The One Night Stand by Carissa Ann Lynch

My eyes fought to stay open, my contact lenses that I wasn’t supposed to sleep in at night, sticking to the backs of my eyelids.ĭelaney’s standing up straight now, her skin so pasty and pale that it was almost translucent in the low-lit room. It’s the hiss that did it-a warning sign, that Delaney’s about to scream, or in the very least, get angry and throw a few things. “Mom!” Delaney hissed, tugging the blankets from my chest. If you take away the lashes, and the girlish curve of her jaw…I could almost see what my son would have been… Maybe just like Delaney, with black feathery hair and deep brown eyes. I wonder what he would have looked like, as a teenager. So, when I woke up to find my fifteen-year-old daughter standing over me, her eyes like shiny black marbles glowing in the moonlit shadows of my room, the first thing I thought about was Dillan.Įven now, Dillan is still one of my first thoughts each morning. My beautiful Delaney was head-strong and iron-willed, and it didn’t surprise me that she was the stronger of the two. But the way she described it was almost morbid-one twin sucking up all the nutrients, sucking the life right out of its roommate… In layman’s terms, she had described it as one twin donating blood to the other. There was a name for my tragedy: twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. And those words…her words would haunt me for the next fifteen years, probably longer. “Only one twin survived.” The doctor was soft-spoken and honey blonde I’ll never forget the contours of her face. A painful dichotomy of intense love and exceptional grief arose, gave birth to me that day. But in those beady black eyes, those chirpy pink lips…I still saw the son who didn’t make it: Dillan. And right on cue, my tiny fowl had opened her eyes and mouth, changing my life forever. The delivery nurse held her out to me in the palm of her hand, like a baby bird in its mother’s nest. When I think about Delaney, I think about Dillan.

The One Night Stand by Carissa Ann Lynch