Chapter 321 Franklin fainted

Chapter 321 Franklin fainted
Everything moved quickly after that. She was taken through to the labor ward with Franklin right beside her, his hand finding hers and staying there, his voice low and steady in her ear even when his own heart was clearly hammering away behind his ribs.

He said whatever came to him, that she was doing so well, that he was right there, that she was the strongest person he had ever known, and whether or not any of it actually helped, the fact that his voice was there helped, and she held onto it.

The gynecologist looked up at one point, her tone matter-of-fact but not unkind. "If you want to come see, you can. Come watch your baby arrive."

Franklin moved forward without hesitating, stepping around to where he could see, and the moment the baby's head appeared, that small, perfect, impossible crown of life pressing into the world for the first time, the room tipped sideways.

Franklin grabbed the nearest surface.

The dizziness that took him was total and immediate, the kind that doesn't negotiate, and he stood there gripping the edge of the bed with both hands and breathing very carefully through his mouth while Cassie, still in the middle of the hardest thing she'd ever done, somehow found the presence of mind to notice.

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Franklin came back to consciousness the way you do when your body has decided things for you all at once, disoriented, the ceiling unfamiliar for just a half second before the sounds of the room rushed in and told him exactly where he was.

A nurse was crouched beside him, her hand on his arm, her voice even and professional.

"Mr. Roth. Are you alright?"

He didn't answer her. His head snapped sideways and found the midwife across the room and found Cassie. She was still there, still pushing through something that made his chest cave in just to witness and he was on his feet before he'd fully decided to stand, crossing to her side and taking her hand in both of his.

"Sweetheart." His voice came out rougher than he intended. "What do I do? Tell me what to do."

There was nothing to do. He knew that, somewhere underneath the helplessness. He felt ashamed to have fainted earlier, but it was as if all the pain Cassie was feeling had passed through him all at once.

He couldn't take any of it from her, couldn't step in front of it or negotiate it away or solve it the way he solved everything else, and that fact sat in him like a stone.

He held her hand and stayed close and told himself that being present was something, even when it felt like not enough.

When the midwife turned to him with the first baby cradled carefully in her arms and offered him to Franklin, he took the infant with the careful, reverent hands of a man holding something he doesn't fully trust himself not to break.

He looked down at that small, perfect, impossibly new face, remembering the first time he held Tristan, and the tears came before he had any warning, welling up and spilling over without asking permission.

"He looks just like me," he whispered.

From the bed, another cry tore through the room, sharp and raw and announcing the arrival of something that couldn't wait any longer, and Franklin moved without thinking, stepping to Cassie's side and placing the first baby gently against her belly.

Her hand came up immediately, finding the infant even through her exhaustion, pressing against him with the instinctive certainty of a mother who has already claimed what's hers.

The nurses worked around her, and she let them, and her eyes stayed on the baby on her stomach.

"They're identical," Franklin said, and his voice had gone very quiet, the way voices do when the moment is too large for regular volume.

He was holding the second one now, moving toward Cassie, and the tears were still sliding down his face without any attempt on his part to stop them. He didn't care. He had stopped caring about that approximately thirty seconds after the first one arrived.

Cassie took the second baby with arms that were shaking just slightly from the effort of everything her body had just accomplished, and she looked between them.

This small, perfect pair, two entirely new people who hadn't existed in the world this morning, and the smile that crossed her face was the most tired and the most complete expression Franklin had ever seen on her.

"Finally," she breathed. "It's over."

Her eyes closed.

Just like that, as though her body had been waiting for those exact words to give itself permission, she let go and went under, not dramatically, not with any fanfare, just the quiet, total surrender of someone who has given everything they had and is now done.

Franklin stood over her for a long moment, watching her breathe, before he pulled himself back into the practical world and started doing what needed doing.

He arranged for food to be ready when she woke. He spoke to the nurses. He supervised the twins being cleaned and settled and checked over with the focused, attentive energy of a man who has found the one thing he can actually be useful for right now.

And then he picked up his phone.

He called his parents, both sets, the family he was born into and the family that had chosen him, and then he opened the group chat, the one that had started as a handful of people and had grown into something none of them had a proper word for except the one Cassie had given it, and he typed out the news.

The responses came back so fast it was almost funny, piling on top of each other in the way that only happens when a group of people have all been waiting for the same message.

Congratulations!

We are on our way.

Send the location.

Debbie's message came through a beat after the others. Nathan is in the middle of a surgery. We'll come when he's out.

Franklin froze instantly and his response to her was not only different, but also swift.