Chapter 50: Present Father

Clancy let out a ragged breath, completely unable to hold back his tears any longer. They spilled over his cheeks as he leaned over the bed, carefully avoiding her medical lines, and pressed a gentle, lingering kiss to her forehead.

He rested his cheek against her temple, feeling the warmth of her skin.

"That’s right, sweetheart," Clancy wept softly, cradling her small hand against his chest. "I am your daddy. And I promise you, I am never going to leave again." He said to her,

Moments later, Clancy stood by the door of the recovery room, his gaze fixed on the small form of his daughter sleeping soundly.

Only an hour had passed since she woke up and the doctor had confirmed her stability. An hour since he broke the news to her, a talk that had drained him emotionally.

The tinge of happiness still lingered in his heart. He helped save his daughter’s life.

He had done what any father would do, yet the weight of that title still felt foreign and completely terrifying on his tongue.

A door clicked open followed by the sound of multiple footsteps. Selen entered first, her eyes carrying a deep exhaustion that no amount of hospital coffee could fix.

Behind her walked David and Daniel. And Clancy’s chest tightened with a sudden, sharp ache at the sight of them.

Selen signed for him and moved away from them a bit. That was Clancy’s cue.

Clancy cleared his throat, the sound rough and deliberate in the quiet space. Then he got up from the chair he was seated on and took a small step forward , keeping his hands visible, open, and trembling slightly.

"Hey, guys," he murmured, his voice dropping an octave to keep from disturbing the sleeping girl. "There is something we need to talk about. Something about who I am to you."

Daniel, the older of the two brothers, crossed his arms over his chest. He did not look angry, he simply looked observant, his dark eyes tracking Clancy’s every movement with an analytical precision.

David remained slightly behind his brother, his hands tucked deep into the pockets of his oversized hoodie, his expression unreadable and perfectly still.

Selen stood back against the wall, her hands clasped tightly in front of her, letting Clancy take the lead.

This was his truth to deliver, his burden to bear, and his chance to bridge the gap that had existed since the day the triplets were born.

"I know things have been confusing, and I know you might have had a lot of questions about why I showed up when your sister got sick," Clancy began, his eyes moving between the two boys.

He forced himself to maintain eye contact, refusing to look away from the raw honesty of their youth. "I am not just a donor who happened to match her blood type. I am your father." he said.

Clancy braced himself for an explosion, for tears, or perhaps for a barrage of questions demanding to know where he had been for the last seven years of their lives.

He expected the passion that usually came with childhood revelations of this magnitude. Instead, the reaction was utterly hollow.

Daniel did not flinch. His arms remained firmly crossed, his shoulders dropping only a fraction of an inch as the information processed through his sharp mind.

He turned his head slightly to look at the door that his sister was in, and then looked back at Clancy. "Oh, okay," Daniel said softly.

The word was flat, devoid of any emotions of anger or sudden warmth. It was a simple acknowledgment of a fact, like being told the weather had changed outside.

David merely shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He pulled one hand out of his pocket to rub his nose, his eyes fixed on Clancy’s leather shoes.

"Is that why your marrow worked for her?" David asked, his voice quiet, small, and pragmatic.

"Yes," Clancy replied, a knot forming in his throat at their total lack of outrage. "That is exactly why. Because you carry my DNA. All three of you do."

"Cool," he whispered. He did not smile, he did not move toward Clancy, nor did he shrink away. He simply accepted the biological explanation as if it were a science lesson from school.

The silence that followed was dense and thick with unsaid things. Clancy felt a sharp wave of emotion wash over him. He had prepared himself for a battlefield, but he had stepped onto an empty field instead.

The boys were not making a big deal out of it, but their quietness felt like a wall of unacceptance.

They were not rejecting him, but they certainly were not welcoming him either. They were just letting him exist in their space.

Selen finally stepped forward, placing a gentle hand on Daniel’s shoulder. "We can talk more about this later, boys. You can go in and see your sister now." she said and pointed at the door as a form of go ahead.

David stopped halfway to the door and turned around, "can we go to the cafeteria later?" David asked Clancy, his tone perfectly normal.

"Yeah, me too," Daniel echoed, still walking toward the door without a second glance at the man who had just revealed himself as their biological parent.

"Sure," Clancy said and watched them disappear behind the door without another word. They did not hate him, they did not love him.

They were simply quiet about it, leaving him alone with the steady, echoing clicking of keyboards and the crushing weight of a clean slate he had no idea how to write on.

Selen did not say anything to him, mostly because she did not know what to say. Even she had not expected that reaction.

She walked into Diana’s room to supervise the boy’s visit. Although she was out of danger, there were still some tubes connected to her for monitoring and they were not to be played with.

Clancy’s only little ray of hope was David who had asked him to take him to the cafeteria later. And he did not even know what that meant for them.

Was it a way of them letting him into their bubble? Or were they just genuinely hungry? After all, if he was their father then it was okay for him to take them instead of their mom.

Clancy just quietly sat outside, waiting for them to finish talking with their sister so he could take them to the cafeteria.