“I need to see them,” I said. “And not in a picture. I don’t think I’ll feel okay until I see them with my own eyes.”
I could swear I heard Brenda, her back to me, sniffle. “It so happens,” she interjected, “that there’s a shortcut to the elevator that passes through the neonatal unit. That might be the most, er, private way to get you back to your suite.”
Half an hour later, Brenda was steering me into the NICU, where I heard a disembodied array of beeping until I was parked neatly between two incubators.
“Bex,” I heard Nick say. “Meet your daughters.”
I turned my head to one side, then the other, to see two pink babies in pink knit caps lying snugly on their backs, with IVs and ID bracelets and narrow feeding tubes and any number of other alarming-looking things connecting them to their monitors. But the beeps were steady. The nurses were calm. And the girls had matching scowls on their faces as they scrunched their eyes closed, like they were desperate for a nap and very annoyed by all the fuss.
“Hello, babies,” I said to them, placing a hand on the clear plastic side of each incubator. “Welcome to the world.”
CHAPTER NINE
There you go, bug,” I cooed, taking my daughter from the nurse and nestling her against my chest. “Snuggle up for a nap.”
I had unbuttoned my shirt enough to rest her face against my skin. Nick was doing the same with her twin sister next to me, tipping his head back against the rocking chair and smiling in ecstasy.
“This is therapy,” he said. “I could do this all day.”
“Pretty soon you will, sir,” said the nurse on duty. “They’re thriving. They’ll be home before you know it.”
Once Bea knew the babies were safe, she’d sent out word of the premature delivery. Even though we wouldn’t have our girls in tow to show them, we’d agreed to speak to the assembled press and well-wishers when I was discharged. That had been two days ago. When I saw the ensuing footage of that appearance, it almost made me cry; Nick and I had looked like dazed, lovestruck fools when we walked out of the hospital’s glass double doors.
“The staff here were marvelous,” Nick had said as we stood there in front of over a hundred reporters from all over the world—all of whom were smiling directly at us, a detail I clearly remember because it had never happened to me before. “They had two terrified first-time parents on their hands, and they were strong and steady and calm, even when I tore my gown the first two times I tried to put it on by myself.”
A gentle laugh wafted through the crowd. I looked up at the building across from the hospital and realized that every window was crammed with people looking down at us, and before I could help myself, I waved up at them. Every one of them waved back.
“And the babies?” asked Penelope Ten-Names from her spot in the front. “I understand we’ll get names in a few days. Any hints?”
“Once the shock wears off, we’ll let you know,” I had said with a grin. “After we have an audience with the Queen.”
“They’re doing brilliantly, though. Small, but mighty,” Nick had said. “Like Britain herself.”
This was now day three of our new schedule of NICU visits, and the press so far was keeping a respectful distance, making it an oddly peaceful time. Focusing only on these minuscule beating hearts, without fear that we’d leave the hospital through a throng of people trying to get a shot of me lactating, made it easy to shove the outside world away for as long as we could manage it.
My phone vibrated on the table next to me. I shifted as carefully as I could, so as not to wake my daughter.
“Gaz,” I told Nick. “Now he thinks we should name one of them after Saint Wulfhilda of Barking, who got…” I squinted at my phone. “Fired from the Abbey for being too hot.”
“He’s barking,” Nick said. “Should we tell him, and put him out of his misery?”
“No way,” I said. “His misery is way too entertaining.”
The baby grabbed Nick’s finger. “Yeow,” he said theatrically, tickling her nose. “First you rip out your feeding tube, and now you’re trying to pull off my finger. What two-kilogram baby can do that?”
“A fighter, that’s who,” I said. “In a spiritual sense, but mixed martial arts would be an interesting twist.”
Nick laughed. “I’m not sure that’s in the cards.”
“Maybe not,” I said. Nobody was around us—they’d put us in a private area—but I still lowered my voice. “We should probably talk about what is in the cards, though.”
He knew what I meant. His eyes scanned the area.
“The fantasy of leaving is so, so alluring,” he said quietly. “But now I’m not so sure I can do it.”
“I wondered if you’d land there,” I said. “It would be…such a shitshow.”
“It’s not even that,” Nick said. “I mean, it is that. But it’s so many other things, too. I keep thinking of my grandfather. He said in his letter that running off wouldn’t actually let him and Georgina escape anything. That the scandal would always chase their family. We’re in a similar position, and now that I’m seeing these two in front of me, flesh and blood, I don’t know if I can do it to them. Is that crazy? If I have the choice that I have always wanted, is it madness not to take it?”
“Deciding to stay is a choice, Nick,” I pointed out.
“But not my choice alone,” he said. “What do you want to do?”
I leaned back in my padded rocking chair. Nick had painted such a nice picture of what our alternate future might be. A simpler life, with simpler jobs, and simpler choices. Years ago, I told him I fell in love with a person, not a prince. But they don’t exist separately. They will always be
