Twins Under His Tree Read Free

two.”
    Again he passed the infant to Francesca who worked at clearing her airway, cleaning her eyes, checking her lungs, hooking her up to the ventilator to help her breathe. When Mitch saw that, a lump rose in his throat.
    â€œI’ve got them,” Francesca reassured Lily. “I’ll be around to give you a report as soon as I can.” Then she pushed the babies away, out another door before Lily even glimpsed them.
    Reluctantly, Mitch released Lily as she collapsed onto the bed, murmuring, “Maybe I should have quit work sooner and stayed in bed. It’s often recommended with twins. But I rested the past two weeks. I kept my feet up as much as I could.”
    Mitch knew he had to keep Lily calm after her ordeal. “You did everything you thought was best. That’s all you could do.”
    Lily surprised him when she caught his hand again and held it tight. “Troy should have been here. He shouldhave seen his girls born. He should have helped me name them. He should have…he should have…”
    â€œHe should have never died,” Mitch filled in.
    Lily bowed her head and finally let the tears fall unchecked. Mitch did the only thing he could—he held her in his arms until she simply couldn’t cry anymore.
    Â 
    Lily had been settled in her hospital room for at least two hours and was growing anxious. Why hadn’t Francesca come yet? Wouldn’t they have told her if something had happened to either of the babies?
    Her gaze landed on Mitch, who was standing at the window. He was as calm as she was agitated. Where did that calm come from after what he’d been through? He’d been presented a Combat Medical Badge, awarded a Silver Star and a Purple Heart, though he never spoke of them. All Troy had told her was that Mitch had been involved in an IED explosion.
    â€œHow do you do it?” she asked, following the train of thoughts in her head.
    Minus his jacket and tie, his tuxedo shirt was rumpled. He turned to look at her. “Do what?”
    â€œStay calm under any circumstances.”
    He shot her a wry half smile. “It’s a learned technique.”
    Interested in anything that would keep her mind off what was going on down the hall, she asked, “Like meditation?”
    Even though she’d worked with Mitch for more than two and a half years, she didn’t know much about him. Just the little Troy had told her. She knew he was forty-five, had been born in Sagebrush—the small town where they both lived about fifteen minutes outsideLubbock—but he had no family there. He’d been deployed to Iraq, injured and changed specialties—from trauma surgery to endocrinology—because he’d lost the fine motor coordination in his hand that he needed to perform surgery. But that was about the extent of her knowledge of his background.
    â€œI learned several techniques,” he replied, running his hand through his jet-black hair. “Meditation was one. Guided imagery was another.”
    Her gaze went to his hand and the ragged scars there. She wanted to ask if he’d learned the techniques when he’d been hurt. Had they been his method of recovering? But that was such personal territory. If he didn’t mention Iraq himself, she knew better than to jump into it.
    In spite of herself, she still remembered gazing into his eyes rather than looking at his nose while he’d coached her. Every time since the day she’d told him she was having twins, she’d felt such an intense…
    She wasn’t sure what it was she felt. Mitch knew things. He’d felt things. She could just instinctively sense that. The compassion he showed her seemed personal, but maybe he was that way with everyone.
    â€œYou know, your friends wanted to stay,” he said.
    Yes, they did. But they all had children and husbands and practices to see to. “I told them there was nothing they could do here. I’m going to