My mother-in-law had made her feelings painfully clear from the moment my twins were born.
To her, only my son mattered.
Minutes later, a nurse rushed to my daughter’s bassinet and revealed something the rest of us had completely failed to notice.
Nurse Sarah reached into my daughter’s bassinet and lifted her so quickly that the blanket slipped from her tiny body and fell onto the floor.
“Call neonatal!”
Her voice sliced through the recovery room.
My husband, Tom, froze where he stood, our son still cradled carefully in his arms.
My mother-in-law, Margot, took a step backward as Sarah pressed two fingers against my daughter’s chest.
“What is it?” I asked, my voice shaking.
Sarah tilted my baby’s head, placed a tiny oxygen mask over her face, and shouted toward the hallway.
“I need oxygen now!”
The room instantly erupted into motion.
Another nurse rushed through the door, pushing a medical cart. Seconds later, a doctor followed.
Someone pulled a curtain around the bassinet, but I could still see my daughter’s tiny feet beneath it.
They were blue.
I tried to sit up.
A sharp wave of pain tore through my abdomen.
“What’s happening to her?”
Tom placed our son in the nearest crib and moved toward the nurses.
Sarah immediately held up a hand.
“Give us room.”
“Is she breathing?” Tom asked.
“Not enough.”
The doctor listened to our daughter’s chest.
“Respiratory distress. Her heart rate is dropping.”
My vision began to narrow.
I had been in labor for 36 hours. When the doctor finally placed both babies on my chest, they had each cried.
I knew they had.
But now I couldn’t hear my daughter at all.
The only sound was the steady hiss of oxygen.
“We need to move her,” the doctor said.
Sarah raised the bassinet rails.
“Wait,” I begged. “Please. Let me see her.”
Sarah brought my daughter close enough that I could reach out and touch her hand.
Her fingers were cold.
“Stay with me, Ivy,” I whispered.
We had chosen her name months earlier.
Margot had hated it from the beginning.
She said it sounded weak.
Sarah squeezed my shoulder.
“We’re taking her to the NICU.”
Then my daughter disappeared through the door.
I tried to follow.
My body refused.
I had lost too much blood during delivery, and my legs began shaking before I could even reach the floor.
Tom caught me.
“Sit down.”
“Go with her.”
“Kris—”
“Go with our daughter.”
He looked toward the hallway.
Then he looked at his mother.
Margot was still standing beside our son’s crib, both hands resting on the clear plastic sides.
She looked protective.
Possessive.
Almost as if the emergency unfolding around her had nothing to do with her.
Tom followed my eyes.
Something in his expression changed.
“Mom.”
Margot looked up.
“You should stay with the boy,” she said.
Tom stared at her.
“My daughter can’t breathe.”
“The doctors have her.”
“Her name is Ivy.”
Margot’s expression tightened.
“This isn’t the time.”
“No,” Tom said quietly. “It is exactly the time.”
He started toward the door.
Margot caught his sleeve.
“The family is here to meet your son.”
Tom looked down at her hand and pulled away.
“Get out.”
She blinked.
“What?”
“Leave the hospital.”
Her voice became softer.
“You’re emotional.”
“My daughter almost died while you were pushing her bassinet away.”
“I did no such thing.”
“You moved her.”
“She was in the way.”
The words hit the room like broken glass.
Tom pointed toward the door.
“Get out.”
Margot gave a quiet laugh.
It was the same laugh she used whenever someone forgot who paid for things.
She had used it at our wedding when my father questioned why she had chosen the venue without asking us.
She used it when Tom wanted to leave the family business.
And she used it whenever she reminded us that the down payment on our house had come from the Waverly estate.
