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Chapter 180

Claire fully expected Jamie to come groveling back to her sometime that day with a typical lame excuse for an apology to feed her. An apology which she wouldn’t be swallowing – no way. His apologies had become meaningless to her because every time he said he was sorry for something, he just went and did it again. He was out of second chances from her… and third chances…

Hell, Jamie was out of chances altogether.

The way he’d acted yesterday was inexcusable. Refusing to touch the babies, his own daughters… walking out on her again… and then having the nerve to show up drunk in the middle of the night…

Even now, just thinking of it all left her seething with anger.

And yet, beneath the fury was another emotion, one more difficult to explain in words. Even though she was mad and resentful of Jamie, it hurt her to not have him here. These were the days they had been looking forward to since their honeymoon, when they’d first talked of having children. In some ways, it was hard to believe a full year had gone by since then, yet their first wedding anniversary had slipped by a few days ago with only a phone call to commemorate it. A phone call which she had made. Occurrences like that made it seem as if their lovely honeymoon had happened in another lifetime.

In any case, their children were here, earlier than planned, but here, and Jamie was not. It was a moment they should have shared together, and instead, here she was, alone in her hospital room, and he was god-knows-where, doing god-knows-what. And that hurt.

Thankfully, it wasn’t like she had a lack of support from the other people in her life. Her family had been coming during visiting hours without fail to keep her company, and Nick had been around a lot, well outside the constraints of regular visiting hours. But no one had reprimanded him, perhaps because those who didn’t know him assumed he was her husband and the babies’ father, and those who did know the situation understood.

It was nice having all of them around, but even so, it wasn’t the same as having her husband, her babies’ father, there to share in her concern and reassure her that everything would be alright, even if there was no guarantee it would.

The feeling was worse now that Nick had gone home. She would never forget the way he had sung to her daughters, his gentle voice soothing her as well, and she couldn’t understand how two men who, in some ways, were quite similar could be so completely different. Nick had been there for their births and every day since, even though they weren’t his children and he owed her nothing, and Jamie, who was supposed to be there, hadn’t been.

Maybe it’s karma, she thought grumpily, unable to keep from feeling sorry for herself. I left a wonderful man and married an asshole, and this is what I get.

It was not the best time to start questioning every decision she’d made over the last few years, but lying in her bed, with two sick newborns down the hall, that’s what Claire was doing.

She was interrupted only by the sound of a knock at the door. Instantly, she stiffened. The hospital staff didn’t usually knock, or if they did, they didn’t wait for a response. Nick had already been there, and as he had mentioned a shower and a nap on his afternoon agenda, she doubted he was back already. Nor did she expect her family, who had taken off for the afternoon. And since Dianna was working, Laureen was in Chicago, and Father Andrews had already stopped by to offer a blessing for her and her twins, that left only one person she could think of who might be knocking on her door.

Jamie, of course.

“Come in!” she called grudgingly, her response delayed. The door pushed open at once, and when she looked into its threshold, she was surprised to find that it was not Jamie at all. It was worse.

It was Jamie’s mother.

Claire could hardly hide her surprise. “Mrs. Turner!” she choked, twisting her lips into what she hoped was a polite smile. “I-I didn’t expect to see you down here… so soon.”

“Well now, you didn’t expect me to stay up in Des Moines, half a country away from my new grandbabies either, did you? I booked my flight yesterday, as soon as Jamie called me,” Mrs. Turner replied, flashing her lopsided smile.

“Ah… well, I’m so glad you could make it,” said Claire, lying through her teeth. “Have you, uh… talked to Jamie since then?” She wanted to know what his mother knew of the current situation… babies, last night’s drunken visit, and all.

“Well, of course! Who do you think picked me up from the airport?” Laughing shortly, Mrs. Turner added, “Yes, I just got in about two hours ago, and Jamie picked me up and drove me over to Brad’s home just long enough to leave my luggage, and then we came straight here.”

Claire arched her eyebrows. “‘We’?” she echoed curiously.

“Yes, Jamie’s here; he’s still in the neonatal ward. I just insisted that we drop in and check up on my new grandchildren first.” Mrs. Turner beamed. “Jamie wasn’t so keen on it; he mentioned something about a little spat with you – but I told him all about hormones and how you were probably just feeling a little irritable and that he should at least go and spend time with his daughters.”

Claire was still reeling with this twisted version of what had gone on between Jamie and her yesterday when his mother, lowering her loud voice a notch, added, “He’s not used to coping with these things, you know – illnesses and intensive care and those sorts of things. Our family has always been very healthy; until his father died, he’d never had to experience anything like this. But like I told him, he’ll just have to buck up and get used to it.” She gave a short not and finished, “He should have known that going in.”

Claire blinked, as Mrs. Turner’s words washed over her, absorbing slowly. Did she really mean to sound as if the problems the twins had had come from her? As if bad genes or something, inherited from the Ryan side of the family, had caused their prematurity? Or was it just her fault? Was that what she’d meant by “he should have known that going in”?

She wanted to retort to that, wanted to put Mrs. Turner to the test and snap, “And what do you mean by that?” But even with her “hormones” in the state they were in, she knew she needed to keep her cool around her mother-in-law, and so she fought to do so, holding her tongue.

In her silence, Jamie’s mother just kept talking.

“What darling babies, though! They’re a little small, of course, and sickly, but… I’m sure they’ll grow. You’ve been praying hard, haven’t you?”

“Of course I have,” Claire nearly snapped, feeling stubborn and defensive, as if her children had been criticized. She couldn’t say why it should upset her – they were small and sickly – but something about hearing it from Jamie’s mother, in her critical tone of voice, just made her mad.

“Do the doctors have an explanation for what caused them to come so prematurely?” asked Mrs. Turner, her brow creasing. “I asked Jamie, but he wasn’t very clear. You know how he gets when he doesn’t want to talk about something.”

At least they were on the same page with that, thought Claire – she definitely knew how Jamie got, how he completely shut down and tried to avoid difficult subjects. She could only imagine him mumbling non-answers to his mother over the phone or on the way back from the airport, as she grilled him for information.

Then again, sometimes, like now, she could understand why. She didn’t want to have to answer his mother, who was looking at her critically behind her wire-rimmed glasses. Pangs of guilt jabbed at her stomach as she considered all the possible reasons for the premature labor. It had likely been her heart condition, her body forcing the twins out in order to protect itself, knowing that it could not handle carrying them any longer. Or maybe she had not kept still enough during her bed rest, not lain down enough, not followed her doctor’s orders as strictly as she should have. Maybe she had done something wrong to trigger the latest round of preterm labor.

Or maybe… her stomach turned over, wrenching in agony… maybe it all went back to the selective reduction of the third baby. In the physical sense, the procedure was not without its complications, as she had been warned – sometimes it could stimulate premature labor or end in the termination of the entire pregnancy. She was incredibly thankful the rare latter complication hadn’t happened; she wasn’t sure she would have been able to go on, knowing that she had mistakenly killed all three of her unborn children. But in making the decision to terminate the one, had she doomed the other two to prematurity? To weeks in an incubator, hooked up to tubes, isolated and sick? To a potential lifetime of problems resulting from being born too soon?

All of a sudden, she had the urge to vomit. Thankfully, she’d gained good control over her gag reflex after months of throwing up from chemo, and she kept the sensation in check. Swallowing back the bile that had risen in her throat, she forced herself to meet Mrs. Turner’s eyes.

“They can’t say for sure,” she answered her question finally, hearing her own voice tremble just a little. “It’s been a complicated pregnancy. It could be a lot of things.” Things having to do with her body, she reminded herself fiercely, things she wasn’t obligated to share with her mother-in-law.

Claire had never been particularly reserved about sharing when it came to her health; she’d found that talking about it, showing that she was comfortable with it, really helped. It helped put others at ease, knowing that she could be so candid in talking about things that were hard to talk about, and in doing so, made her feel better too. But this… this was a subject that was still too fresh, and she didn’t think she was ready to be grilled about it by Jamie’s mother.

“It has been difficult for you, hasn’t it?” murmured Mrs. Turner, studying her closely. “First all the trouble just to conceive, and then… then the… the death… of the one…” She trailed off in a faltering whisper, as if it was cursed just to speak of the third baby.

And she didn’t even know the real story.

At Jamie’s insistence, they had told his mother that the triplet had died, spontaneously, inside the womb. She would think of it as a miscarriage, which sometimes happened to even the most devout Christian couples, and not as an abortion, a mortal sin to which, in her eyes, no decent Catholic woman would ever consent. It made Claire feel even guiltier over the whole thing to have to lie about it, especially to her mother-in-law, her babies’ grandmother. But Jamie was probably right in thinking that she would never understand, that she would blame Claire. Claire could sense the blame radiating from those sharp eyes even now, without her knowing the whole truth.

Claire cleared her throat loudly, fighting to keep her churning emotions contained. “Yeah… well… I guess I should have known it would be complicated. Everything always is when it comes to my health – part of the curse of living through cancer, I guess,” she said stiffly and forced a very strained smile. Mrs. Turner looked away from her face briefly, which gave Claire a slight triumph of satisfaction. All of a sudden, she wanted to make Jamie’s mother uncomfortable, to get under her skin. Maybe she didn’t like Claire being blunt any more than Claire liked being grilled.

She could have said more, but she knew she shouldn’t. Like it or not, this was her husband’s mother, her daughters’ grandmother, and she had come to visit, something her own son had struggled with. Claire knew that she should be appreciative. “I’m just grateful to have two daughters who are alive,” she finished, and that much could not have been more sincere.

Mrs. Turner nodded, putting on another lopsided smile. “Of course,” she said softly. “That’s all that really matters. I just hate for you and Jamie to have to go through all this, and to see them like that. A new mother should be able to hold her babies, not look at them through plastic.” She paused to sigh. “It’s just so unfortunate. Why, when I had both Brad and Jamie, I was nursing them right off the bat. Of course, I delivered naturally; I suppose that makes things easier too. You poor thing, having to have a C-section…” She trailed off, her eyes traveling up and down Claire’s torso, which, thankfully, was hidden under the covers. Claire didn’t feel like being scrutinized.

Dr. Valerio had told her once during a prenatal check-up that some women who had C-sections felt a sense of grief afterwards, as if they’d been cheated out of the experience of giving birth naturally, or as if they were somehow inferior for having to deliver through Cesarean. At the time, Claire had thought it silly, assuring herself that she would not feel that way. Sure, if given the choice, she would have chosen to go through labor and deliver the twins the natural way, but there was nothing wrong with having a C-section, and she felt sure that she would not react that way.

Logic had been able to drill this into her head at the time, but now that she was here, in a hospital bed, recovering from one and having to face the regretful face of Mrs. Turner, who was looking at her as if she were someone to be pitied for having a C-section, Claire began to understand this sense of loss. Maybe she had missed out on something…

To make matters worse, Jamie’s mother broke the tense silence that had settled between them a moment later by reaching into her purse and exclaiming, “Oh, wait till you see what I brought! I thought you might like to look at these…” And she pulled out a thick envelope that was stuffed to the seams with photographs.

Curious, Claire took the envelope from her, swung her bedside tray over her lap, and carefully slid the stack of pictures out onto it. She could tell at once, by their size and somewhat faded, blurred quality, that they were old. And, sure enough, smiling up at her from the photo on top was a much younger version of Mrs. Turner. Claire recognized her at once, even though her frizzy gray hair was a mousy brown in the picture, her haggard face was smooth and shining, and the glasses over her eyes were much, much larger.

The young Mrs. Turner was in a familiar position – sitting up in what was clearly a hospital bed, the covers drawn up over her knees, and wearing an ugly printed gown and a broad smile. By the sheen of sweat that made her face glow and the large bulge visible beyond her knees, Claire guessed this was a picture of Jamie’s mother in labor.

“I was pregnant with Jamie there,” confirmed Mrs. Turner, pointing to her swollen belly in the photo. “Eight hours in labor, but not nearly as bad as when I had Brad – his labor lasted almost eighteen.”

“Wow,” said Claire, forcing a humorless laugh, “at least I didn’t have to go through much of that. It was pretty quick for me.”

“Oh, you’ll make up for it in recovery time,” replied Mrs. Turner, patting her arm and smiling sympathetically again.

Gee thanks, thought Claire with heavy sarcasm and annoyance. Trying not to sigh out loud, she forced herself to turn to the next photo. It was another one of Mrs. Turner in a hospital bed, but this time she looked even sweatier and happier and was holding in her arms a little bundle with a shock of dark hair. A smile tugged at the corners of Claire’s lips as she realized it was a newborn Jamie she was holding.

Claire was sure she had seen baby pictures of her husband before, but never quite like this. As she flipped slowly through the next few photos, she found several close-up images of him, red-faced, but filled out and beautifully healthy-looking, with his pink skin and chubby cheeks and full head of hair.

Leaning in to look at the picture she was holding, Mrs. Turner said, “Delaine especially looks a little like he did, doesn’t she? With the darker hair, I mean. Pat and I always joked that we never understood how both of our boys ended up with such beautiful dark curls, since we both had lighter brown hair, but it looks like at least one of your girls inherited those genes.”

“Lucky,” Claire smiled faintly. “If they both manage to escape the curse of white skin from my side of the family, I’ll be happy.” The Doune skin, they called it in her family, as it had come from the side of her mother, who had been Caroline Doune before she had married Kris Ryan. But then, the Ryan family’s Irish red hair and freckles didn’t help things much either. Claire did hope her daughters’ looks would come mostly from their father, though a selfish part of her wanted to be told that they resembled their mother too.

Right now, it was too difficult to tell, and although it was clear that Delaine’s hair was darker now, Claire didn’t think she really looked much like the infant Jamie in the pictures. In fact, there was such a difference between the baby in the pictures and her own twins that it made her sad to look at them, for the photos were a powerful reminder of how tiny and sick her babies were. It was hard, too, to look upon the photos of Mrs. Turner and Jamie’s father holding baby Jamie, all three of them looking healthy and content. Together with Jamie’s older brother Brad, just a little boy in the pictures, they were the perfect, happy family. Meanwhile, Claire and Jamie could barely speak without fighting, nor could they hold their frail twin daughters yet, and even if they could, Claire wasn’t sure Jamie would want to.

Comparing their situation to the perfect little scenario presented in his mother’s photos, Claire felt more depressed than ever. With each photo, she began to resent Mrs. Turner more and more for making her feel like this and wished that Jamie would come back from the NICU soon, more to take his mother off her hands than to visit her. She still wasn’t sure she was up to talking to him yet, especially not after this uncomfortable visit with his mom.

And indeed, when Jamie finally did show up a few minutes later, she found that it was hard to look at his face and even harder to hold her tongue, remembering how wasted he had been the night before. She wasn’t ready to accept an apology from him, if he even had one to offer, though she could see herself chewing him out if his mother wasn’t around. Lucky for him, Mrs. Turner showed no signs of budging to give them privacy, so Claire took the easy way out and pretended she was tired and in pain and that she wanted to take a nap.

Jamie looked hurt, his mother suspicious, but Claire didn’t care. She didn’t care what they would say when they left the hospital together, didn’t care one bit. All she knew was that she was tired of making awkward small talk with Jamie’s mother and that she wasn’t ready to talk to Jamie at all, not the way they needed to. Thankfully, Jamie seemed to understand this and didn’t protest.

Only when he and his mother had gone did Claire realize Mrs. Turner had left her photos behind, perhaps intentionally. Claire frowned at them a moment before pushing them aside and reaching for her digital camera from the bedside table. Her parents had brought her the camera from home, since she’d forgotten it in her rush to leave for the hospital with Nick the night she’d gone into labor. So there would be no pictures of her in a hospital bed, about to give birth, like there were of Jamie’s mother, but she’d taken tons of the twins.

Flipping through them now, she noticed they all looked about the same – some close-up, some far away, and from different angles, but as Caitlin and Delaine didn’t do much, they looked no different from picture to picture. Much different from the infant Jamie, though, she realized again, a lump rising in her throat as she looked at a close-up of Delaine.

Tears threatened, but she quickly turned off the camera and set it aside, refusing to allow herself another meltdown right now. She blamed Jamie’s mother for getting her upset and quickly turned on the TV in her room, determined to try and forget it all, even if for a mere half hour.

***

Half an hour turned into two and a half, as Claire managed to doze a little to the drone of the TV. She had apparently needed the nap, having not slept well the night before, because when she awoke from it, she felt much better.

Wondering if there was any change in Delaine or Caitlin, she reached for her nurse call button, intending to get someone to walk with her down to the NICU. Although the nurses were encouraging her to get up and walk around, they didn’t want her roaming around by herself just yet, as she was still a little shaky and slow-moving from the surgery.

Even so, they were talking of sending her home the next day, which was incredibly bittersweet for Claire. Going home was usually a good thing, as no one liked being in the hospital, but in this case, she knew her daughters would not be coming home with her, and her leaving without them was hard to imagine. It was another reason she wanted to go and see them now; she was determined to spend as much time as she could with them, knowing it would take a lot more effort to get up to the NICU once she was recovering at home.

She was just about to hit the call button when another knock came at the door. It was a cheerful “Shave and a Haircut” knock, and, knowing that could not be Jamie, Claire called “Come in!” with more enthusiasm than she had earlier.

The door swung open, and in came Dianna, dressed in the stylish skirt and blouse she’d evidently worn to work, her tall heels click-clacking rapidly on the floor as she hurried over to Claire’s bedside for a ginger hug. “Claire! How ya feelin’, girl?” she cried animatedly, leaning back to give Claire a once-over.

“Well… I’ve been better… but I’ve also been worse… so I guess I’m okay,” answered Claire, smiling up at her. “It’s good to see you! I didn’t know if you were going to come and visit or not.”

“Surprise!” exclaimed Dianna, grinning. “I wanted to come yesterday, but after I talked to your mom, I thought it might be better to give you some space.”

“Aww… well, you know you’re always welcome, but yeah… yesterday was hard,” Claire admitted. “Today’s been a little better.”

“Really? That’s good. Does… does that mean the babies are doing better?”

“Yeah… a little. They’re not out of the woods yet, especially Delaine, but they’re hanging in there.” Claire forced another smile.

“Aww, well, good. I can’t wait to see them!”

“I’ve got pictures,” said Claire, handing Dianna her camera. “I was just thinking about going to see them, though, so you can come with me if you want.”

“Sure! I’d love to!” Excitedly, Dianna turned on the camera and started flipping through the pictures, cooing loudly. “Awww!! Poor little things… they’re so cute though!” she gushed, which Claire took as a compliment. “So who do you think they look more like?” she asked, peering at Claire over the top of the camera.

Claire laughed lightly. “I can’t really tell, but Delaine does have darker hair, so according to Jamie’s mother, she looks like him. She even brought me baby pictures of him to look at.” Rolling her eyes, she motioned to the envelope she’d pushed away earlier.

“Oh boy… a visit from Mrs. Turner, huh?” said Dianna in a tone of voice that exactly matched Claire’s own thoughts. They both laughed. Having gone to high school with Jamie, they were both familiar with his mother, who had always been a nice woman, but also an overprotective, opinionated, highly critical nag.

“Yeah, that was almost as pleasant as the visit I got from Jamie himself in the middle of the night,” replied Claire, and all it took was Dianna’s dark eyes widening to trigger the rant that she hadn’t nearly gotten out of her system on the phone with Nick last night. All the things she would have said to Jamie that afternoon came spewing out to Dianna instead, who merely looked appalled.

“I can’t believe him!” she cried in shock, when Claire had finished. “What an asshole!! Want me to go kick his butt for you? I bet these heels would a job on him; he’d never want to drink again,” Dianna threatened, jiggling her stiletto-heeled foot menacingly.

Claire laughed, grateful her best friend was on her side. She knew Dianna was often put in a difficult position when it came to spats between Claire and Jamie, as she was friends with both of them, but when it came down to it, Dianna almost always sided with Claire.

“Seriously, do you want me to talk to him?” offered Dianna, her brown eyes wide with concern. “Maybe he doesn’t realize how much he’s hurting you, acting like this.”

“No,” sighed Claire. “I mean, thanks, but… he’s my husband; I need to talk to him myself. We’re too old to send a messenger to do our dirty work. I’m just not ready to have that talk yet; I’m afraid I’ll just bite his head off if he’s in the same room with me for too long. It’s probably a good thing he did bring his mom with him today.”

Dianna nodded. “Understandable. Well, give it some time… you know he’ll come crawling back to you soon enough; he always does.”

“Yeah… he always does,” Claire echoed. “And I take him back. Every time. Every time this has happened… and how many times has it happened in the last year alone? Not counting the shit he pulled when I was sick. Is it just me, or is that really messed up, Di? I mean, why do I keep taking him back? Why?”

Offering a crooked smile, Dianna answered, “Because you love him? Because he’s your husband? Why else would you?”

Yeah…, thought Claire, frowning. Why else would I?

Maybe it was because she loved him, deep down, as she had since high school. Maybe it was because he was her husband.

Or maybe she just didn’t want to be alone.

***