Plus-Size Quadruplets: My EX-Husband Worst Nightmare

Camille's POV

The night my daughter almost died, I was thinking about my thighs.

It's a shameful thing to admit, but it's the truth, and I promised myself a long time ago I wouldn't lie to you, not even about the ugly parts. I was sitting in a plastic chair too narrow for my hips, in a dress I'd chosen that morning because Kyrian liked it on me — liked it, not loved it, there's a difference, and I'd learned to hear the difference the way other women learn to read weather — when Dr. Adeyemi came around the corner with a face that told me before her mouth did.

"Mrs. Voss." She said it twice before it landed. "I need you to look at me."

I nodded. My hands wouldn't stop shaking, so I pressed them flat against my thighs — my too-wide, too-soft thighs, the ones Kyrian's mother once called "healthy" at Thanksgiving in a tone that wasn't a compliment — like that would help anything at all.

"Nancy's bloodwork shows a toxin attacking her red cells. Her body can't keep up. If we don't get her a transfusion in the next few hours, her organs start failing. I won't sugarcoat that."

"Take mine, then." The words came out fast, desperate, before she'd even finished talking. "Take as much as you need, I don't care, just take it."

She didn't answer right away, and the silence scared me worse than a scream would have. "We tested you the moment you came in. Nancy's AB negative, Mrs. Voss. Under one percent of people carry it. Our bank's empty. So is the regional one. We've already called three other hospitals."

"Test me again." I knew how stupid it sounded even as I said it.

"You're O positive. It's not going to match no matter how many times we run it. I'm sorry."

My knees went first. I caught the edge of the nurses' station before the rest of me could follow, and for one absurd second I thought about how Kyrian used to joke I was too much woman to knock over, and how it hadn't felt like a joke in a long time.

"There's something else." She touched my arm, and that's how I knew whatever came next was going to be worse. "Your labs came back positive for pregnancy. About three weeks."

I laughed. One ugly, broken sound. "That's not possible. Three doctors told me after Nancy I'd never carry again. Scarring, they said. I stopped hoping two years ago, after we tried and tried and nothing came of it, after Kyrian stopped even bringing it up because — " I stopped myself before I said the rest out loud, the part where he'd once said, not unkindly, not kindly either, that maybe my body just wasn't built for it twice.

"The body does what it wants sometimes, whether the charts agree or not." Her voice softened, but the next part landed like a slap anyway. "Which is exactly why we can't put you through any procedure with real risk, even if your blood matched. You're not strong enough to gamble with right now. I won't trade one life for two."

Two lives. She said it so plainly, like I wasn't standing there trying to hold my ribs together with my bare hands.

"Kyrian." His name came out like a lifeline. "He's AB negative too. We found out the day Nancy was born."

"Then call him. Now, Mrs. Voss."

My phone felt foreign in my hand, my fingers thick and clumsy, missing the passcode twice before it finally opened. It rang four times and dropped to voicemail. "You've reached Kyrian, leave a message." Flat. Businesslike. A voice for clients, not for me.

"Kyrian, it's Nancy, please, she needs you, call me the second you hear this—" I hung up before the beep finished.

I called again. Voicemail. A fifth time. A seventh. By the tenth I wasn't crying anymore, just staring at the screen, and a small cold thought slid in sideways — it was our anniversary. He'd texted that afternoon, working late, something came up, sorry babe, shorter than what he'd have written two years ago, back when he still reached for my waist in the kitchen and called it his favorite place to put his hands, back before the comments started — small ones, sideways ones, you'd look incredible if you just, trailing off like he was doing me a kindness by not finishing the sentence.

I folded that thought away like a letter I didn't want to read yet. Not tonight. Not with Nancy behind that door, tubes taped to the back of her hand, poison working through her like something with a mind of its own.

Poison. The word snagged the second time I thought it. Who does that to a three-year-old. Vivianne, maybe — no. Vivianne had been with us since the week we brought Nancy home, sang to her in Portuguese when the nightmares came. It wasn't her.

Except Vivianne had asked for the evening off. Her sister's birthday. Which meant I was the one who made dinner — the little chicken stars in broth, Nancy's favorite — stirred by my own hands in my own kitchen an hour before she started seizing on the living room floor. My mind gave me nothing but static and the sound of Nancy screaming.

I called Olivia. My voice broke apart the second she picked up.

"Liv — it's Nancy, they said she needs blood and I'm not a match and Kyrian isn't answering—" And then, without meaning to: "and I'm pregnant, three weeks, I don't even understand how—"

A pause. Half a second.

"Oh my God, Cami." Her voice came back syrupy-soft, almost rehearsed in its warmth. "That's wonderful news. A second baby, after everything you two went through." A little laugh, too light for the moment. "Don't you dare worry about Nancy, okay? She's going to be completely fine. I promise you."

It was a strange thing to promise. Not I'm praying for her. A promise, flat and certain, like she already knew how the night ended.

Dr. Adeyemi walked me to the elevator herself. "Find him. Bring him here yourself if that's what it takes. We're stabilizing her for now, but we need that blood before sunrise."

I don't remember most of the drive. My eyes had gone past crying by the time I turned into our driveway — dry and raw, the kind of dry that comes after you've used up everything you had.

Kyrian's car sat in the garage. He'd been home. The whole time.

I let myself in through the side door. The house was dim, one lamp glowing upstairs. I slipped my heels off at the bottom of the stairs out of old habit, forgetting for one full second that Nancy wasn't asleep upstairs tonight.

That's when I saw them scattered at the foot of the staircase. A pair of heels, one knocked onto its side. A blouse. A bra — deep red lace — hanging off the banister post. Removed in a hurry. I knew that bra. I'd stood in a dressing room with Olivia three months ago, holding it up against her reflection, telling her the red was made for her, paying for it myself because it was her birthday and she was my best friend and I loved her, and some small ugly part of me had thought, standing there, I could never wear that, not with this body, and hated myself for thinking it even then.

Moaning came through as my legs carried me up the stairs before the rest of me caught up. Past our wedding photo. Past Nancy's crooked crayon drawing — Mommy, Daddy, and me. My hand found the bedroom door, open maybe three inches, gold light spilling out in a thin seam. Kyrian's voice came through that gap, low, unhurried, saying a name into the dark.

It wasn't mine.

My fingers wouldn't work right. It took two tries to push the door, and when it finally swung open — when I finally saw exactly what five years had been reduced to in that lamp-lit room — everything in me went still and cold at once. For one long, suspended second, I forgot my daughter was fighting for her life across town.