Corinne's Blog

After having just crossed the boarder of Arizona into Nevada on their way to a small, calm, and quaint cabin that sat right outside Helena Montana. Jules’s water broke two weeks before her due date. Her buns had finished cooking and they were ready to come out of the oven. Jule’s doctor had advised her that it was not healthy for her to consider traveling as a woman in her condition, carrying twins and so close to her due date. Yet, Jules was determined to get her last piece of quiet fresh air before it became intoxicated by the screams and dirty diaper pollution the newborns were bound to bring. She’d nagged Duncan until at last he lifted the foot he had earlier ‘put down’ and he packed up their bags and gassed up the car for the ride to the family cabin.

The cabin itself wasn’t as much of a rough it out and get your feet wet cabin as it was a spa. A spa day was exactly what Jules had been craving for weeks since the pains of her having the carry the unborn infants was weighing on her confidence and self esteem. She felt like a cow, she looked like a duplex and she wobbled like a penguin. All signs that the pregnancy had come to term. Duncan Stevens had been dealing with his wife’s deteriorating self esteem for weeks and he was getting tired of her bashing herself. He pained for her to realize that she was still beautiful at this point in her pregnancy as any other point.

To Duncan, Jules was that girl who everyone wanted and he was lucky enough to get. He’d read in a magazine once that in every relationship there was a reacher and a settler. In the case of Duncan and Jules Duncan was a confessed reacher and he was grateful everyday that Jules had settled for him. Duncan went out of his way to give his lovely wife everything she dreamed of and when she’d wanted to go and pamper herself he couldn’t help but tell her yes. Even though the doctor had advised against it.

The car itself was his idea, if he was going to be taking his amazingly pregnant wife on a trip he’d want to have full control if anything went wrong. He’d read in one of his books that planes weren’t good for a pregnant woman’s health and that it was well advised that pregnant women not fly. He’d also wanted to be behind the wheel in case the unexpected happened and they’d need to find a quick hospital. He was exceptionally vigilant behind the wheel and he was the only driver he trusted with such an important load on board. No pilot would steal his right to speed to the nearest hospital when the time came…no way!

But the couple didn’t expect anything bad to happen on the trip and they were determined to get there in about a days time from where they lived in California.

However determined the couple was to have that last thrill they found it was a lot more difficult for them to be happy when the time actually did come and they were in the middle of the dessert with an almost empty tank of gas. Duncan couldn’t help but think of the multiple times that Jules had warned him to stop at a gas station along the way, but he’d wanted to prove her wrong and show her that he could make it to a gas station in the silver state before the tank finally hit that empty ‘e’. Jules hated to admit that her doctor had been right about how unwise it was for her to be traveling at such a late time in her third trimester. But such were the ways of this couple.

Though the parents of the twins are rather important, the twin’s arrival is even more important. After finally making it on the little gas the couple had to the nearest town on that hot day, Duncan and Jules were able to locate a small local hospital.

The hospital building looked a bit like an old school house, it was made up of only four rooms. The front room was the waiting room equipped with a few worn down love seats couches. A little nurse sat at the small dark wood receptionist desk that sat in the corner.

Duncan ran into the hospital as sweaty and hyper as any man might be when he’s been speeding through a dessert trying to find a hospital for his pregnant wife. Right away the little nurse knew why he’d arrived and she provided him with the hospitals only pea green wheelchair. After helping Jules out of the car Duncan wheeled Jules up the hospitals wooden wheelchair ramp. The nurse had Jules sign a quick release and insurance paper then the group continued deeper into the building through a small hallway. Instantly they were met by the main hospital area. Eight medical beds aligned both walls left and right, all were sectioned off by linen to create sixteen separate cubicles. A single aisle acted as a walkways between the beds for the doctor and nurses to walk. Light shown through the beautiful paneled windows and on that surprisingly hot day the buildings air conditioning system was doing an exceptional time making the room feel comfortable and not stuffy. In the very back of the large room were two doors to two back rooms. The back room that stood on the right served as the main doctor’s office the doctors name was written plated in gold on the wood door. The room on the left was used as a special private room for patients. It consisted of a desk, a medical bed, a couple of chairs and a large vintage white medicine cabinet where all the main pharmaceutical products were held that needed to be kept under lock and key. This special room was the room the little nurse escorted Duncan and Jules into she showed the couple the hospital’s bathroom and provided Jules with a handmade pink flowery hospital gown. Jules was surprised to have noticed that the hospital used and reused hospital gowns, this was her first time experiencing anything so provincial but she was in so much pain that she did as the nurse asked and put on the beautiful hospital gown anyway. Duncan would have preferred to bring his children into the world in a more sanitary environment, but by that point both he and Jules knew that their two new small family members wouldn’t be able to wait another forty five minutes for the ride to the next town of significance, Las Vegas.

News spread quickly of the city couple who had arrived at the hospital to have their babies delivered. The towns people were so excited at the rare commotion of this young lad and his screaming wife that they gathered around the hospital windows making it look like a scene from those nativity plays children put on every year for Christmas.

The nurse promptly shut the blue and white striped hospital curtains and attended to getting the doctor prepped for delivery.

The doctor who delivered the twins was old enough to be Duncan and Jules’ father but he looked like a grandfather with the giant magnifying glasses he wore. He assured the young couple that their delivery was in good hands, he being the only physician within the forty mile radius had had the privilege of delivering every newborn in this and the surrounding small towns for the last five years. He boasted at having recently been able to deliver his first born son a month or two previous. This came as a surprise because Jules and Duncan both thought he looked like a man who may have been handsome at one point but whose older look classified him as sexless and infertile. Regardless of his sexual status all that meant nothing when Jule’s contractions got to their strongest and the instructions to push from the doctor were the only goal to get those babies out. Duncan was there by Jule’s side through the whole delivery and it was only after the second baby had been successfully pronounced a girl that his wits about all the blood left him and he fainted a happy new father.

It is now said that the girls came out so fast that the doctor hadn’t even been informed that he’d be delivering twins. The doctor had needed only to sit and catch as first one baby then the other was hatched. Both getting the only color baby clothing this schoolhouse hospital had left, matching tie dyed hats and onesies it was almost impossible to tell which one was which. When Duncan finally came to, he also had had the privilege of being assigned to a medical bed that had been rolled into the private room along side his wife. Duncan thanked the doctor for delivering his daughters and also as embarrassing as fainting might have been he was was grateful that the doctor had had him placed in a bed rather than left passed out of the floor.

“I couldn’t have just left you laying there son, where’s the dignity in that.” The doctor said with a slight snicker.

As embarrassing as the whole ordeal may have been for Duncan he got the courage later to ask the doctor which of his daughters had come out first and was possibly the oldest, the doctor, lets call him Travis only could reply that he’d gotten so mixed up in the moment that it hadn’t occurred to him to take notice.

“The babies were out, and you were down, and your wife was hysterical both in pain and worry…It was like a scene right out of a soap opera!” Doctor Travis recalled.

So Duncan and Jules never worried about the ages of their girls, to them they had both came as a gift in their lives and come birthdays they went out of their way to make both girls feel equally as special at the same time. When confronted with the question ‘who came out first and was therefore older’ Duncan would simply shrug his shoulders and claim that he hadn’t been looking and had missed it and Jules would look at him and smile.

And so that is how Mel and Adalet were brought into the world and so begins their constant struggle to prove themselves the older of the other.