Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Married people -- Fiction
It was very hard. She didn't want to think, but she must. She must begin
with something she knew. She knew who she was. She was Rose--Rodney's
Rose. Here was his mouth down close to the pillow saying her name over
and over and over again. And she was in her own bed. But what had
happened? She must try to remember. She remembered something she had
said--said to herself over and over again an illimitable while ago.
"It's coming. The miracle's beginning." What had she meant by that?
And then she knew. The urgency of a sudden terror gave her her voice.
"Roddy," she said. "There was going to be a--baby. Isn't there?"
Something queerly like a laugh broke his voice when he answered. "Oh,
you darling! Yes. It's all right. That isn't why I'm crying. It's just
because I'm so happy."
"But the baby!" she persisted. "Why isn't it here?"
Rodney turned and spoke to some one else. "She wants to see," he said.
"May she?"
And then a woman's voice (why, it was the nurse, of course! Miss Harris,
who had come last night) said in an indulgent soothing tone, "Why,
surely she may. Wait just a minute."
But the wait seemed hours. Why didn't they bring the baby--her baby?
There! Miss Harris was coming at last, with a queerly bulky, shapeless
bundle. Rodney stepped in between and cut off the view, but only to
slide an arm under mattress and pillow and raise her a little so that
she could see. And then, under her eyes, dark red and hairy against the
whiteness of the pillow, were two small heads--two small shapeless
masses leading away from them, twitching, squirming. She stared,
bewildered.
"There were twins, Rose," she heard Rodney explaining triumphantly, but
still with something that wasn't quite a laugh, "a boy and a girl.
They're perfectly splendid. One weighs seven pounds and the other six."
Her eyes widened and she looked up into his face so that the pitiful
bewilderment in hers was revealed to him.
"But the _baby!_" she said. Her wide eyes filled with tears and her
voice broke weakly. "I wanted a baby."
"You've got a baby," he insisted, and now laughed outright. "There are
two of them. Don't you understand, dear?"
Her eyes drooped shut, but the tears came welling out along her lashes.
"Please take them away," she begged. And then, with a little sob she
whispered, "I wanted a baby, not those."
Rodney started to speak, but some sort of admonitory signal from the
nurse silenced him.
The nurse went away with her bundle, and Rodney stayed stroking her limp
hand.
In the dark, ever so much later, she awoke, stirred a little restlessly,
and the nurse, from her cot, came quickly and stood beside her bed. She
had something in her hands for Rose to drink, and Rose drank it
dutifully.
"Is there anything else?" the nurse asked.
"I just want to know," Rose said; "have I been dreaming, or is it true?
Is there a baby, or are there twins?"
"Twins, to be sure," said the nurse cheerfully. "The loveliest,
liveliest little pair you ever saw."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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