At night two women with contractions were brought in at practically the same time. One was quite perky, always talking, her name was Barbara. The other was Sandra, she was quiet and a little frightened. Barbara often joked with Sandra, and Sandra listened only to the nursing staff, afraid to miss a single word.
The girls were in the same delivery room and it so happened that the labor began almost simultaneously. We were all very lucky that accidentally we had another medical team on hand so they both got maximum attention and time.
Sandra gave birth first. The world’s attention was captured by a very beautiful baby girl who looked just like her mother. The girl was quiet, strong and healthy.
Barbara gave birth a little later, to two brisk and active boys. The babies were screaming so loud that they seemed to wake up not only the maternity hospital, but also the neighboring houses. It came as a huge surprise to us that she had twins. Barbara herself didn’t know she was carrying two babies either. As it turned out later, she was not registered for pregnancy, and she did not visit a doctor. And we had no time to examine her.
After the babies were born Barbara started thinking about something, she stopped talking like she used to. The next day we realized what she was thinking. Sandra came running to the nurse on duty and told us that Barbara had not come out of the shower for an hour. We checked the shower and there was nobody there. Anyway, Barbara ran away from the maternity hospital, leaving the children behind.
Still, the next day Barbara showed up at the maternity hospital. She went to the head doctor. She wrote a statement about refusing two babies at once. The reason was that she was not able to feed two sons at once, and physically would not pull. And she could not choose between the two.
Very sorry for the little ones. But nothing could be done. For the entire medical staff, unfortunately, it was nothing new. Everyone knew how to proceed as instructed, the children were simply taken to a special room for babies who had been abandoned. The process was set in motion, they began to be prepared to be transferred to an orphanage. And a couple of hours later we learned that Sandra and her husband had gathered the paperwork to take the children.
When Sandra was discharged from the hospital, we joked that she had one daughter and was going home with three little ones.
