would both be girls.” She sucks on her bottom lip, remembering what day it is. “The grand opening. You should be there, Leo.”
“And leave my girls behind? Not a chance in hell.”
Footsteps approach the room, and as if they knew that we were talking about them, the door opens and Mika and Cartier come in, arms overloaded with pink soft toys and bunches of flowers.
They stuff the gifts into my arms and sit either side of Gianna on the bed, cooing over the babies, eyes glistening with tears.
“I knew they were both girls,” Mika squeals.
“It was a lucky guess.” Cartier strokes Liliya’s head with feather-like touches and breathes deeply. “I love that baby smell. I wish I could bottle it; I’d make an absolute fortune.”
“They both look like you, Gi, but this one is more like Leo.” Her gaze flits between me and Anya. “God help you when they’re teenagers.”
“God won’t need to step in. I’m not letting them out of my sight.”
“Spoken like a true father.”
The voice causes us all to turn around as Andrej walks in looking disheveled and bleary-eyed, as if he has been up all night, sampling every bar in Chicago. The bouquet of flowers in his arms would’ve barely made it through the doorway, it’s so huge.
“Andrej, you brought flowers?” Gianna’s half-smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
I don’t know if she’ll ever fully trust my little brother, but she always tries to include him in family meals and celebrations, even if he is still aloof around her. I don’t know what happened between them before Xander kidnapped her—she won’t tell me—but she is like the bird with one eye on the cat in case it pounces.
“They’re for Leo.” He winks at me and hands them over. “I guess you’re on flower duty, brother.” He keeps his distance as if scared the babies might wake up and start bawling, and he’ll be asked to hold one of them.
I find a space in the corner of the room and set the flowers down, then I place the pink teddies at the bottom of the cribs. “Did you get hold of our parents, Andrej?”
“They’re on their way back from Moscow. Mother is disappointed that she wasn’t here when her granddaughters arrived, but she booked the first flight back to Chicago. I warned our father to buy earplugs for the journey.”
Andrej’s gaze hops between Mika and Cartier. He hasn’t been involved in the renovations at the refuge, and I realize that they’ve not met before.
“Andrej, this is Mika and Cartier. They’re going to be running the refuge with Gianna.”
“Have we met before?” His eyes linger on Cartier who is on her feet standing sentinel beside the bed.
“No. I don’t get out much.” Her face grows hot, and she lowers her gaze to the babies in Gianna’s arms.
“That’s not entirely true,” Mika says. “I drag her out of a book occasionally and show her the city.”
“I like books.” Cartier still doesn’t look up.
“I like vodka—” Mika wrinkles her nose “—but I know when I need to get outside and get some fresh air.”
“I’ll show you around some time.” Andrej runs his fingers through his hair like he just realized he’s not quite living up to the Ivanov standards. It’s too little too late—his bloodshot eyes are giving his nocturnal escapades away.
“I don’t know,” Cartier mumbles. “I’m busy with the refuge. We open today.”
“What she means is she’d love to, thank you very much.” Mika checks the time on her phone and slides it back into her pocket. “Speaking of which, we should get going. We don’t want to stand up the mayor.”
Cartier leans in and kisses the tops of the babies’ heads and then Gianna’s cheek. “They’re beautiful, Gi. We’ll get all the gory details next time.” Then she crosses the room, glancing at Andrej from beneath lowered eyelashes as she walks by him.
“We’ll do you proud, Gi.” Mika blows kisses to the room as she leaves.
I catch Gianna’s eye. I’m not entirely sure what was going on with Andrej and Cartier, but the air in the room seems suddenly charged with the kind of tension that crackles between me and Gianna whenever we’re together.
Before I can ask my brother, the babies stir in their mom’s arms, and I rush to Gianna’s bedside, uncertain what I should be doing. Because it’s only now dawning on me that having twins means two diapers to change, two mouths to feed, two babies crying at the same time.
“What can I do?”
Gianna smiles and hands Anya to me. Or it might be Liliya. With the tiny kitten-mewls coming from my daughters, I’m not sure which is which.
“Well, unless you can produce milk from your breasts, you can hold Anya while I settle Liliya on this side.” She expertly covers her breast and our daughter’s head with a fine muslin blanket and places the baby’s tiny pink lips around her nipple while I hold Anya, who is already craning her neck towards her next feed.
I’m so besotted with my beautiful family that I don’t even hear Andrej leave the room. Then I settle back down in the uncomfortable visitor’s seat and watch them while my heart swells with more love than I ever thought it possible for one man to feel.
