Too Late To Love Me I Already Left With His Twins (Lydia and Dave) novel Chapter 268

Dave POV

I stared at the phone.

Then at Anna.

Then at my children.

Ava was already standing.

Eli had lifted his head, his tear-stained face suddenly filled with something I hadn’t seen there all evening.

Hope.

“Dad?” Ava whispered.

I smiled.

“Mom is awake.”

Eli’s eyes widened.

“Mom?”

I nodded.

“She’s awake.”

And before I could say anything else, the twins rushed toward each other, their arms wrapping around one another as Ava laughed through her tears.

“Mom is back,” Eli whispered.

And for the first time that night, those words didn’t feel like a desperate wish.

They felt like the beginning of a miracle.

“Auntie Anna, let’s go now,” Ava said almost immediately, her voice carrying that impatient urgency that had taken over the entire room since we got the news that their mother was awake.

Eli was already standing beside her, looking just as ready to bolt out of the house. “Yeah, Auntie Anna, please. Let’s go.”

Anna, however, looked at both of them and shook her head. “No. Let’s wait. Both of you need to change first, especially considering how wrinkled your clothes look and all.”

Eli’s face fell almost instantly. “Noooo. Mom wouldn’t mind at all.”

I actually had to suppress a laugh because, of all the arguments he could have made, he had decided to use their mother as his defense. “Oh, she’d definitely mind,” I said, getting both their attention. “First of all, the hospital is a public space. Your mom would absolutely want you both looking good and nice when you see her. You know how much she loves being organized.”

Ava looked down at herself, then at Eli, almost as though she was inspecting the state of their clothes for the first time. She gave a small, thoughtful hum. “Hmm.”

Apparently, that was enough.

The two of them followed Anna upstairs, and I was expecting them to take at least ten minutes, maybe fifteen if they started arguing over what to wear, but they were back downstairs almost immediately. I looked at them suspiciously, but they both looked reasonably presentable, so I decided I didn’t have the energy to investigate whether they had actually changed or simply rearranged their clothes.

“Ready?” Anna asked.

“Yes,” they answered together.

A few minutes later, we were all inside Anna’s SUV, and the moment the car pulled out of the driveway, the twins started with the questions.

It was like they had been storing every single question in their heads during the entire ride to the hospital and had suddenly decided there was no reason to hold any of them back now that their mother was awake.

“Auntie Anna,” Ava started from the back seat, leaning forward between the two front seats, “what exactly happened to Mom?”

“Even if she doesn’t answer?”

“Even if she doesn’t answer.”

Ava seemed satisfied with that, but Eli was clearly nowhere near finished. “Did the doctors make her go into the coma?”

“No,” Anna said. “The coma wasn’t something they intentionally caused. They gave her anesthesia for the surgery, which is different. Her unconscious state afterward was related to the seriousness of her condition.”

“So she wasn’t awake before the surgery?”

“No.”

“Did she know she was going to have surgery?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did she know we were waiting for her?”

“I don’t know, Eli.”

He frowned. “You don’t know a lot.”

Anna laughed softly. “I know. I’m very sorry to disappoint you, Professor.”

That finally got a tiny smile out of him.

“But seriously,” Anna continued, “there are some things I simply don’t know because I wasn’t with your mom every second. And I don’t want to guess. When we get there, the doctor can explain exactly what happened.”

Ava leaned forward again. “Was Mom badly hurt?”