HOLDING ON

by KIKI MALONE

  “Oh my God!” she yells and then has a look of horror on her face. She whips off the blanket and I just about fall to the floor.

  The bed is full of blood! My babies! What is happening?

  “Blood!” I yell into the phone. “There’s blood everywhere! Help! Help! Oh my God, please help us!” Forget staying calm, this is more than I imagined was happening. We can’t lose our babies, not now, not after all we’ve been through to have them.

  “Carter, this is Doctor Hall, I need you to calm down for a minute, can you do that?” I faintly hear come over the line. “Carter, I need you to check Maggie and see where the blood is coming from.”

  I look at Maggie and want to hurt something. She’s in so much pain I didn’t want this for her. No matter how much I wanted our babies, this isn’t something I wanted for her.

  “Maggie, love, I’m so sorry, so fucking sorry,” I cry. “The doctor is on the line now, she asked me to check you to see where the blood is coming from. Can I touch you, please?”

  She doesn’t answer, she just nods her head.

  I lift the blanket that remains on her and notice she’s completely naked. I slowly look over her lower body and see that the blood is coming from her vagina. I inform the doctor of such and they say the ambulance is pulling into my driveway now and that she must get to the hospital immediately.

  I rush to the closet and grab a clean sheet and throw it over Maggie. I can’t let them see her this way, it’ll devastate her.

  I rush downstairs and throw the door open. The EMT’s are already rushing to the door with a stretcher in tow.

  “Hello, sir,” one of the EMTs say. “Can you please take me to the location of the patient? We’ve been updated by the emergency operator on the patient’s condition.”

  “Follow me,” I tell them, and head back upstairs.

  “We received updates from the emergency operator. We will check the patient and get her safely to the hospital as quickly as possible.”

  “Thank you,” I answer. “Am I allowed to ride with her?” I ask as I open the door to the room to hear Maggie moaning in pain. Though, I don’t think they heard me as they were solely concentrating on taking care of Maggie and assessing her pain.

  “Ma’am,” the EMT starts, “we are here to help you. Can you please tell us where it hurts and what happened?”

  “It just hurts!” Maggie screams and begins crying heavily.

  “Can I check you out?” the EMT asks. He’s being cautious, treating Maggie with extreme care and his professionalism makes me happy.

  “Yes,” she moans. “Make it quick, I can’t take this anymore.”

  The EMT examines Maggie and surmises that, yes, Maggie is in labor and needs to get to the hospital right away.

  “Sir,” the EMT turns to me, “I need to get her to the hospital, will you follow us, or will you ride along?”

  “I’d like to ride along,” I answer, then look at Maggie, “Is that okay?”

  “I don’t fucking care,” she screams at me. “Just get these fucking demons out of me and stop fucking up my life!”

  The EMT gives me a look of sympathy as he and his partner try as gently as possible to get Maggie on the stretcher. It’s a bit of work getting her down the stairs, but they manage with the help of a few police officers who have also shown up.

  As soon as we get to the hospital, Maggie is rushed straight into a labor and delivery room. As the doctor performs a quick examination of Maggie’s cervix, she looks very concerned and informs us that they have to get the babies out of Maggie immediately or both Maggie and the babies could lose their lives.

  I’m growing more uneasy by the second here. I’m praying Maggie and our babies will be okay and pull through this.

  “Maggie, Carter, it looks like the placenta is covering the cervix,” the doctor begins to tell us. “This can cause major complications. I’m going to need to perform a c-section, quickly, to get the babies out. We don’t have much time. I will have the babies out in less than five minutes, but we need to get to the operating room now.”

  “Get them out!” Maggie yells. “I don’t care what you have to do!”

  “Mr. Montgomery,” a nurse I didn’t even realize was in the room with us says to me. “I need you to put these scrubs on and follow me. We’ll let you in the room as soon as the doctor is ready to begin.”

  I put the medical gear they hand me as quickly as possible and rush to the operating room to be there for Maggie and our babies. I have to wait for a nurse to come out and get me but am losing patience. The nurse finally comes out and I see Maggie strapped to a table and a sheet hung halfway down her body, covering her lower half. I rush to her side and sit on the small seat next to her head. Maggie’s eyes are closed, but there are tears coming down her face. I gently wipe one away. I don’t talk, I understand her pain.

  Within a minute of me arriving in the room, I hear the scream of the first of my children. Then not a minute later, I hear another. When I don’t hear the third one, I immediately panic. I see them hand the last baby off to a medical team and they are working diligently on the baby. I still don’t even know what gender my babies are, but I see them all being worked on by more doctors than I would ever imagine being in one room.

  Finally, after about two minutes, I hear the last baby cry. I sag with relief and look over at Maggie who is pale as a ghost.

  “Congrats Maggie and Carter,” the doctor says. “You have three beautiful little girls. But, Carter, you’re going to have to leave the room. Maggie, your uterus tore, and we need to repair it in order to stop the bleeding. We’re going to put you under completely. Would you like to hold your girls for a moment before we do that?” the doctor asks.

  Maggie shakes her head no and closes her eyes again. She must just be in too much pain, that’s all I can think as to why she doesn’t want to hold them.

  “I’d like to hold them,” I say to the doctor.

  She looks at me then nods her head to the nurses holding the babies.

  “Carter, you can hold them for a few seconds, then I need you to go with the nurses to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, so the babies can be fully assessed, and I can finish repairing Maggie’s uterus. You will have to leave the room and Maggie will go under full sedation.”

  I nod my head and reach out for the babies. The nurses each hand me one and I look at all three of my beautiful girls and I am in awe. I don’t ever want to give them up. They are gorgeous, just like their mother.

  All too soon, the nurses take the babies from my arms and rush out of the room.

  I stand up and kiss Maggie on the head. “Thank you,” I whisper and then turn to catch up to the nurses and my newborns daughters.

  IT’S BEEN a full day since the babies were born and Maggie still hasn’t seen them. She’s in a lot of pain since her surgery and hasn’t been awake much. I know she needs sleep to heal, but I really wish I could bring the girls in to see their mother. We need to decide on names, and I don’t want to do that without her seeing them to make sure each name fits. I have a few names in mind, but I don’t want to make the decision without Maggie. It’s just not fair to her after all she’s endured.

  Finally, Maggie wakes up and looks at me. She doesn’t look happy at all to see me in her room.

  “What are you doing here, Carter?” she asks, throwing me for a loop.

  “Where else would I be, Maggie? I ask.

  “With your precious babies,” she spits out. “The ones you insisted on having, the ones that have ruined my body completely! Look at my stomach, Carter! They didn’t just give me all these fucking stretch marks, they scarred me for life! Not even plastic surgery can fix the scars they’ve created! They had to cut me open. How will I ever get rid of those scars? This is all your fucking fault! Just get out and take those fucking demons with you!”

  She doesn’t mean what she’s saying. She can’t. But, hastily, I comply and leave her room. But I’m not leaving her room just to leave. I’m going to g
et the babies and bring them back to her. I’m sure once she sees the beauties we created and she nurtured for the last eight months, she’ll change her mind.

  I walk back in the room with a nurse following me. I have two babies in my arms and the nurse is wheeling the bassinet holding the third behind me. She puts the bassinet near Maggie’s bed and quickly leaves the room.

  “Maggie,” I say, gently, “meet our daughters.”

  I lay the two girls on her chest then reach over to grab the third. She looks down at them and a tear escapes her eye.

  “They are beautiful,” she whispers, looking at the babies with awe. “Just what you wanted.”

  “We need to give them names,” I tell her. I knew she’d change her mind as soon as she saw them. The look on her face is the one I had hoped to see during the last nine months. It’s such a relief to see.

  She looks at the first baby, then up to me. She smirks then states, “Felicia Haley.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Felicia Haley. Okay, I can do that.” Although it’s taking everything in me not to say no way. Felicia and Haley are two of Maggie’s old friends. They hate me. They always have, and she’s told me many times the shit they say about me as she laughs about it. But, now is not the time to fight with her on this.

  “How about the other two girls?” I ask. “What will we name them?”

  She looks at them and then shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t care what you name them, they’re yours. But this one, her name will be the one I gave her, understood?”

  I’m not going to argue. I look at all of my girls and decide.

  I pick up the smallest of the three—she is a tiny little thing—not that they all aren’t but she only weighed three pounds eight ounces when she came into this world yesterday. She’s the one the doctors had to work on to get her to breathe. But once she did, she showed them she was going to have a voice and be a fighter.

  “Sofia Marie,” I declare looking into my beautiful daughter’s eyes. “That’s what your name will be my little sprite. And you,” I continue as I pick up my other daughter in my other arm, “you will be called Isabella Lynn.”

  I look at Maggie and it appears she has fallen asleep again. She is holding Felicia to her chest and it makes me happy.

  The nurse comes back in and tells me the girls will have to go back to the NICU now. They shouldn’t really have left but she broke the rules, so Maggie could see them. Because of their small size, they will spend some time in the NICU until they gain some weight. Felicia and Isabella will be able to come home soon, but Sofia will probably spend about a month in the hospital. I don’t want to have to separate them but there’s nothing I can do.

  Felicia Haley was born at four pounds ten ounces and Isabella Lynn was our chunky monkey out of the three weighing five pounds three ounces. I know that’s really not big, but compared to how small Sofia is, she definitely looks the chunkiest.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CARTER

  UNDONE

  4 MONTHS LATER

  MAGGIE, Felicia and Isabella came home from the hospital a week after the girls were born. Maggie was assured by the doctor that if she chooses to have more children, that she would be able to, but if she wanted to have her tubes tied, like she had been insisting throughout her pregnancy, that she would have to wait until her body heals. Because of the complications of the girls’ birth and the surgery she needed immediately following, they weren’t able to perform the procedure as originally planned.

  Maggie was a very attentive mother with Felicia but would barely bother with Isabella. She refused to breastfeed the babies because she didn’t want them ‘ruining her breasts like they did her stomach.’

  I hired both a nurse and a nanny to take care of Maggie and the girls at home. Freyda, our new nanny, is an older woman, whose family lives far away. She’s an amazing addition to our family and the kind of grandmother I’d always hoped my mother would have been. Maggie had a lot of healing to do and the girls would need a lot of care.

  I spent every day at the hospital with Sofia. I couldn’t stand the fact that one of my girls had to be left behind. I needed for her to know that her parents loved her and would never leave her alone.

  It took a month, but Sofia was finally healthy enough to come home and be with her sisters again. The transition wasn’t easy for her or her sisters. They all had to get used to being together again.

  I kept a bassinet in my room and Maggie had the nursery for the girls when they were with her, though that wasn’t very often.

  Slowly, her relationship with Felicia began to dwindle and soon she would complain if any of the girls made a sound. I did my best, as did the nanny, to keep the girls happy, fed and clean. Maggie got tired of the nanny going in and out of her room to get to the nursery to care for the girls and made me switch rooms with her. She moved all of her stuff down to the guest room and I moved back into the master suite. It was a good move for me, because now that the girls were growing fast, they no longer fit in the bassinet I had purchased for my room. I would have needed to buy another crib for my room had she not made that choice.

  When it came time for me to go back to work at the office, I often took the girls with me. Maggie would not only not pay attention to the girls, but she would also give the nanny a hard time when Freyda would try to take care of them. The best thing for all of us, was me taking the girls and their nanny with me to the daycare I had installed at the office.

  Everyone at work loved my girls. They were hardly ever in the daycare because my employees would go in and steal them to spend some time with them. I didn’t complain, I loved that everyone loved my girls.

  Mikael came to the office often to spend some time with the girls. He, like me, had become enamored with his nieces. He only came to see them at the office because he refused to be anywhere near Maggie. His relationship with Maggie had completely died in the months after the non-wedding. He did try, I give him that much credit, to tolerate her remaining in my life, but she made it so he would never forgive her each time he came by. My best friend hasn’t stepped foot in my house in months.

  Maggie went back to her workouts as soon as the doctor gave her permission to do so. She spends most of her days in the home gym and sometimes some nights. She was so happy the day Marco came back to train her, I was a little jealous. She literally ran and jumped into his arms when he walked in the door. I thought I’d surprise her by bringing him back to train her, but I didn’t expect her to act that way toward him. I was a bit shocked, to say the least.

  Any time I call her to discuss something at home or with the girls, she’s in the middle of a workout or getting a massage and refuses to stop and talk to me. It’s a bit worrisome, but I’m afraid it’s exactly what I asked for when I begged her not to terminate her pregnancy and to give our children a chance at life.

  She’s seen three plastic surgeons so far to correct both her stretch marks, which are vast and to try and lessen the scar she has from the C-section.

  She never lets me forget how much of her body she sacrificed to have our girls, so I made sure to keep my promise and let her do what she needs to feel happy again. I don’t know if she’ll ever be truly happy with me again, but Lord knows I’m trying with everything I have to make that happen.

  This morning, when I was getting the girls ready to go to work with me, Felicia seemed a little off. I’ve checked on her a few times in the daycare and the nanny has assured me that she’s okay.

  As I get ready for a meeting, Freyda walks in with Felicia in her arms. “Felicia has started to run a fever,” she informs me.

  “Freyda, when did this start?” I ask.

  “About an hour ago,” she answers as she hands me my beautiful girl.

  “Hey Licia, my beauty, Daddy’s gonna take you home to Mommy, okay?” I tell my girl. Then I look back up at the nanny and tell her to get the other girls ready, so I can take them all home.

  She leaves to do as I’ve asked, and I sit back down in my chair w
ith Felicia in my arms. I pick up my phone to call my assistant.

  “Hello, Mr. Montgomery,” Catherine, my assistant, greets when she answers. “What can I help you with?”

  “Catherine,” I answer. “Felicia isn’t feeling well, I’m going to be taking the girls home. Please reschedule any appointments I have and send anything that needs my attention to my email.”

  “Will do, Mr. Montgomery. I hope she feels better,” she tells me and hangs up. She’s a great assistant and doesn’t need more direction to do what I’ve asked.

  I grab my jacket and head to the nursery to pick up the other two girls and everything else we will need.

  Freyda buckles Isabella into her car seat and I put the Felicia and Sofia in theirs. I tell her that she can go home for the day and I’ll take care of the girls by myself. She nods and heads to her car. She knows not to argue when I want to take care of my girls on my own. She tells me it’s important for them to spend quality time with such a loving parent. I just wish they had two loving parents.

  When I get home, I hear noises coming from the exercise room. Marco must be here training Maggie again. They are always training it seems. She’s also hired another trainer, Ivan. She told me that there were days that Marco wasn’t available, so she needed to hire someone else to cover those days. If this was making her happy, there was no way I was going to argue. It’s what I had agreed to, wasn’t it?

  The training is obviously working because Maggie looks to be in better shape now than she ever was before she became pregnant with our children.

  I decide to head upstairs first and put the girls in the nursery before I bother Maggie and let her know that Felicia is sick. Since Felicia is the only one that she has paid any attention to since they were born, although she’s backed away from her, I’m sure she’s going to want to know that she’s sick.

  I click the video app on my phone for the baby monitor I installed in the nursery and turn the sound up so that I can hear the girls if they wake up before I come back. They fell asleep in the car on the way home, so I’ll let them sleep in their car seats until they wake up.