Nothing else there 30

My mother leaves at four with her empty containers and her good coat and a kiss on both my cheeks, and from the window I watch her get into a cab. She waves and I wave back and the cab pulls away and the apartment is warm and quiet and full of the smell of cornbread.

On the counter by the door, a package I didn’t notice earlier — small, wrapped in brown paper with a ribbon, the kind of thing that arrives while you’re not looking. Inside is a tea tin, beautiful, dark green with gold lettering, loose-leaf chamomile and lavender. On the card, in handwriting I don’t recognize but don’t question: For my girl. Take care of yourself and those babies. Love, Mom.

I smile because she does this — sends the gift ahead and then shows up pretending she forgot. I boil the kettle and spoon the tea into a cup and the smell is floral and warm, filling the kitchen the way her cooking filled it an hour ago.

I carry it to the couch and sit with my feet tucked under me and drink it slowly. Nick is in the shower — I can hear the water through the wall — and Lily is in her room with her music on, and the apartment breathes around me the way it breathes on the best evenings, the ones where everyone is home and no one is afraid.

I pick up my phone and call my mother.

“Hi, baby,” she says. “I just got in the cab.”

“I know, I saw you from the window.” I take another sip and the warmth moves through me. “Mom, thank you for the tea. It’s beautiful.”

She’s quiet, and the quiet has a shape to it that makes the mug feel heavier in my hands.

“The tea?” she says.

“The chamomile and lavender, the tin by the door.” I set the mug on my knee. “You left a card.”

“Aria, I didn’t send any tea.” Her voice is careful now, the way it gets when she’s trying not to alarm me. “I brought the food, baby. That’s it. What tea?”

The room tilts — very slightly, like a picture frame knocked crooked — and I look at the mug and the tea is half-finished and the taste is still on my tongue, floral, and underneath it something bitter I didn’t notice before. I notice it now.

“Mom, I have to go,” I say, and I hang up before she can answer.

I set the mug on the table and my hands are not steady.

Then the cramp comes. Low and deep, the kind that starts in the center and radiates outward, and I know this feeling the way you know the sound of a door you’ve heard slam before. Three times the cramping started low and moved up and each time what came next was blood and a hospital room and Dominic’s silence.

I press both hands against my stomach and say “No, no, no” and another cramp comes harder and I double over on the couch and my hand goes between my legs and when I pull it back there is blood on my fingers, red and bright and wrong.

“Nick!” The sound that comes out of me is not my voice — it’s raw and torn and animal. “Nick!”

The shower stops. Footsteps, fast, and he comes around the corner in a towel with his hair dripping and he sees my face and he sees my hand and the color leaves his skin.

“Something’s wrong,” I say, and I’m crying, I can’t stop, my hands pressing against my stomach like I can hold them in. “There’s blood, Nick — the babies, please, not again, I can’t do this again—”

He’s already moving, phone in hand, and then he stops and looks at me and makes a decision. “No. I’m driving. It’s faster.”

He grabs keys and wraps a coat around me and I’m still in the dress from dinner and blood is soaking through warm against my thighs and the cramps are coming in waves and I’m gripping his arm so hard I can feel muscle under my fingers.

The elevator, the lobby, the car. I curl around my stomach with both arms wrapped around it and the engine starts and the city begins to move past in streaks — red, yellow, white.

I can’t see straight. The edges of my vision are going dark and the cramps are pulling everything toward the center of my body and I’m praying to something I haven’t prayed to in years — please, not them, take anything else.

“Aria.” Nick’s voice cuts through. “Baby, look at me.”

I turn my head and he’s driving with one hand, his other reaching for me, finding my arm, gripping it. “We’re almost there,” he says, and his voice is steady but his knuckles are white on the wheel. “Stay with me.”

“I can feel them,” I say, and my voice is coming from very far away. “I can still feel them moving.”

“Good.” His hand tightens on my arm. “Keep talking to me, Aria.”

“Don’t let me lose them, Nick.”

“You’re not going to lose them.” His voice cracks on lose and he swallows and grips the wheel harder. “Five minutes. Just hold on.”

“Promise me,” I say, and I can hear how small my voice is.

“I promise.” His hand moves from my arm to my face, just for a second, his palm warm and damp against my cheek. “Aria, I promise. Hold on.”

The hospital lights hit the windshield — white, blue, the fluorescent blaze of an emergency entrance. Nick pulls up and he’s out before the car fully stops and then there are people, scrubs, a gurney, hands lifting me, and the ceiling is moving above me and the lights are blinding.

Nick’s voice is somewhere behind me saying something to someone, cracking on a word I can’t make out.

They push me through double doors into a long white hallway and the ceiling tiles blur together and gloved hands press against my stomach and someone is saying “twenty-four weeks, vaginal bleeding, possible poisoning” and the word poisoning enters my head and sits there like a stone in still water.

The doors at the end of the hall, and they’re pushing me through and I turn my head and Nick is there — right there, behind the doors, his hand reaching forward. I’ve never seen his face like this. Every wall he’s ever built is gone, his eyes wet, his jaw shaking, a man watching something he can’t stop.

“Everything will be alright, baby.” His voice breaks on baby the way it broke on lose in the car. “I love you. I’m right here.”

The doors close between us and his face disappears.

The fluorescent lights pass above me one by one and my hands are on my stomach and the twins are still moving, still there, still fighting. I’m talking to them now — not to God, not to Nick — to the two boys inside me who have survived their father’s cruelty and their mother’s silence and a body that failed three times before.

Please don’t leave me this time. I know this body has broken its promises before but I am asking you to stay. Both of you. Stay with me.

The light above me is very bright and the voices are getting further away and my hands are on my stomach and I can feel them, I can still feel them, and I hold onto that feeling the way I’ve held onto everything that matters — with both hands, pressing hard, refusing to let go.

Stay with me. Stay with…

The light goes white. Then dark. Then nothing.