breathe | r lewandowski

23

At first I assumed she had just confused me with another new father. Müller was a common last name here in Germany and it wouldn't have come as a surprise to me if in fact there were five other babies in the same room as I, with the last name of Müller.

However before I could ask the nurse, she had left.

It crossed my mind for a few moments, making me wonder if these were my children, or if my set of twins weren't those two with the jet black hair across the room. But no, the sparkle in their eye was identical to Jagger's and I knew, without a doubt, that these were my twins.

I stared at them for a while, wondering how they felt - if they felt at all. It was beginning to dawn on me that I was now responsible for these two tiny beings, and as much as I felt proud, I felt equally as guilty. Guilty in the sense that they would carry my genes, and maybe one day carry the depressing weight on their shoulders and the suffocating mass inside their head.

I prayed otherwise.

I stood and watched my children, time passing much faster than I was even aware of. I felt like the world had shifted all of a sudden right under my feet, and yet as I gazed at my children it was as if no time was passing at all.

I decided to go and visit Jagger again. I hoped she'd be able to talk to me, if she was even awake. I wanted to know why she didn't tell me she was in labour, or even pass the message on as soon as possible, but I didn't know what happened until I arrived at the hospital.

Leaving the babies after a nurse came into the room, I walked back up the stairs to Jagger's room. I pushed back my hair and pulled the sleeves of my jumper over my hands, walking into the room with my head down.

"Jag-"

Before me was Thomas, along side, and extremely close to Jagger. So close, that their hands were touching, though not just touching, their fingers were individually intertwined so neatly, sat on her lap as he pressed his forehead against hers and gazed into her eyes in a way that only I should ever do.

She looked up at me, a desperate and lost expression on her face that seemed to almost mock me. She didn't know I was here, that I even know that she had given birth.

Thomas pushed himself away from Jagger, rising to his feet, moving faster than I had ever seen him move before. His eyes darted across the room, back and forth between Jagger and I as he pushed his hands behind his back in an innocent manner, even though he was anything but innocent.

"What the hell is going on in here?"

Thomas stayed silent, the pressure of the room thickening as my voice blasted through the ear drums of both of them, equally shivering in the wrath of my sudden anger.

"Are you going to have the decency to answer me? One of you?" I asked, my gaze flickering between them before landing on Jagger, "Or maybe I'll ask Mario. Because he seems to be the only one that ever tells me anything around here."

"Don't speak to her like that, Robert."

I almost laughed at Thomas. I thought he was joking, the way that he suddenly decided to play the knight in shining armour. Though his stance before me, in front of Jagger, posed nothing close to a threat, only a sprinkling of humour amongst a dry desert of heartbreak.

"You know how I found out you were even in labour?" I said, walking straight past Thomas who pathetically tried to stop me by placing a hand on my chest, which I simply threw off me.

Jagger stared at me, her eyes wide in fear and shock. Whatever she had been hiding, she didn't plan for it to come out the way it had.

"From Mario. I found out you had been emitted to hospital and I drove straight here, running so many red lights, taking so many one way turns and breaking the law for you and those babies and you didn't even have the decency to call me yourself?"

Nothing was said.

"And the letters. The messages, all the phone calls that I made to you every single day to try and show you that I still care about you, you threw them all back in my face with a response of white noise."

I followed Jagger's eyes as she looked up at Thomas for help. He didn't know what to say, I could tell. His eyes were darting back and forth in panic while Jagger laid still and quiet, though the clear gloss over her eyes told me that she still felt something.

But it was too late, because in the time that I had waited for her to respond to me, to tell me something, anything, I had gone cold again. And I felt nothing at all.

"If there was one time that I kept up hope about you giving me a second of your time, it was when our children were being born, Jagger."

The way she looked at me broke my cold, dead heart. The way her eyes glimmered so mercilessly was powerful enough to shatter something ice cold, and that had never happened before. My heart broke in two, and it felt like my mind had been split down the middle along with it.

I didn't know what to think, but the more I did think, the more I came to realise.

I rose to my feet, backing away from Jagger. She didn't move, although I hardly expected anything more from her.

I walked over to the door, looking over at Thomas who stood a few feet away from me with his jaw clenched out of pure fear rather than anger.

I looked at them both, probably for the last time, because I was gone.

"Thomas," I said, forcing him to look up from the ground and look at me.

"Do not fuck up with those children, because believe me," I paused and changed my gaze to look at Jagger, "She will."

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only one chapter left but i *might* make a sequel if people want???? let me know!