Page 13 of Secret Triplets, Second Chances
LARA
“ C ome on, come on,” I mutter, desperately trying to rotate my scrub top around my body after realizing I threw it on backwards. Yesterday was clinicals and class, and now I’m starting my stretch of three workdays in a row, seven in the morning to seven in the evening.
Before darting out of the locker room for my shift in the emergency department, I take one last look at my phone, finding a text from my mom.
Mom: The packages have been secured.
Mom: Image
I waste precious seconds tapping on the image, watching as a photo of my three babies fills the screen. Aster, Chrys, and Daffy strapped in the back of my mom’s car, each with a muffin in their hands.
It’s like a photo taken right before a disaster hits.
Lara: They’re going to make a mess of those muffins.
Mom: That’s what vacuums are for, dear. Enjoy your shift.
My mom picks them up on the mornings when I have work and always takes them to the café before whatever fun, educational thing she has planned for them that day. Sometimes they spend the day at a museum, and my kids come back to me telling me facts about prehistoric fish.
Last week, my mom casually introduced them to one of her astronaut friends. He’d let them look at his memorabilia and showed them pictures from the station, and now Daffy is convinced she’s going to be the first woman in space.
“I’ll break it to her,” my mom whispered, eyes shining with admiration for her granddaughter. “Just let her keep this spark for a few days.”
I roll my eyes and shove the phone back into the locker, twisting the combination and hurrying out onto the floor.
“You’re late,” my supervisor says, glancing at me, then at the clock.
I open my mouth to explain — that I have three five-year-olds to get ready in the morning, that it took me too long to change, that my SUV threatened not to start in the university’s parking lot — but I snap it shut, knowing she’s not going to actually care.
“Won’t happen again,” I promise.
“Mm-hmm.” She jerks her head at the nurse at the station, who looks like she’s barely able to stay on her feet. “You’ve got three beds in here right now. Run through rounds and report back to me.”
I go through rounds with the night nurse. She looks like she could lie down on the floor at any moment and go straight to sleep. I only know her vaguely from working together, and I know she has two kids of her own.
It’s always harder during the summers, when they’re home and you feel the loss of time with them. I’m lucky — I get to work three twelve-hour shifts and have the other four days a week free.
The unlucky part is that school and clinicals take up a big chunk of those remaining four days.
Still, it could be much worse, and I know plenty of nursing students with kids who don’t have the benefit of the built-in babysitter grandparents.
My shift flies past. We get two kids with sore throats heading for strep, a man who was building a tree house with his son and accidentally cut himself with a hand saw, and an older woman worried she might be having a heart attack.
I try not to think about that dad building a tree house. About where Jake and I first met. About the amazing tree house he could build for the kids.
What it would look like, watching them work together. Him teaching them all the important elements of building something well, making something safe and high-quality that would last. And I wouldn’t have to worry about him cutting himself with a hand saw.
By the time my shift ends, I’m practically dead on my feet and doing rounds with the newest batch of ED nurses.
The sun is still out as I drive home, and just like the last four years, it feels like summer held off forever before settling in so suddenly it takes me by surprise.
I’ve gotten so used to it being dark by the time I get off that it’s disorienting now to see the sun still up, kids running through sprinklers, grills sizzling, smoke rising up into the sky.
When I pull into the driveway at my parents’ house, it feels like coming home.
“My light!” my dad cries when I walk through the door. As if it’s a summoning spell, my kids come stampeding around the corner, squealing and attaching themselves to me.
“Hey!” my dad says, peeling them off jokingly. “I knew her first!”
He gives me a hug and runs a hand over my hair, then releases me. Aster wraps his hands around one of my thighs and Chrys around the other. Daffy has already disappeared again.
“How was your shift?” my dad asks, raising his eyebrows. “I bet you can’t wait to get out of the ED.”
“Yeah.” I laugh, closing my eyes and thinking about the three blissful months I spent in the obstetrics department. Of course, there were still high-stress moments, but the joy of seeing new life was enough to balance it out. “You’d win that bet.”
“Get in here!” my mom calls from inside the house, somewhere near the kitchen. “I made a caprese salad, and your father grilled up some chicken.”
I walk slowly with a kid on each foot, and my dad follows behind, giving me critiques on form before finally persuading them to let me go.
“Your poor mother is exhausted,” he says, chiding them, “a day in the ED is like five normal days.”
“What’s the ED?” Aster asks, his little face wide open with curiosity. I slide into a seat at the breakfast bar and try not to think about how much he looks like Jake.
If my parents knew Jake, they would have seen the resemblance immediately. Luckily for me, we must have been the only teenagers on the planet to succeed in keeping our relationship private and our identities hidden.
“Emergency department,” my dad says, plopping a chicken breast on my plate as my mother scoops tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil onto the other half. Then my dad drizzles balsamic over the entire thing.
“Bite?” Daffy asks, appearing at my side.
“Now, come on,” my mom says, putting her hands on her hip. “This is the exact same thing you had for dinner just an hour ago?—”
“How can you ask politely?” I ask, already turning with the food on my fork.
“Bite, please ,” Daffy says, raising her little eyebrows, and I lean forward, popping a bite of mozzarella into her mouth.
When I turn back to them, my dad is beaming, and my mom is shaking her head.
“I swear,” she mutters, “that girl is a race car with all that energy. She could eat all day.”
“Can I be a race car?” Daffy asks, her voice rising, which makes us laugh.
Mom takes the kids into the other room to get their things together, and I work on my plate of food. I’m never hungry after shifts, but if I don’t eat, their feelings will be hurt, and I’d probably start to feel hungry right as I was falling asleep.
Dad and I talk about the horrors of working emergency, and half an hour later, I’m sliding into the driver’s seat with a container of food for Zachery.
“You tell that boy to be careful,” my mom says, leaning in and kissing me on the cheek, “with whatever he’s doing next.”
“I will.” I take the kiss and pass it on to my dad’s cheek when he steps up to the window. “Thanks for everything.”
I say it every night, but I’m never sure if they understand what I’m thanking them for. It’s not just for watching the kids, or for making dinner, but generally making my life possible. Being there for me when I told them I was going to keep the baby.
Being there for me when that baby turned into three.
Accepting it when I said I wanted to become a nurse, even as I’d worried my dad might not like it, might want me to strive for something better .
“Hospitals don’t run without nurses,” he’d said, kissing me on the forehead the day I told him. “And I think you’d be great at it. I’m happy to see you going after something you love.”
My mom, on the other hand, had looked like she was swallowing back her unease about the decision. Without even asking, I’d known what was going on in her mind. I already did a lot of thankless work as a single mother of three, and I wanted to add a stressful, thankless job on top of that?
They would have been happy to front my expenses for the rest of my life. But I’d always known I wanted to make my own way, and after the care I received from the obstetrics nurses when I was pregnant, on bed rest, and then delivering the triplets, I know that’s what I want to do with my life.
Thanks to my parents tiring them out, the drive is quiet, with only Aster asking me a few questions about birds and how they can balance on the telephone wires.
When I get home, I find a note from Zachery. He got the safari tour guide job and left for the airport earlier, so he didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. The kids are disappointed but also used to this kind of exit from Uncle Zach.
An hour later, I have them tucked into bed and snoring, and I manage to wash my face before falling into my own bed. When I roll over into the middle, I tell myself I’m grateful for the space.
I tell myself that another person in this bed would make it too crowded.
For the next five minutes before I fall asleep, I try to stop thinking about strong arms around me, what it felt like to fall asleep next to someone I trusted with everything.