Chapter 209 THE TWINS ARRIVED EARLY

Chapter 209 THE TWINS ARRIVED EARLY
POV: Brittany

The pain woke me before the sound of my own voice did, sharp enough to cut through six weeks of careful, controlled pregnancy anxiety in a single second.

"David."

He was awake before I finished saying his name, moving the way he'd moved that first night when the camera in my room went dark, the same controlled urgency, now compressed into something far more immediate.

"How bad," he said, already pulling on clothes, already reaching for his phone, moving through the dark room with the same fast, focused precision I used to only see from him during a crisis.

"Bad enough." I pressed my hand flat against my stomach, waiting for the wave to pass, and it didn't pass the way the practice contractions Dr. Reeves had warned me about were supposed to pass. It built instead, sharper, closer together than anything I'd read about in any of the books Elena kept leaving on my nightstand.

"It's early," David said, and I could hear him trying to keep his voice level, failing slightly. "Six weeks early."

"I know how math works, David."

"Sorry. Sorry." He crossed the room and helped me up, one arm firm around my back. "Can you walk?"

"I can walk."

We didn't wake the house. There wasn't time, and David had already texted Dr. Reeves before we'd made it down the hallway, his security team meeting us at the car with a speed that told me they'd been half expecting this exact scenario for weeks, the size discrepancy between the twins monitored so closely these past months that everyone in this family had quietly prepared for early arrival without ever saying it out loud.

Elena appeared in the hallway anyway, robe thrown over her nightgown, hair still loose around her shoulders, some instinct in her waking her the moment the house shifted even slightly out of its normal rhythm.

"Go back to bed," I told her through gritted teeth, another contraction building. "It's too early to wake everyone."

"It is exactly the right time to wake everyone," Elena said, already reaching for her phone. "I'll call Leo. He'll want to alert the security team properly, and someone needs to sit with the household staff so the whole mansion doesn't fall apart while you two are gone."

"Elena."

"Go," she said, waving both of us toward the door, her voice steady even though I could see her hands weren't quite as steady as her voice. "I'll handle everything here. Just go."

David squeezed my hand once, grateful, and we left her standing in the hallway, already dialing, already taking charge the way she'd taken charge of every crisis this family had survived over the past year.

Dr. Reeves met us at the hospital within twenty minutes, which felt both impossibly fast and impossibly slow at once, the specific distortion of time that happens when your body is doing something you have no control over.

"How far apart," she asked, already examining me.

"Four minutes," David answered, because I couldn't quite manage full sentences by that point.

"You're in labor," Dr. Reeves confirmed, and something in her voice, calm but sharpened at the edges, told me she'd known this was a possibility longer than she'd let on during our appointments. "Given the size discrepancy we've been tracking, I want you prepped for a C-section as a precaution. I'd rather have the option ready than need it and not have it."

"Is that necessary?" David asked.

"It's precautionary," she said. "I want to be careful, not alarmed. Let's get her settled first."

I gripped David's hand through the next contraction hard enough that I heard him hiss through his teeth, and he didn't pull away, didn't even flinch beyond that single sharp breath.

"Talk to me," I said, when the wave passed.

"About what?"

"Anything. I need something that isn't this."

"Okay." He thought for a second, and then, absurdly, started telling me about the residency portal Leo had been building, some argument he'd overheard between Leo and Daisy about video file compression that had apparently gone on for three straight days, and I laughed despite everything, a short, breathless sound that turned into a groan halfway through as the next contraction hit.

Hours passed like that, contraction and breath and David's voice filling the space between them with stories about nothing, about Elena's garden, about the twins' names we still hadn't fully decided on, about anything that wasn't the fear sitting underneath both of us.

At one point a nurse asked if we had names picked out, a routine question meant to fill space during a long labor, and David looked at me before answering.

"We have ideas," he said. "We haven't settled on the order."

"The order of what?"

"Long story," I managed, before the next contraction stole my ability to explain anything more complicated than a groan.

Somewhere around hour three, David's phone buzzed against the side table, and he glanced at it without letting go of my hand.

"Elena," he said. "The whole mansion's awake now. Leo's already run three separate security checks on the hospital perimeter, apparently, just out of habit."

"Old habits," I managed.

"Good habits, in this case," he said, and I would have laughed if another contraction hadn't chosen that exact moment to arrive.

Dr. Reeves checked in every twenty minutes or so, calm and steady, narrating my progress in a voice meant to keep both of us grounded. Six centimeters. Seven. The specific rhythm of labor settling into something almost bearable, almost survivable, until it wasn't anymore.

It was near the end, deep into labor, that Dr. Reeves' expression changed.

I saw it happen in real time, the shift from careful calm into something more urgent, the specific professional stillness of a doctor managing a situation that had just become more complicated than the plan allowed for.

"What's wrong," David said, his voice going tight.

"Twin B's heart rate is dropping," Dr. Reeves said, already moving, already calling for additional staff, her voice carrying a controlled urgency that cut straight through the room. "We need to move to the OR now. This isn't precautionary anymore."

The room filled with motion, nurses appearing from nowhere, my bed suddenly rolling, machines being wheeled alongside me, and through all of it David stayed exactly where he was, hand locked around mine, refusing to let the movement separate us even as someone tried, gently, to guide him toward the waiting area.

I tried to focus on his face instead of the ceiling tiles blurring past overhead, instead of the sound of monitors beeping in a rhythm that no longer matched what Dr. Reeves had described as normal a moment ago. His jaw was tight, his eyes fixed on mine, the same controlled focus I remembered from the night the camera in my room went dark, from the gala floor, from every crisis this family had somehow survived by refusing to let go of each other.

"I'm not leaving," he said, to whoever had tried to redirect him, his voice flat and final in a way I recognized from the surveillance room, from the courtroom, from every moment this past year when he'd decided something wasn't negotiable.

"Sir, we need to prep for surgery quickly, and typically family waits just outside-"

"I'm not leaving," he said again, and something in his tone made the nurse simply nod and keep moving instead of arguing further.

They wheeled me toward the OR doors, and David walked beside the bed the entire way, gowned up faster than I'd ever seen him move, his hand never once loosening around mine even as the doors swung open ahead of us, bright light spilling out into the hallway like something waiting to swallow us whole.

"I need you to stay with me," he said, and his voice broke on the last word, the first time I'd heard it break since I'd known him, since the surveillance room, since the courtroom, since all of it. "Both of you. All three of you." He looked down at me, eyes wet, refusing to blink them clear. "That's not a request."