The Heartbreak Factor - Part Four

Chapter Eighty-One.

“Katy, would you please record it when they come on?” George asked, handing his phone to Katy, who reluctantly took it. 

“Why?” Katy groaned in her usual teenage attitude. “All you do is store them in a folder on your laptop and you never watch them. It’s a waste of time and storage and phone battery.”

“Do as your dad says,” I instructed. 

“But..”

“We’ll play them back for you all when you’re eighteen so you can cringe at how much you’ve changed,” George grinned. “Don’t worry, Katy. All your videos are saved securely on my laptop and all waiting for you to turn eighteen in four years.” 

“Remember this song?” I smiled to Katy as she shoved her phone into her pocket and decided to actually participate in the family discussion for once. “You used to dance all about the lounge with your pink fairy wings on when you were three years old. We used to put this song on when the twins wouldn’t stop crying so you’d be occupied so we could deal with them.” 

“Mum,” Katy paused. “Can you drive me and Craig to the cinema tomorrow night? We wanna see that new movie and his parents said ‘no’.”

“Fine,” I reluctantly groaned, starting to sound like my teenage daughter. “What time?”

“Thanks mum,” Katy beamed, grabbing her phone back from the pocket which she only placed it in just a few seconds before. “You’re the best.”

*

The doctor’s room was so silent as George and I sat on the hospital bed beside each other, waiting for something to happen. The doctor had given me a quick examination and disappeared off without saying a word. All I wanted to know was if the babies were okay - if they were going to survive. I wasn’t a doctor and I had no medical expertise but I knew bleeding wasn’t a good sign. The bleeding had seemed to get heavier and heavier in the ambulance but now there was nothing but bloody pyjamas left behind as evidence. 

“Right, Sammy. I know this isn’t going to be easy to hear but we’re going to need to take you in for surgery,” the doctor explained as he reentered the room, shutting the door behind him. “You can say ‘no’ to the surgery but there is a chance you will miscarry both the babies if we don’t take you into theatre. It seems like, although the trauma wasn’t directly at your bump, both the babies have suffered damage and we’re going to have to operate.” 

“If you operate, is there a chance they’ll survive?” I asked. 

The doctor looked at me with a face that was almost impossible to read. “I’m not going to lie to you and say that the surgery will mean they will both live, but there’s a higher chance they will survive with the surgery than if we do nothing at all.”

“Could they die?” I asked. “Could they die in the surgery?” 

“We’ll do everything within our power to make sure that doesn’t happen,” the doctor paused. “I know it’s a difficult decision, Sammy. But the sooner you make it, the sooner we can get you into the theatre and the better chance your babies have.”

Without even consulting George, I nodded. “Where do I sign?”

*

Readjusting the tie that was around his neck and straightening it so it fell perfectly over his pressed shirt, I couldn’t have been more prouder of my little boy at his graduation ceremony from university. My little boy. That little baby I held in my hands for the first time twenty-three years ago. So much had happened in that time but I had grown to love him more than anything else in the entire world. All three of my kids were my world. And here he was, about to receive his first class degree in medicine. The whole world was his oyster. All his dreams were reachable. He was going to save the world, just like he saved mine.