It was no longer just pain or fear.
I saw my children settled into their incubators. I watched the doctors move from one to the other, focused on each of them.
The doctor himself seemed still shaken by what had just happened.
“I’ve been working for forty years. I’ve seen plenty of cases. But something like this…”
He shook his head.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before. Do you realize what you’ve just done? You gave birth to eight children. Eight.”
I remembered all those sleepless nights spent counting their movements, terrified that one of them might suddenly stop.
Seven incubators had been arranged in neat rows. And then there was this eighth baby—tiny, the one whose birth no one had anticipated.
I looked at her.
“You were waiting,” I whispered. “All this time, you were waiting for the others to come into the world before revealing yourself. You wanted to be the last one.”
My life, which for months had been filled with fear and uncertainty, was now occupied by eight voices and eight tiny, beating hearts.
The doctor’s words I never forgot
I turned around and saw the doctor standing in the doorway.
