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Felicia Simms is a natural on television. The camera accentuates her pale blue eyes and silky dark hair. She is dressed in a black outfit with a burgundy blazer and high-heeled pumps, bearing little resemblance to the jeans- and T-shirt-wearing mother of four from the British Columbia interior.

Flown to Los Angeles in January along with her parents and her conjoined twin girls, Ms. Simms, 21, sits on the couch with talk-show host and supermodel Tyra Banks, who glows as she cradles three-month-old Tatiana and Krista.

Ms. Simms calls them "very gorgeous angels."

Earlier, the program showed her bathing and feeding the girls in a sunlit, tastefully decorated house. What the audience wasn't told is that these scenes were filmed in a rented house in Pasadena, Calif., thousands of kilometres from her crowded apartment in Vernon, B.C., and life in a clan so dependent and closely knit that, in a sense, the whole family seems conjoined.

PANIC ATTACKS

Once a frontier town of ranchers and fruit growers, Vernon is now a haven for skiers in winter and campers, hikers and golfers in summer.

Luxury condos are sprouting along the shores of Okanagan and Kalamalka Lakes. On the main street, cyclists and women pushing pricey strollers congregate for latte and organic muffins at the Bean Scene coffee house. Shiny SUVs with Alberta plates pack mall parking lots.

The Simms family isn't part of this Vernon society. They live in rented houses and apartments and receive social assistance.

Ms. Simms and her live-in boyfriend, Brendan Hogan, the twins' 23-year-old father, don't have driver's licences. They rely on rides from Ms. Simms's stepfather, Doug McKay, although he has many other children and grandchildren to ferry around.

In fact, the entire family travels together around Vernon on daily errands. They visit and talk on cellphones, eat most meals together and serve as each other's confidantes and roommates. There are 15 of them in all.

Felicia Simms has rarely been alone -- by choice. Even as a mother of four children -- Rosa, 4, Christopher, 2, and the six-month-old twins -- she doesn't want quiet. Her home is a cacophony of children's voices and babies' cries; occasionally, an explosive noise emanates from the widescreen TV, the site of many video-game duels between Mr. Hogan and Ms. Simms's sister, Rhea.

Silence frightens Ms. Simms, stirring panic. "I've always had noise. My mom never made any of us be quiet. If it's quiet, I have to put on my MP3 player."

Ms. Simms and her four siblings all inherited the anxiety from their mother, Louise, who suffered years of debilitating panic attacks brought on by silence and solitude. In 1986, with two failed marriages behind her and a live-in boyfriend -- an Alberta oil-rig worker -- having an affair, Louise Simms packed up her three children and drove home to Vernon.

Not long after, she met Doug McKay at a backyard party and the two have been together ever since. Two more children followed. Technically, Mr. McKay is Felicia Simms's stepfather, but to her he's "the only father I've known."

"He's loved us from the beginning," Ms. Simms said. "My dad is like a workaholic. He always made sure his kids were fed."

Mr. McKay worked on farms and ranches across B.C. to support his six children (he brought an older daughter from a previous union). He bounced from Merritt and Cache Creek to Lumby, Armstrong, Golden and Salmon Arm, wherever Mr. McKay could find farm work. Whenever Ms. McKay suffered a panic attack -- an intense irrational fear that becomes associated with a place -- the family moved on.

"As soon as you're alone, your mind starts to wander," she said. "All of a sudden, you're thinking: 'Uh-oh, I'm alone. What if I had a heart attack or what if I fall down the stairs? What if someone breaks in?' And then, bam, you're in a full-flight panic." She said the attacks became so intense that she couldn't breathe, broke into a sweat and felt the room spinning. "A panic attack feels like you're dying," she said.

There were other family struggles. For years, Mr. McKay drank a case of beer a day until Ms. McKay threatened to leave. He's been sober for the past decade.

A kindly man with laughing eyes, Mr. McKay replaced his beer habit with Tim Hortons large coffees. As chief chauffeur for his large brood, he can often be found pacing outside department stores and doctors' offices, waiting for his family to finish errands. He has never criticized his wife's panic disorder.

"If it wasn't for Ouisa," he often says, "I'd be dead or in jail."

A NEW FAMILY

Over the years, the family's anxieties have hampered their schooling and job searches and dwarfed even modest dreams.

Ms. Simms left regular school in junior high. After that, she was schooled at home by a teacher. She talked of opening a hairdressing salon but was kicked out of a business college because it didn't recognize her high-school certificate.

She always wanted her own family, though, and when she met Mr. Hogan -- she was 14, he was 16 -- she knew she'd found the person who'd help her start one. She was pregnant at 15.

"I was upset," her mother said. "You have dreams for your daughter, of going to college, dreams of getting her business degree and going into hairdressing . . ."

Ms. Simms lived at her parents' house with Rosa until she was 19. By then, she had a second child, Christopher. According to Ms. Simms's parents, Mr. Hogan was a weekend father at best whose real enthusiasm was for pot and beer.

"He's a very lovable person," Ms. Simms said of Mr. Hogan. "Even when we're fighting, we get along. He had to grow up. He had to figure out what he wanted to do. I always knew."

Everything changed the day her family doctor called. She was five months pregnant and Ronald Long told her he had to see her in his office. It wasn't a request.

The next day, Ms. Simms and her mother sat facing Dr. Long while he tried to get the words out.

"He said: 'Your twins are conjoined at the head and we don't know if they have one brain and they're just sharing it.' It was pretty hard. Even thinking about it now is pretty hard," she said, her eyes welling with tears. The doctor mentioned something about the twins sharing a blood flow and that their kidneys might not be working.

"He was pretty sure from the ultrasound that he got, that the girls wouldn't live."

Within days, Ms. Simms travelled to Vancouver for a more detailed ultrasound. This test was more promising. The girls' kidneys were working, as were their hearts. Ms. Simms and her family would make five more trips to Vancouver before she gave birth.

At 34 weeks, 16 medical staff oversaw the cesarean section. Ms. Simms was calm. She'd had a dream a week before the delivery that the girls would be born healthy.

"They cut through the skin from the belly button down," she recalled. "They had to push right here on my rib cage, to give them leverage to go down. So it was like a big pressure being pulled out. Then I could feel them slide out. I heard them crying. They had big lungs. Everyone was really happy."

The girls were wheeled to Ms. Simms. She held their hands. Nurses put them under a heat lamp, but they didn't need oxygen or an incubator. Combined, they weighed 13 pounds.

"It was a good day," Ms. Simms said.

'THEY WILL NEVER BE ALONE'

Now, there is a sameness to Ms. Simms's days. Most mornings, she can be found in her favourite rocking chair, feeding and holding her infants, the blinds drawn, the TV volume cranked.

In the afternoon, she often takes the children to her mother's house where Rosa and Christopher play with their cousins. In the evenings, they watch DVDs or movies on pay-per-view or play raucous games of computerized bowling and baseball on hand-held video. Mr. Hogan lives with her now and they are talking about marriage, but Ms. Simms still does the bulk of child-rearing.

"He's just having a hard time jumping into all this responsibility," Ms. McKay said. "He'll get over it."

The downside to this tight family culture is that it's left little room for personal independence, a development not unnoticed by Ms. McKay.

"I can't get my kids out of the house," she said, half joking.

Ms. Simms, though, is looking ahead to another trip to Vancouver, where the girls will undergo a series of tests, including MRIs, CT scans and a cerebral angiogram.

Can the twins be separated? Should they be? Whenever the subject comes up, Ms. Simms turns it around, envisioning Tatiana and Krista staying joined.

"Everybody around here is, like, always telling me: 'I hope they get separated. I hope they're able to.' It doesn't necessarily mean I want them to.

"I mean, it would be nice if they could get separated and live their own lives apart from each other. Yet I'm still going to love them whether they're separated or not."

These musings aren't what most people want to hear. How will they learn to walk, drive a car, go to school, pursue careers? Ms. Simms shrugs. If her girls remain attached, she said, "at least they will never be alone."

SATURDAY-MORNING SERVICE

It's Saturday and Ms. Simms has a lot on her mind. She's nervous about Vancouver and she's been up since 7 a.m., trying to pack for the next day's drive.

Clothes and duffel bags litter the small apartment, along with remnants of what appears to have been a late-night bash: empty fast-food containers, a box of Goldfish crackers, a Pepsi bottle.

***

A case of empty beer bottles sits on the floor of a storage room beside the kitchen. Mr. Hogan is still in bed.

Doug Jr., her goth-loving brother who stayed overnight on the couch, wears the same clothes as the day before, his black eyeliner smudged. Christopher's dark hair has been shaved because of a bout of lice at the school his cousins attend.

At 10 a.m., Louise and Doug Sr. arrive to drive the family to church.

"How are Grandma's precious girls this morning?" Ms. McKay asks, burying her face in Krista's stomach.

The twins laugh in unison when they see the familiar face.

Saturday is the Sabbath for Seventh-day Adventists. Ms. McKay was raised in the faith and Ms. Simms regularly attends services with her.

The church was a huge source of support to Ms. Simms when she was pregnant.

Members hosted a shower for the babies when she returned home with them last Christmas. A teacher at the adjacent school organized a five-kilometre run, raising $2,000 for the twins' trust fund.

By her own admission, Ms. Simms's beliefs are unorthodox.

"I believe in God. I go to church, but I also believe in mystical things, like fairies and magical butterflies." She named Tatiana and Krista after fairies she researched on the Internet.

At church, congregants swarm the family, and Ms. Simms lets everyone look. The girls get hungry during the service, their delicate wails echoing in stereo. By the end, Ms. Simms and her mother are back in the foyer, each with a bottle in an infant's mouth.

In the church basement afterward, a woman clutches Ms. McKay's forearm. "I think they have given more meaning to a lot of things," she says.

Ms. McKay nods in agreement.

Back at the house, friends drop by to wish the family good luck in Vancouver.

In the kitchen, Mr. Hogan takes a big swig from a Pepsi bottle.

"A little thirsty today?" Ms. McKay teases.

"I'm just trying to flush out my system," Mr. Hogan replies.

Ms. McKay adds pointedly: "You don't want to be hung over on the drive."

MESSAGE FOR MOTHERS

Ms. Simms keeps remembering Los Angeles, how nice everyone was, how supportive of her choices.

She recalls the palm trees and the Pacific and the four-star treatment on The Tyra Banks Show.

The show featured two other sets of conjoined twins as well -- a pair of six-year-old girls who are still attached and two 18-year-old girls separated as toddlers.

At the end, Ms. Banks lobbed a wrap-up question at Ms. Simms.

"Do you have a message for other mothers?" she asked.

"Just keep loving them as they are," Ms. Simms replied, smiling.

"These are incredible families," Ms. Banks said, and everyone applauded.

But long afterward, back in Vernon, Ms. Simms returns most often to the still-attached six-year-olds from the show.

"They were so cute," she says.

"They loved being together. They will be able to do things together."

***

Twins gear

Therapists at Vancouver's Sunny Hill Health Centre for Children designed a car seat, bath seat and indoor chair for conjoined twins Tatiana and Krista Hogan-Simms. They were designed by Dave Cooper, a rehabilitation technologist, and Maureen Story, a physiotherapist and occupational therapist.

Car seat