CHAPTER FOUR
Brandy Thompson bent down and scrubbed the purple juice stain off the linoleum-covered kitchen floor. As usual, her two girls kept her hopping. A year ago today, she’d became a widow, losing her doctor-husband to a deadly car wreck. All of her kinfolk were dead, so she had to raise the girls on her own. It made for rather lonely nights, after the kids were fast asleep.
Thank God for the twins.
She would’ve have lost it, would have given up, without them.
“Mommy, Rhonda bit my arm!” Little Rachael came running into the kitchen, mouth wide-open, screaming, favoring her right arm.
“Let mommy see it, Rachael,” Brandy soothed, as she looked down and saw the hunk out of her arm.
“Rhonda, come here and see what you did to your sister!” yelled Brandy as she leaned down and kissed the bite mark. “Mommy kissed it to make it better. Let me grab some antibiotic cream.”
Rachael yelped harder. “The white kind, Mommy! The kind that makes it stop hurting?”
“Yes, Rachael.” Brandy strode to the kitchen counter, opened the cabinet, and grabbed the tube of antibiotic ointment. Suddenly, a sharp pain ran through her left breast. “Dang, the pain is back; I shouldn’t have skipped those mammograms,” She grimaced and forced herself to walk back over to the other side of the counter, where Rachael was sobbing, guarding her right arm. “If only I could get that mammogram scheduled,” muffled Brandy
Skipped mammograms, a bad diet, and a house that needed repairs overwhelmed the single mother of twin girls. Her late husband had done everything for her. But she could eat the yogurt and fruit in the refrigerator instead of driving thru Patty’s Place restaurant’s drive-thru every morning. The two greasy bacon biscuits were killing her. What was she thinking? An RN knew that sodium nitrates were thought to cause cancer; it had been one of the test questions on her Oncology rotation final exam.
She hated to admit that the calorie-packed fast food provided temporary comfort for her. Added with the couple of pots of strong, Kona coffee which she drank every day, she had a temporary fix to slide her to the next day of life as a windowed mother of bouncing twin girls.
Rachael tapped Brandy on the leg and yelled harder, “My medicine, mommy! It hurts so badly!”
“Let’s put the cream on it.” Brandy compassionately said. She squeezed the white cream onto her fingertips. Smoothing the cream onto the bite mark on Rachael’s right arm, she saw Rhonda turn the corner, her eyes down in guilt. “Rhonda, apologize to your sister and give her a hug. You’re lucky to have each other,” Brandy scolded.
The two three-year-olds almost knocked each other over, tugging at their necks, before they finally paused to exchange slobbery kisses. They had made up. They turned and ran through the kitchen floor, making a right to enter the hallway.
To the toy room, as it always is after a fight, thought Brandy.
Brandy often wondered what ever became of the Amish girl, Rachael, who was the girls’ real mother. She’d been working in ER when they had come barreling in the door, and her husband had been the ER doctor. They’d been praying for a baby for ten years, but she was told that she couldn’t get pregnant. They had spent thousands of dollars, trying to get surrogates, but all the surrogates had gotten cold feet and backed out, leaving Brandy and her husband devastated.
“Get rid of the baby, please! I want to go home. I was in Rumspringa. I am a teenager myself. Please take the baby.” The beautiful, blonde-haired Amish girl had pleaded.
Being that Brandy had seen many a mother not want a child, she had been a little cold toward the Amish couple. She had remembered saying, “You guys live off the land, serve God unconditionally, and don’t drive cars. You can handle a baby better than the rest of the world.” Her words had been true, although expressed a little harsh.
The young Amish girl had fallen down to the floor, cradling her stomach with her left hand, yelling as the contractions hit her. Between the contractions, which were getting closer together, she had sobbed, “Gott, forgive me. Please take the baby! Please give her to someone that’s praying for a baby!”
Brandy had been praying for a baby.
For ten years.
Brandy remembered it like it was yesterday, as she had gotten the young girl back into the hospital bed, trying to calm her down. There had been more than one heartbeat in there. Brandy was in panic. Although the young Amish girl didn’t know it, she was having triplets, but they had to be small.
They would have to fight for their lives.
What a pity, Brandy had thought.
Brandy had left the room, angry at God. How could God not give her a child, but give a young Amish girl, who got drunk and pregnant during Rumspringa, three babies?
And to beat it all, the girl hadn’t even had the first doctor’s check-up. Why, if God had blessed her with one baby, she’d been an hour early for every appointment. She would have been ecstatic.
The rest of the evening was like any other evening: she clocked out, swung by the liquor store for a six-pack of beer, and headed home. She had her feet prompted up on the living room coffee table, remote in hand, flipping through the channel line-up, when her husband came walking in, juggling a pink blanket in each arm. An older Amish woman followed, as did a bearded-Amish man.
This couldn’t be happening? Brandy had thought. There is no way that they are getting away with this; it is illegal! A muffled conversation had entered the hallway, but Brandy couldn’t make out what they were saying.
She had gone back to watching television when she had remembered that there had been three babies. Had someone left one of the babies in the Labor & Delivery nursery?
She downed her beer as the Amish man and woman were shown to the door by her husband. Now, five years later, she still had those two bundles of joy, and the third baby was being raised by his grandmother.
But Brandy often wondered if the girls knew that they had shared the same belly with another baby girl. Did the baby girl look like the girls? The girls were identical, so surely their sister looked the same. The girls hated pears and peas, so surely their sister hated peas, too.
The sharp pain stabbed her in the breast again. “I hate mammograms,” uttered Brandy, as she scrubbed the two high chairs. As usual, the peas were all over the floor. She needed to stop buying them since the girls always spit them out.
The pain returned, taking her breath. She had finally gotten a mammogram, and was awaiting word of the results from her late husband’s friend, Dr. Graber, who was also a neighbor. He had promised to swing by to tell her the results. He always brought salt-water taffy for the girls. They squealed every time they seen him, with the hope of a sugar rush.
The doorbell rang just as Brandy was tossing the pea-covered rag into the sink. Her stomach tilted. Let’s hope that it is good news.
She willed her legs to the front door and opened the door to see Dr. Graber standing there, a warm smile on his face.
It couldn’t be that bad, thought Brandy, making note of his relaxed mood.
He extended a hug and said, “I got my girls some salt-water taffy, but I need to talk to you about the mammogram.
“Nothing major, I hope.”
His tone lowered, “I’m not for sure. I need to examine you more.”
Her heart dropped. “You mean you found something?”
“A small cyst, but with your family history of non-malignant cysts, I am sure that you’ve got one now, too.” He smiled and extended his arm around her. “Now, your husband left you a lot of money. You are taken care of if you need time off.” He arched his brow and reprimanded her, “No more skipping these yearly mammograms.”
Brandy flinched. “I know. I am a workaholic. And I guess it is the nurse in me; I think I’m immortal.”
He agreed, his blue eyes twinkling under the high-ceiling
’s show lights. “Yes, most nurses do that, but some end up clocking out forever. Please remember to take care of you. You have two girls that need you.”
Brandy laughed. “Oh, don’t worry; if anything happens to me, I have an Amish family that has agreed to take them. I’ve known them since the girls were born.” Again, she thought she was immortal. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”
“Well, as you probably know, I want to do a biopsy on the cyst. Just to rule cancer out.” He felt like he had to push her, because she was thinking that something like cancer couldn’t happen to her. He’d lost two nurses to cancer in the past two years. He wouldn’t have the disease take another.
She smiled, her blue eyes sparkling. “Sure, but I can’t do it until the end of the month.”
His face tightened. “Let’s do it in the morning. Aren’t you off half a day?”
She shrugged, thinking about her busy schedule. “The girls are having their winter play at the daycare. Can we do it later? I promise that it can’t be cancer. Everyone in my family, but me, has had two non-malignant cysts.” Seeing the insistence on his handsome face, she sighed and added. “Okay, but I need to do it first thing in the morning. The girls’ play, teacher-greet, and luncheon are at noon.”
He was relieved, his mouth tipping a gentle smile as he said, “Fine. I will see you in the morning.” He hugged her, and reached into his lab coat, grabbing two small boxes of colorful salt-water taffy. “Don’t give them too much sugar before bedtime.”
Brandy’s eyes glistened, and she giggled. “Oh, I’ve already cleaned up peas, nursed a boo-boo, and scrubbed a juice spill. Two pieces each!”
He gave a departing smile and patted her on the back. “Good plan. I’ll be praying for you, and I’ll see you first thing in the morning.”
That would be a nightmare, to have to give the girls to the Amish family. Their real father, a stocky-looking, Amish-turned-Englisch man, named Elijah, had stormed the hospital Labor & Delivery unit, staking out all nurses that had adopted children the age of three. Jeremiah, his Amish friend, who had covered for him, had his mother raising the third baby. He’d lied to his mother about fathering the baby, but according to the Labor & Delivery Nurses, the biker man that was looking for one of the girls sure looked mean and determined, so she could see why he had been scared into covering for him.
Brandy often wondered why such a mean, bitter man wanted his baby back. What was he going to do: put her on the back of his Harley? He wasn’t a good fit for the girls anyway. They were both hyperactive, and Brandy supposed that their sister was the same. God had intervened and placed the babies where they needed to be. It was a done deal. Two of the girls were hers, and the Amish woman had the third one.
Having a conscience, there was no way that Brandy would have taken all three of the girl’s babies. Why, what if she changed her mind, and wanted them back?
Brandy would never give up her babies; she’d wanted ten years to get a baby. That was why Jeremiah’s parents and she made a pact to never say anything, except for that his mother was raising Rachael’s baby. They weren’t really lying, for Renee, the third child, was Rachael’s daughter.
Elijah had searched the hospital several times, but had come up empty-handed. Luckily, he had not been told that she worked in ER, and not Labor & Delivery. Would he try to take the girls, if he knew where they were? Brandy hated thinking about it because the girls were thriving. Hopefully, she would be, too, once the cancer test came back negative.
The End. The 2nd volume will be out on February 18th.
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