The Thirteen X's

Prologue

 November 22, 1993

“Hold on Janelle! Just keep pushing! Oh, and breathing!” Rod yelled at Janelle.

Janelle shrieked out in pain. “OH MY GOD! SOMEONE! ANYONE! GET THIS THING OUT OF ME!”

Rod tried to quiet down his lovely wife. “Shhhh, Janelle! It’s going to be ok!”

The doctor knocked at the door. “Knock, knock,” he said softly.

“WHAT?!” Janelle snapped at the doctor.

The doctor was a bit caught off guard by the tone and aggression of Janelle’s voice. “Mrs. Feveray, calm down. Your heart rate is dangerously high. But that’s not the reason I came. As one of the nurses was monitoring you, she realized that both babies are in severe danger, and they’re causing you to be in danger also. We need to do an emergency c-section, for your sake and the babies,” the doctor explained.

Janelle sighed. “I don’t care what you do, just get them OUT!”

The doctor nodded and got his equipment ready.

Janelle was in the emergency room for nearly two hours. Rod was in the waiting room, eating a stale, expired chocolate chip PopTart from the vending machine, while nervously drumming his fingers on the video camera in his lap.

“Any moment now…” Rod said to himself, a tad annoyed at the doctor for messing this up, and a tad annoyed at the stale PopTart he was still eating. Rod scoffed at the PopTart. “This isn’t even good! Why am I still eating it?” Rod sighed and threw the rest of the PopTart out. Rod was in the middle of his squat to sit back down when the doctor approached him.

“Get your camera, and yourself, ready. Your about to be a father.” The doctor motioned for Rod to come into the room across the hall. Rod stood up the rest of the way from his half-squat and followed the doctor into the room his beloved wife was in.

          Janelle was on the bed, breathing calmly. As Rod entered the room, a look of relief crossed.

Rod looked around the room. “Where are they?” he asked quietly.

“Oh, the nurse took them to clean them off. She’ll be right back momentarily,” the doctor said.  Rod and Janelle nodded. “Oh, here she comes now,” he added.

The nurse was carrying a pink bundle and a blue bundle. She handed them to Janelle. Janelle pulled back the covers from her babies’ faces.

“They’re beautiful!” Janelle said quietly.

“What do you plan to name them?” The nurse asked, clutching a clipboard and pen, and smiling.

“The girl will be Ivy Lily Feveray,” Janelle said, smiling up and Rod. “And the boy will be Hess Sam Feveray,” Janelle continued.

“Oh, those are beautiful names,” the nurse said, scribbling on her clipboard.

Janelle looked about the room. From the nurse, the her babies, to Rod, everywhere. Her vision blurred again. Her vision was blurred before. A hot, salty tear rolled down her cheek for the millionth time today.

Janelle pulled the blankets even farther, so she could fully see each twin’s torso, arms, and head. Ivy and Hess’s arms extended up to Janelle at the same time. Janelle looked up at Rod.

“Aw, look at that! They do the same thing! Rod, are you filming this?” Janelle asked.

Rod nodded, the stopped himself. “Uh…yeah, except there’s some sort of interference or something. The screen keeps going all haywire on me.” Rod pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose.

Janelle rolled her eyes. She really could care less about her husband’s nerd speak. She looked down at her two beautiful twins and took a double take at the same time.

X’s.

13 of them. On both Ivy and Hess.

Some x’s were big, and dark black, while others were red on Ivy, and blue on Hess. Like someone had just tattooed the infants.

There was one smallish(if you could even  call them that) x across each eye, one on each earlobe, where earrings might go. There was a big x on the palms of each hands; a big x on the back of each hand; one on the inside of both wrists; one on the outside of both wrists, and one on the left thumb knuckle of Ivy and Hess. They were in the exact same spots on each baby, and…

And they just appeared there.

For no apparent reason.

Janelle examined her babies. There was also a small band of x’s around Ivy and Hess’s right pinky, like a ring. Ivy’s “ring” was glowing red, while Hess’s was glowing blue.

Janelle looked up at the nurse, crying. “Why do they have thirteen x’s on their body?” The nurse’s smile faded. She and the doctor looked at each other, bewildered. Rod shrugged.

“What x’s?” All three asked to Janelle.