The Baby Package

by Sarah J. Brooks

  “Wow, thank you so much,” I said a little shocked that they were going so above board for me.

  “Yeah, Doctor Cooper requested it the other night when he stopped by,” the nurse said just as we got out to the Uber.

  “Doctor Cooper?” I asked a little confused.

  “Yeah, he’s been checking on the babies most evenings. He must be working all sorts of crazy hours because he usually stops by after regular visiting hours.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said, not knowing what to say to the information I had just heard.

  “Let’s get these babies loaded,” Teddy cut in and lifted Brody up to the big SUV he had waiting for us.”

  The car seat guy went over all the little details that we needed to know and helped me connect both of the car seats. He showed me where a lot of the new cars had the extra safety clips for car seats and we talked a little about safety in the city in particular.

  When I finally had the boys loaded in, Teddy and the nurse finished loading everything else into the back of the vehicle. Teddy sat up front with the driver while I climbed into the middle seat between the boys. I could already tell that traveling with these two was not going to be easy at all. I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like if I needed to take them to a doctor’s visit if they were sick.

  “Teddy, did you hear what that nurse said about Mike visiting the babies?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  “What do you think about that?”

  “I don’t know. It seems like a nice thing to do. What do you think about it?”

  “I thought he didn’t want anything to do with us. It’s just weird that he would be stopping by to visit the boys and he didn’t ask me first.”

  “From what I’ve heard, you haven’t been returning his calls,” Teddy said as he looked back at me knowingly.

  It was true. I hadn’t been returning Mike’s calls or his text messages. I didn’t have the energy to fight with him and I just didn’t want to deal with all that emotion at the moment. I had planned on calling him back eventually but then he just stopped trying to reach me.

  “So what have you heard?” I asked.

  “Not much, that’s about it,” he said and turned back to the front of the vehicle.

  “Teddy, you know something and you’re not telling me. I can tell when you’re lying, don’t even try it.”

  “I don’t know a thing,” he replied without turning around. Just confirming that he was lying to me.

  I was too tired to push him for more information. I leaned my head back on the seat and closed my eyes for a few minutes on the ride home. Both of the boys had fallen to sleep almost instantly after being put into the carriers. I did like how that worked so quickly to get them to sleep and I wasn’t opposed to using it sometime in the future.

  When we stopped in front of my condo I sat up and started unbuckling the boys from the car. Each of the carriers were strapped in with a regular seatbelt and another latch that ensured the seats didn’t fly out of the car.

  Teddy and the doorman loaded up a cart with all my stuff and Teddy was standing next to the door waiting to take one of the boys as soon as I was ready for him. There was no way I would be able to take the boys out alone unless I had a stroller that the baby carriers could lock into. Then I could just take them out of the car and move them to the stroller. I mentally put that on my list of things that I needed to buy in order to survive my new life.

  “Which one do I have?” Teddy asked as he looked at the baby carrier.

  “That’s Ben.”

  “I still don’t know how you can tell them apart. I think it must be a nature thing since you are their mother.”

  “Probably. Even the nurses who cared for them for weeks sometimes had a hard time telling them apart.”

  The doorman came up in the elevator with us to push the cart full of hospital items and gifts that people had sent the babies. All of my brothers had sent flowers and gifts throughout the time the boys were in the hospital. Rob had managed a short visit one afternoon, but then promised he would come to the condo and visit more often once we were home.

  None of my family really understood what I had done or why I decided to have these babies on my own. Even my mother didn’t seem to care much anymore because she was so in love with the boys.

  “Here let me hold him,” Teddy said as he grabbed Brody’s carrier from me so I could unlock the door.

  “I thought Sarah was staying here until we got back?” I asked as it took me forever to get the door unlock.

  When I finally managed to get the door opened I looked into my condo and it didn’t look like my place at all. The living room was organized and beautiful. The boxes had all been put away and even the pile of items I’d ordered online weren’t sitting in the room anymore.

  “Surprise,” Sarah and Kendra yelled from the nursery.

  “Guys, you put all this stuff on the beds and organized the living room. Oh, my God you are the best,” I said as I hugged them.

  Everything was done. They had opened up all the bedding and put it onto the beds. The rocking chair and changing table were put together. Everything looked absolutely perfect and I felt like a huge weight was off my shoulders.

  “We had some help,” Kendra said as she turned me around and pushed me to walk toward the bedroom.

  As I got closer I could see that both of the basinets were set up in there too. My whole place was cleaned and organized and I had the fresh start I’d been hoping to have when I brought the boys home.

  Then I saw him.

  My heart skipped when I saw Mike standing next to the baby swing in the corner of my room. He was holding two white roses and one red one. He looked so handsome with his blue t-shirt on and sweat literally covering half of it.

  “You helped them?” I asked as the girls pushed me into the room with Mike and shut the door behind us.

  “Julia, I love you. I’m not going to wait another second to tell you that. I love you and I want to be with you. I have wanted to tell you for a long time and only held back from saying it because I didn’t want to push you. But now I can’t hold it back anymore.”

  “Mike…” I started to say before he stopped me.

  “You can tell me to go to hell in a second. I just have to get this out so you know exactly where I’m coming form. I’m sorry I had to leave the hospital the night the boys were born. I thought I was going to lose my medical license and was trying desperately to save it. It’s not an excuse but I did want you to know.”

  “Mike…” I tried to interrupt him again.

  “I promise to make it up to you if you let us all be a family. I have taken six weeks off from work and I’m ready to be here with you every night and every day as we get to know the boys. I will get up and change them for you and feed them if I need to or do anything else for them because I love them. I know we signed this contract and if you want to keep it we can, but if it was up to me I’d tear it up so we could be a family.”

  “Mike…” I tried one more time to stop him.

  “No, no, I have to finish. Julia, I knew that first night that you were someone special. I knew that I was going to be different after meeting you and it was true. I am different. I am a better man for having you in my life and even if you don’t want me to be involved in raising the boys I will always cherish that we made this decision. And…”

  “Mike,” I put my finger up to his mouth and held it there so he would stop talking for a moment. “I love you too.”

  Instantly all the stress and worry that I had disappeared when I saw his smile. It took us a long time to get to this spot but we were in love and I knew that deep down long before Mike confessed his love for me.

  There were no more words to be said. Instead, Mike wrapped his arms around me and pressed his lips into mine. Softly we stayed intertwined as we kissed and held onto one another until Kendra opened the door a little to see what was going on.

  “Do you want to meet your boys?” Kendra asked as she
brought one of the carriers into the room.

  “Oh, I’ve met them,” Mike said as he leaned down and started to take Brody out of his seat. “Me and Brody have had some long man to man conversations over the last few weeks.”

  “You know that is Brody?”

  “Yeah, I could tell them apart from the first time I saw them in their incubators.”

  And in that moment I knew that Mike and I were going to work out just fine. He was their father and not just biologically. I could tell by the way he held Brody that Mike had done that before too.

  “So you didn’t think you should talk to me before hanging out with the boys?” I asked a little playfully.

  “Oh, I tried to wait for you to say it was okay, but I just couldn’t stay away from these guys. I had to see them every night. I just had to come visit them so they knew who I was and that they were loved very much.”

  “I’m glad you did,” I said as I picked up Ben from his seat.

  The four of us stood there together rocking back and forth and cuddling like the family that we were. I’d dreamt about having a perfect family. I’d tried to make my own perfect family and fate took over and twisted everything around to make things even better than I could have imagined.

  “And they lived happily ever after,” Kendra said as she stood in the doorway with Sarah and Teddy and took our first family picture.

  Epilogue

  “You absolutely have to stay in bed Julia, no more excuses. This is doctor’s orders,” I said to Julia after she tried to get up and help get the boys off to kindergarten for the day.

  “Oh, come on. I’m allowed to get up to use the restroom so I should be allowed to help Brody get his coat on for school.”

  “Nope. You are using up all your standing time by using the bathroom. That leaves no standing time for helping the boys. That’s the rules. I’ll bring them to you though and you can help them in the bed.”

  “I’ve already made it to thirty-two weeks. I have a feeling this time I’m going to make it full term. There’s only one baby. It’s a piece of cake to cook this one up the full length of time,” she joked.

  “Babe, you have to listen to me for the baby’s sake. Okay?” I asked a little more determined to get her to listen.

  As much as I knew that bed rest sucked, I also knew that Julia needed it. She was seeing the new female doctor in our practice and we had consulted on what to do after Julia had severe spotting a week earlier. If she was my patient I would have put her on bed rest too.

  The practice was going so well that we now had five full-time doctors and I was only working a couple days of the week. I did most of the behind the scenes work with our business manager and the legal team. I also worked with our new marketing team to keep new patients coming in.

  Bruce had found the love of his life and married her, she happened to also be the new doctor that we had hired, so that was another mess we had to figure out. I was more worried about it when they were dating than I was now though because he was clearly devoted to her and happier than I’d seen him in years.

  “Don’t cancel the dinner party,” Julia yelled from the bedroom as I finished packing both the boys their lunches. “I can still eat dinner. Everyone has already cleared the day and we don’t want to cancel just because I’m on bed rest.”

  “Babe, what are we going to do, bring the table in here and all eat in bed with you? We can schedule something for after the baby.”

  “No, I am fine to eat. I won’t get up and pee that day,” she tried to argue with me.

  “Julia, come on honey.”

  “Mike, this is important. I want to see everyone. We have been so busy and everyone else has been so busy. I just don’t want to let this date slip by.”

  “Fine, but only dinner. You can’t get up and help prepare it at all but for the actual dinner you can come out and eat. Then you promise to go straight back to bed.”

  “Or maybe sit on the couch?” I asked.

  “Girl, you drive me crazy,” I said as I crawled into the bed to kiss her growing tummy. “Baby, your mother is one of the strongest women I have ever met. Just you wait until you get to meet her out here. You’ll see what I’m talking about.”

  “Dad, Dad, Dad,” Brody said as he pulled on my leg. “I’m hungry.”

  “I just fed them. I swear I just fed them,” I said as I slid out of bed. “They must be growing. I can’t believe how they are always hungry.”

  “Wait until their teenagers,” Julia laughed.

  I couldn’t even imagine what our life would be like with the boys all grown up into teenagers and our new one just a few years behind them. I finally managed to give each of the boys one last snack and brought them to say goodbye to Julia before we headed off to school for the day.

  Managing school drop-off with my work schedule wasn’t hard since I was the boss, but I could imagine it would be difficult for regular families to balance. I definitely saw how families could benefit from the use of a nanny.

  When the boys were younger we had a nanny come stay with them during the day after Julia went back to work. It was a hard decision for her but eventually she had to work just to keep herself feeling good. She was a driven woman and sitting at home with the boys was fabulous and she loved it, but she really did like working too.

  By the time Saturday rolled around, the night of our dinner party, Julia was going stir crazy from her two weeks of bed rest. I wasn’t sure she was going to make it for another month of rest so it was nice that we were having the dinner party to boost her spirits a little.

  The bell to the condo rang and I hurried over to answer it. Everyone had arrived at the same time. There was Kendra and Devin, Patrick and his girlfriend, Teddy and his boyfriend, and Sarah came alone.

  “Oh, I’m going to die you all look so good,” Julia said as she came out to hug everyone.

  “You look so good,” Sarah said as she rubbing Julia’s growing tummy.

  We all visited and I managed to get Julia to sit on the couch while I finished preparing dinner. She was alive and vibrant when she was around her friends and I really did love seeing her so happy.

  “So when are you due?” Kendra asked.

  “It would be nice to go another month but I’m not so sure I’ll make it that long.”

  “She’s supposed to be on bed rest,” I shouted from the kitchen.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m resting right here,” Julia said and then went back to talking to her friends.

  The boys were in their room sleeping and weren’t phased at all by the commotion going on in the living room. We did have a babysitter who was staying in the spare room and ready to help if the boys needed anything throughout the evening, but I suspected we would be paying her for sitting there texting her boyfriend.

  “Uh-oh,” I heard Julia say and the room went quiet.

  “Mike, you better come here,” Teddy said and everyone got up from the couch, except Julia.

  “My water just broke,” Julia said as calm as could be. “I’m not feeling any contractions though. That’s a good thing, right?”

  “No,” I said without stopped to explain.

  I grabbed our emergency bag and gave some quick instructions to Kendra who was going to stay at the house with the boys. Going into labor without her water breaking would have been better than having her water break. Under this circumstance we had to deliver. We couldn’t just stop the contractions and continue with the pregnancy. If the amniotic fluid was all gone, then the baby needed to be delivered.

  “Mike, you’re scaring me,” Julia said as I helped her into the Uber that was waiting for us when we got downstairs. “What’s going on?”

  “I need to get you to the hospital and see if there is any fluid left in there. If not, we have to deliver.”

  “But I’m not having contractions.”

  “Then you’ll have to have a c-section. Or maybe we could induce you if both you and the baby are doing okay. It’s going to be alright though. Don’t worry,
baby.”

  “Who is on call tonight?” She asked trying to hide her fear.

  “Bruce.”

  “Oh, that’s good. I don’t like that new guy you have.”

  “He’s just a little nerdy. He’s a very good doctor though,” I reassured her.

  We bypassed the Emergency Room and went straight up to the labor and delivery floor. I’d already sent a text to Bruce to let him know we were on the say and he was waiting with the team of nurses at the entrance when we got off the elevator.

  “No contractions and at least a partial rupture of the amniotic sac,” I told the crew.

  “Let’s see if we have anything to work with,” Bruce said as he and I grabbed the ultra sound machine and wheeled it into the room where Julia was getting hooked up to all the monitors.

  “Let’s take a quick look,” Bruce said calmly.

  I knew as soon as he put the scope up to her stomach that there was a problem and it wasn’t going to be a smooth delivery. The baby had no fluid around her and her heart beat was much slower than it should be.

  “Is that the chord?” I asked as he glided the scope near the baby’s head.

  “Yep,” Bruce said and lipped the monitor off. “Prep the OR,” he yelled out.

  “Surgery, what? Why do I have to have surgery? I can push. It’s okay. And did you say her? Are we having a girl?” Julia looked so excited for the news.

  “Yes, it’s a beautiful little girl but we need to get her out quickly. I need you to stay calm and we are going back to surgery. There is no time for an epidural and I know you really want to be awake but trust me, we need to move fast.”

  “Okay,” Julia said with a calmness I hadn’t expected. “You save our little girl.”

  She had tears in her eyes and kissed me as we pushed her out of her room and toward the operating room. The operating team was there and ready and we lifted the sheet that Julia was on and moved her to the operating table.

  The anesthesiologist was waiting and as soon as the IV was in her he started assessing so he could behind putting Julia to sleep. Everyone was rushing around the room and getting things ready to take care of the baby once she was born. They had all the crash cart supplies for the baby there and I desperately hoped that they wouldn’t need to use any of it.