Page 73 of Christmas With A Stranger

Mackie doesn't say anything, but when I look over, her eyes are open, and she's watching me.

"Come here."

"You take the bed."

"I'm not going anywhere. Will you share it with me?"

I lie down beside her carefully, staying clear of her middle. She turns onto her side and eases herself against me. I get an arm around her and pull her close without touching her incision.

"Just hold me."

So I do. I get up a few times through the night to check on the babies, and every time I come back, she makes room for me.

At six, Bettina comes in with a coffee for herself and takes a look at the two of us, gray and wrecked in the flat light.

"You two did that with no help all night." She drinks. "That's the whole test."

The car seat tests take ninety minutes each. They strap the babies in upright with the leads still stuck to them and let the machine watch. I stand through both of them, and I watch the numbers hold. Mackie tells me twice to sit down, and I don't.

Then they weigh them. Graham is five pounds four ounces, and Hildie is five even.

The bag Lis packed on August fifth finally gets used for what it was meant for. We put them in the going-home outfits. Graham's has a G stitched on the chest, and Hildie's has an H. At some point, Lis must have taken hers in to have it stitched to match her brother’s without telling either of us.

The bassinets are in Mackie's room at the condo, standing exactly where I set them up in July, down to the angle. I stop in the doorway with a car seat in each hand.

I built them before I ever met the two children who were supposed to fill them. Now I'm the one carrying them both through the door.

We lay them down. Graham falls asleep first. Hildie follows a minute later, and the room goes still.

Lis stands in the hall with her fingers over her mouth.

"Don't get used to it," she whispers.

But for one long stretch, both of them sleep in the two bassinets I put together with my own hands, and the whole condo goes quiet.

My departure keeps getting pushed back. It was before they arrived, then it was once they were stable, then it was after they left the NICU, and now we've been discharged for a full twenty-four hours, and I still don't have a return flight booked.

I go see Hildie every other day, and Mackie has come with me once. She’s done better every week since I brought her back.

Thursday night Mackie stands in the kitchen doorway with Hildie against her shoulder and asks it straight out.

"Since you're staying indefinitely, it seems, what do you think about staying over here? I can't do both of them at two."

"I can do that."

Lis' couch is a foot too short for me. Sometime after midnight, I give up trying to find a position where neither my neck nor my knees are hanging off something.

I wake to Mackie's hand on my shoulder.

"Carson."

I get upright too fast. "Everything okay?"

"They're both asleep."

I look down the hall toward her room. "You okay?"

"I'm fine. You look ridiculous."