Wicked Eclipse

ORIGINS

1994


Screams reverberated off the walls of the hospital room, a very distraught woman lying back and breathing hard between shrieks of pain. Her stomach was very large, and she put a hand on it as she sobbed.

Ahh! Please, please, they need to come out. I can’t…” Melody Kostas broke off into another scream.

“Mrs. Kostas, we’re getting the operating room ready right now. We’re about to take you up. Just keep breathing, okay? And do not push.”

Her husband, Henry, was by her side, holding her other hand. He brushed his lips over her knuckles then bit his bottom lip when she began squeezing his fingers hard.

Several monitors were beeping loudly as some of the nurses talked to one another about things he didn’t understand. “Her heart rate and BP are elevated. We need to get her to calm down.”

Her crying did not subside when they began wheeling the bed she was in out of the room and down the corridor toward an elevator. Nurses and other patients alike peeked through curtains and around corners to catch a glimpse of the hysterical mother.

“Henry, Henry, I don’t know… I don’t know if I can do this,” she panted, screwing her eyes shut.

The blond-haired man kept steady pace with the doctors as they pushed the hospital bed into a waiting elevator.

“Yes, you can, Melly. I promise. You are so strong and you’re gonna give birth to two strong girls.” She could see his eyes brimming with tears and nodded. “You’re gonna do so good, baby. I know you will.”

She let out another loud scream that dissolved into slightly quieter weeps afterward. “What if something goes wrong in there, though? What if—“

“Nothing is going to go wrong. You’ve got a team of great doctors. There haven’t been any complications so far. Everything is going to be fine.”

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open, the doctors immediately pushing forward. A thick red line was drawn on the floor right in front of a large set of open double doors.

“Alright, Mr. Kostas, this is as far as you can go,” one of the nurses told him.

Henry nodded, leaning down one more time to talk to his wife. “Everything is gonna be fine, okay? You’re gonna do just fine. I love you.”

She shook her head as he wiped tears from her face. “I love you, too.”

Straightening back up, Henry nodded to the doctors who then rushed to push her through the doors which closed promptly behind them. He let out a long breath then raised his hands, putting them behind his head. They were going to be fine. Everything was going to be fine.

Henry found the waiting room he was supposed to be in and took a seat in an arm chair. His hands were shaking badly and though the hospital was kept cold, he was burning up. There was a coffee machine on a countertop and several books and magazines scattered around the room on different tables. There was no way he was going to be able to focus enough to read anything, though. All he wanted to do was meet his baby girls. Nicole and Alexandra. He was ready to hold both of them in his own arms. He had been ready for nearly nine months.

As time passed, Henry grew more and more nervous. He kept running his hands through his hair and cracking his knuckles. His fingernails were nearly bleeding from picking at them so obsessively. The clock showed that he had been waiting for an hour, then an hour and a half. By the time two had gone by, he was up and pacing, heart beating heavily in his chest.

Finally, a door opened and the lead surgeon, Dr. Evans, stepped out, still in scrubs, his surgical mask pulled down around his neck. Henry smiled, but it fell when the man in blue looked him in the eyes.

“Wh-what happened? How are they?”

“Mr. Kostas, you should sit down.”

Henry’s heart dropped in his chest. He shook his head. “I’ve been sitting for almost two hours. I can’t anymore.”

The doctor nodded. “Well, your wife is fine. She did wonderfully. You’ll be able to see her in a few minutes, though she’ll still be groggy from the drugs.”

“And the girls? How are my girls?”

Dr. Evans’ lips tightened and he sighed. “We could only get one, Mr. Kostas. I’m so sorry, but we lost the other twin.”

Henry let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding and sat down in the chair behind him quickly. “What… I mean… What happened? They were both so healthy…”

“She was in distress. Both of the babies were by the time we got into the OR. We delivered her first, handed her off to another NICU specialist who couldn’t get a heartbeat. She tried her hardest, but… We just couldn’t revive her. I’m so sorry.”

Henry could feel hot tears streaming down his face, nodding blankly. “And the other one? Is she doing okay?”

Dr. Evans nodded. “She’s stable, doing very well. She’s in the nursery right now. You’ll be able to see her very soon.”

“Thank you, Dr. Evans. Does… Does my wife know yet?”

The doctor shook his head. “She hasn’t been lucid enough for us to break the news to her. I’ll be in her room to tell her within the hour, though. You should sit with her for now.” He held a hand out for Henry to take, helping him out of the chair. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Henry, but you’ve still got a healthy wife and a beautiful baby girl.”

Henry showed a small smile, but his eyes were still swimming.

◊◊◊


The small family sat in front of a large mahogany desk. A kind woman was behind it, dressed in a professional pant suit with horn-rimmed glasses. She had a manila folder open in front of her, several pieces of paper spread out over the desk.

“We have several options for you, all of them magical children put up for adoption by no-majs. They range from infancy to fifteen years old.” The woman reached across the wood to hand Henry Kostas a small stack of paper. His wife sat beside him, arms full of their daughter Alex who was sleeping soundly.

The man leaned over as he flipped through the pages, letting his wife look at them. Each had a photograph paper-clipped to it, a child moving in it—one was a little girl kicking a soccer ball, one was a teenage boy reading, a toddler with spaghetti sauce all over its face, a boy hitting a baseball with a bat almost as tall as he was.

They read each description carefully but knew what they had in mind. The Kostas wanted another baby. They had planned for two; they wanted two. Both Henry and Melody knew that it was harder for older kids to get adopted and would have loved to help one of the older orphans, but Alex was supposed to have been a twin. They wanted another child her age.

“Where are all of them?” Melody asked, watching a young girl smile for the camera as she wiggled one of her front teeth with her tongue.

The adoption agent leaned back her chair. “They’re all in the New England area, but most are in separate homes, if that’s what you’re asking.”

The couple nodded, flipping to another page. On it was a picture of a newborn with wide brown eyes that darted around. After a second, the baby broke into a big smile, making Melody do the same. She lifted the photo to read the short biography. It was a boy, born just a month before Alex. His parents’ names were listed as well as a history of any diseases in the family (nothing big enough to be concerned with), and a short genealogy.

“This is… This is him,” Melody said quietly, looking at her husband with tears in her eyes. The two had done a lot of crying this past month, but Henry could tell that this was happy. She was crying out of joy.

Henry nodded. He had known as soon as his wife had. All it took was that baby’s smile.

The woman across the desk grinned, taking the papers from the couple. “I’ll contact the home he’s in. There are, of course, more steps that we’ll have to take before you can bring him home for good—interviews, a home stay.”

“Yes, of course,” Henry nodded, suddenly very giddy.

“Okay, then I have some more papers for you two to sign,” she passed them another stack with a couple of pens that Henry took, “and then we can get the ball rolling.” The woman smiled kindly at them. “Congratulations. I’m very happy for the both of you.”
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Been stoked about this for a little while. Time off has given me time to get back on Pottermore and read up on a lot of stuff, Ilvermorny being some of it, and I'm a little in love with it. Thunderbird House 4ever