And then she woke when there was no sound: why was there no sound? Had she done something wrong, were they suffocating? Were they breathing, had they died? She placed a hand on each baby and waited for the rise and fall, the sound of air being drawn in, a sign of life. Under the harsh light, under her two hands they breathed, they moved, they lived.
Lauren’s heart slowed by degrees. She thought of all the people that would be heartbroken if she let them die. Her gran, his mother, his father and hers. Patrick’s sister Ruthie and the cousins, Sonny and Daisy. The funeral, how she did not want to go through that or watch Patrick go through it. Was this the love, this fear of them dying? Perhaps it was. She lay with her eyes open, unable to stop a series of appalling ideas from flashing in her mind. Dropping them on their heads on the hospital floor. Crashing the car with them in it. A plastic nappy bag on the face, obscuring the airways in seconds while her back was turned. These things were so easy, so quick, and they actually happened, they were real. She was right to be scared. She looked at the babies, fixing them in her memory, their personalities emerging already—Riley frowning in his sleep, dissatisfied with something. Morgan, abandoned to it, relaxed and satiated. I will never forget this, she thought.
They were asleep. Sleep when they sleep. And she wanted to watch them to make sure they kept breathing but she clicked off like a light.
She dreamed of the bird and the cat again and awoke drenched in sweat and dread. How long had she slept? Impossible to know. The curtain between her bed and the next had been drawn across once more. This time there was no mistake: there was a woman in the next cubicle. The lamp inside was lit; she could see a silhouette on the curtain, long thin shadows stretched out to the ceiling. A creaky voice began to sing an unfamiliar song.
As she was a-walking her father’s walk aye-o
As she was a-walking her father’s walk,
She saw two pretty babes playing the ball
Lay me down me dilly dilly downwards
Down by the greenwood side-o
And the woman had two babies, Lauren was sure. There, the sound of two together, both cooing and grunting, as if they were singing along with the strange lullaby.
She said pretty babes if you was mine aye-o
She said pretty babes if you was mine
I’d dress you up in silken fine
Lay me down me dilly dilly downwards
Down by the greenwood side-o
Lauren felt an urge to visit the toilet, a sudden pressure on her bladder strong enough for her to answer it with a movement a bit too fast for her body. She swung her legs out of bed. Her knees buckled as she stood, but she held herself up with both hands on the bed rails. She perched there, testing herself. She could walk; she was just a bit unsteady. There was no sunburst of blood on the sheet. The muscles in her pelvic floor, cut and torn and sewn up, held her in place for now and she took her hands from the bed, allowing her feet to take their burden back. She checked the babies, still breathing, feather breaths on her cheek. Blood rushed from her head to serve her limbs and she waited for the feeling to pass, the floor to cease shifting under her like the deck of a sea vessel.