before inviting us to follow her.
The doors were closed and there were no children in the hallways. The place seemed deserted. The silence amplified the sound of our footsteps on the tiles. The corridor felt narrower than the day before. Irina led us to the twins’ dormitory.
They were alone in the room. All the other beds were empty, and the covers had been folded into squares. Their metal cribs had been placed side by side. They slept curled up on their stomachs. Their bottoms, rounded by their diapers, lifted to the rhythm of their breath. “They’re good sleepers,” she said.
“Shouldn’t we wait until they wake up?” I whispered. She assured me it wasn’t necessary, and seemed in a hurry for us to get moving.
Gregory delicately lifted Vanya and placed him in the stroller’s top seat. He buckled the seatbelt hesitantly, but the child sighed and stretched his legs without protest. In my arms, Daniil was warm and pliable. He started sucking his thumb when I set him in the bottom seat.
The employee admired the stroller.
“It’s a Phil & Teds,” I said.
And so the adoption was concluded.
She waved at us from the top of the stairs once we reached the sidewalk. Her young face was devoid of all emotion.
The babies woke up in the taxi. I calmly offered them a snack and wiped their mouths assuredly.
“You’re a natural,” raved the driver in astonishingly good English.
Gregory approved, his eyes misty.
As we entered the airport, I realized I hadn’t paid any attention to it on our arrival, knocked out from the flight and the customs interrogation. The hall’s triangular lines formed golden diamonds over our heads. The purity of the angles was dazzling. I felt luminous. While I lost myself in the ceiling design, Gregory folded the stroller, checked the car seats, and lugged the heavy bags with the pride of a patriarch.
The babies were going to spend many hours on our knees on the plane. Locating a sparse play area not far from our gate, I suggested we let them play for a while to stretch their legs before the flight.
Facing the wooden abacus, rotating puzzles, and slide, they clung to each other. I sat down on the foam rug and reached out my arms for them to join me. They took a few uncertain steps in my direction.
“Are they twins?” asked an enthusiastic young mother, who was accompanied by a young girl. She spoke French without an accent.
I proudly confirmed.
“They look just like you,” she said. “How old are they?”
I froze. Should I correct her? “Fifteen months,” I declared breathlessly.
It seemed fair not to mention the adoption; I wasn’t about to tell my life story to a stranger. I turned my back to end the conversation and focused on the children.
The little girl babbled, jumping from one toy to the next. The twins had no reaction at all.
Suddenly, Vanya fell on his behind. Gregory lifted him to his feet, teasing him gently, before he noticed he was trembling.
“Let’s get to the gate,” he declared.
I put a sweater on Vanya, but the trembling didn’t stop. I buried my nose in his neck and murmured over and over, “It’s okay. Mommy’s here.”
I let the word Mommy roll around my mouth.
I held Vanya on my lap on the plane. He was getting worse. He cried violently as a fever gripped him. His little body boiled in my arms. I pulled off the sweater, not knowing whether I should warm him up or cool him down. I tried rocking him and singing gently to him, but nothing would calm him. He was having muscle spasms. I didn’t know how to soothe him.
Then Daniil started to shiver as well.
“Maybe it’s just a bad cold,” ventured Gregory.
The seats were narrow and we didn’t have much room to lay them down. I was getting warm myself and was fighting the start of a migraine. When I unbuckled my seat belt, I was able to reach the air vent overhead. A thin jet of air blew at us. Holding Daniil against him, Gregory got up and rocked him, standing in the aisle, but he kept having to squeeze against the seats to let the other passengers by. Daniil cried even harder.
A liquid spread through his pants. Daniil had diarrhea and his diaper was overflowing. I had brought a few changes of clothes for the babies, but of course, none for us. Gregory made his way to the bathroom to try and clean up the mess, leaving me alone with the two children. Vanya screamed in my lap while Daniil writhed on Gregory’s seat. I raised the armrest separating us, trying to pull Daniil closer to keep him from falling on the floor. I shot panicked looks toward the bathrooms, hoping Gregory would hurry up and return. The babies were howling and people were starting to turn and look at us. I tried unsuccessfully to console them by making the stuffed monkey and cat talk. Gregory had alerted a flight attendant, who followed him to our seats with juice and blankets. The babies refused to drink. To get the plastic cup out of the way, I finished Vanya’s juice myself.
I just couldn’t believe a cold would put the children in this state, and the fact that they’d fallen sick at the same time suggested something more serious. I didn’t understand. I watched Vanya’s features, trying to discern the origin of the problem, but I realized I had no point of reference for a sick child. He wasn’t coughing, his nose wasn’t running, it didn’t look like a cold at all, but I couldn’t think what else it could possibly be. An infectious disease, maybe? I lifted his shirt to see if there was any redness or spots, but I saw nothing.
Next to me, on Gregory, Daniil started convulsing. We frantically hit the button for the flight attendant.
“Hurry, lay him out on the seat. Keep his airways open. Like
