Young and Pregnant

Cassandra lay to the hospital bed. Her insides ached from all of the nausea and vomiting. The bucket of puke rested on the floor beside her bed and she tried to lie on her side. She could faintly hear her parents talking to the doctor outside about the risks, about the months ahead, and about possible medications.

“How’d this happen? I-I mean, my daughter definitely doesn’t have AIDS! They tested for blood just days ago in her last check up and I know she isn’t diabetic!” her mother raged in the hallway.

“We think it was due to poor nutrition. The baby’s been having a hard time developing. We gave Cassandra those nutritional supplements. It seems somehow that the baby started to feed more of Cassandra’s intake of calories and food.”

Cassandra pinned her eyes shut. She tried to erase the spells of dizziness from her head. It was nearing two am. A fever so intense it seemed to battle the heat of the Sahara Desert had taken her. They’d changed her sheets twice due to the sweat and her temperature was only rising.

“We have to think of other options. This pregnancy is becoming increasingly dangerous. It…”

Some sort of rummage went on in the hallway. Cassandra gripped deeper into her sheet and tried to hold back the rasping urge in her throat to cough. They’d told her the stress would potentially put more pressure on her womb, her stomach.

She wanted this baby. She finally wanted it.

“Alec..” she croaked.

That was when the room really began to spin.

* * * * *

“Shit! Why the hell did there have to be a rain storm the night of our shift?!” Alec gave the steering wheel another dangerous maneuver and tried to peer in closer to the windshield. “And why the hell isn’t Cassandra’s mother answering her phone?!”

Jack sat beside him in the passenger seat, munching on chips and relishing the military grade vehicle that they’d borrowed.

“Well it’s all about staying calm dude. I know you knocked the girl up, but damn calm down. Getting mad at the pavement will do no help.”

Another fierce crackled off thunder moved off the road’s distance view. They were only ten minutes from the hospital in normal weather, but in such deteriorating rain who knew how long it would take?

“I just have to see her. I have to know that she’s okay. I can’t-“

“You can’t what?”

Alec took his eyes off the road and looked to Jack. “I can’t let her go through this alone.”

“Dude, you…” Jack’s eyes widened and stared out to the windshield. “You are not gonna like this.”

What?

Alec turned to face the windshield again and slowly pressed his foot on the brakes. Red and blue lights ahead flickered off of the car’s dashboard and their skin.

This could not be happening.

* * * * *

Her vision was now one of black dots and television static. Voices still mumbled in the hallways.

“Uh…” she grunted.

It felt as if she’d fallen asleep, but also as if she hadn’t. The room around her was bright. The call button dangled temptingly inches away. The dribble of olive colored bile leaked down the side of her cheek. She felt the liquid on her face and on the fabric of the sheets.

A nurse came walking by the door and Cassandra tried to raise her hand.

“Ugh…”

Her right hand fell down and made an attempt to reach the call button. Her fingers landed centimeters away. The centimeter became minutes it took to close in on and finally clamped her thumb down on the button. It began to blink just as her consciousness did.

“A-are you okay?” The young looking resident stood in the doorway with nervous glow in his eyes.

“No.”

The rush of bile and blood erupted through her lips onto the clean hospital floor. That’s when she passed out and could vaguely remember the hospital machines around her going haywire.

* * * * *

“What do you mean it’s a two hour delay?! It’s just a fucking car accident!”

Alec and Jack were outside in the drenching rain in just their military uniforms. Alec felt as if his entire body was soaked, but none of that mattered. All that mattered was the dumbass police officer standing before him.

“We can’t allow people to go through. There are stray scraps of metal and gasoline spillage. It was a nine car pileup. It’s too dangerous.”

“Well I’ll let you know one thing and it’s too-“

“Alec, calm down.” Jack hissed, dragging him by the arm away from the officer. “Going off on some police officer isn’t gonna help. They’re just doing their job.”

Jack let Alec’s arm fall away from his grasp and Alex sighed.

“Then what do we do instead? I didn’t come all this way just give up on her.”

He saw Jack’s eyes drift to the slim array of barriers separating the oncoming traffic from the road leading to the hospital littered with the accident. Jack’s eyes eventually came back to Alec and he breathed.

“Okay. When I tell you to run you’re going to cut through that cheap little barrier over there and haul ass to the hospital. If it comes down it I’ll tackle that nice little officer over there to give you a running start.”

A sense of graveness welled deep within Alec. Goose bumps rose up and down his arms. It was now or never.

“Go.”

* * * * *

Cassandra was floating. The entire backside of her body was pinned against the hospital room’s ceiling. Her auburn hair hung around her face in strands and all the while she looked down on the scene.

The attendants and nurses rushed into the room. Her body flailed and slashed on the bed. Everyone was screaming at each other, screaming out medical orders she could never understand. The room was filled with silence, but covered in noise.

“She’s going into SCA! All the stress on her body has had some kind of effect on her heart! We’ve gotta get moving if we want to save her and the baby! Start CPR”

One woman’s hands went down on her chest and slammed into the place of her ribs.

“What’s wrong?! What happened to my daughter?” Her mother had showed up at the room’s doorway, screaming and terror in her voice. “What the hell did you do my daughter?”

“Hold her back! Keep her out of the room! Keep the mother out!” the main nurse shouted.

A man in scrubs reached his arms out and latched them around Cassandra’s mother from behind. Her mother was still screaming, still crying. But the silence in the room took over its intended effect. The sheets beneath Cassandra’s legs were soaked.

“Oh God.” the nurse gasped.

“What? What’s wrong?”

The nurse looked back to Cassandra’s mother. “Her water just broke. The CPR worked, but…”

Cassandra knew what that meant. She was going into labor.

* * * * *

Alec’s boots pounded and pounded against the soaked cement. Street lights and empty sidewalks surrounded him. The rain came down in a blind haze. He reached the top of the road’s hill and the hospital came into view.

Run. Run. Run.

He sprinted up the hospital’s path to the entrance. A few mouths gasped as he came barreling through the hospital front doors. He ran towards the receptionist desk and slammed his sopping wet palms on the counter.

“Where is Cassandra? S-she came in a few hours ago, bleeding, coughing, pregnant! What floor? Room?”

The receptionist looked back wide eyed. He still sat frozen with his headpiece attached to his ear.

“Where is he?” Alec growled.

The receptionist sped through a pile of papers and stammered out his next words.

“She’s on the third floor.” Alec was already speeding towards the elevators. “But I just got a call that something’s wrong! You may want to wait before you go up there!”

Too late. Alec was already barreling up the bowels of the hospital’s stairwells.

* * * * *

“Oh God no! No! You can’t put her under! Sh-she could-“

“She’s not going to die, mam. We have to rush her into the OR. There’s no other way.”

Clicks went off and the railings on the edge of Cassandra’s bed went up. Before she knew it the bed was already moving. Cassandra was back in her own body now. She was weak. Jabs of pain were rushing down her lower side.

“Mom. Mom,” Cassandra’s rasped. “Where’s Dad?”

Her mother’s hand snaked into hers and she could hear the fear in the woman’s voice. In all the years Cassandra had known her mother, she’d never known her to be afraid.

“He had to step out for a second, sweetie, but I’m here. I’m here for you and-“ Her mother’s voice choked over and the lights above nearly shoved Cassandra back out of consciousness. Her mother’s hand squeezed onto her numbing fingers tighter. “But I know you’ll make it and just know that I was always proud of you. Always.”

Cassandra felt her mother’s grasp slip from hers and the words of Alec drifted across her mind.

I love you, Cas. I’ll never stop.

The mask with the drowning drugs was already on her face and Cassandra was already sifting away. She no longer had any idea where her life was headed.

* * * * *

“What the-“

Alec cleared the third floor and froze dead in his tracks when he saw Cassandra’s mother standing and crying.

“Wh-What happened?”

Cassandra’s mother whirled around and threw her arms around Alec’s neck. The unknown woman cried and cried into Alec’s shoulders as she tried to form words that only stayed matted into his shirt. She finally pulled away. Her hands gripped to him as she looked into his eyes.

“It’s over, Alec. She’s dead.”

* * * * *

The quiet after the storm is always a shocking thing: to feel one’s body after being washed away by the treacherous waters of a storm, to now know the horrible thing that the waters have down, and lastly to know that it’s over.

When Cassandra’s eyes drifted open she knew that it was over. The lids upon her pupils felt heavy and stale. Inside her mouth was a chalky, unusual taste and her mind was gone. But most of all, the space were her stomach had been felt empty and sore.

The first sob escaped her lips and before she knew it the arms were around her.

“Shh. It’s okay. I’n here, Cas. I’m here.”

The tears halted where they should have fallen.

“You weren’t there.” she choked.

“I know. I know.” His breath bathed her neck and his smell surrounded her. “I came here as fast as I could. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here earlier. I’m so sorry.”

That’s when Cassandra let it all out. She sobbed and sobbed until her ribs ached. And even being in Alec’s arms didn’t reassure her that the future would be alright. She just wanted her baby back, her baby and nothing else.

* * * * *

“Can I get some water and crackers for my girlfriend? She just got out of surgery not too long ago and I don’t want her to be hungry.”

The woman preparing the trays behind the counter had long blonde hair and seemed busier than anyone else.

“Was she one of the ones that just had a C section? The one that lost her baby?” Alec nodded and the woman glared to him. “Then you should know a woman in her state doesn’t want to be eating right now. She’ll be more aware her stomach than anything else. She needs to be alone.”

The woman turned away from Alec and went back to work. The walk back to Cas’s room was long and he wondered how the late morning hours had come so soon or why Jack or his sergeant hadn’t shown up yet.

When Alec got back to Cas’s doorway he came to see her parents sitting on her bed talking to her softly. Her mother leaned in and gave her the softest hug, rubbing her back and then departing. She was the first to meet Alec at the door.

“Is she okay?” Alex asked.

Cas’s mother stood before him with her arms crossed and sighed. “She’s having a rough time. It seemed like that baby was her last hope. I feel so bad for her, feel like I should have been there.”

She sniffled and the change of behavior wasn’t such a surprise to him. Even though Cassandra’s mother could fly off the edge of all the time, he’d always secretly gotten the vibe that the woman really cared for her daughter and today she had shown that.

“I think she feels like she went through this on her own. She still wants to see the little girl.”

To Alec, having Cas see the dead baby seemed like a horrible idea. But he couldn’t quite wrap his head around it like Cassandra could. The pregnancy had been far more personal for her even if he didn’t want to admit. Cassandra had actually been a part of it. Alec, as terrible as it sounded, had just been a bystander.

Cassandra’s mother moved on by and out came Cassandra’s father. All Alec and the man could exchange was a simple nod and a sort of common indulgence for the girl in the room.

“Just be careful with her. She’s in a tough place.”

* * * * *

She still sat in the hospital bed. As the morning hours had ticked away she still never moved. Alec sat in a chair just close to her bed all the while. Every now and then she’d shed a tear or two, but nothing near the scale of her previous breakdown had managed to sneak its way back in.

“I already know what you want to ask. I saw it.” she said.

Alec’s gaze shot up and the film of shock covered his eyes. “What?”

“When I was out of it and after I saw my water break, I saw all of these things, like flashes of moments. The night you and I had sex, the first time you asked me out, our first kiss, even memories of my mom, and I tried to make sense of it.” She looked to him in the chair. “And I saw you holding the ring on that bus. You were going to ask me to marry you.”

He stared back at her, helpless.

“Why didn’t you ask me?”

The quiet lasted longer and longer.

“Just tell me, Alec.”

“Because I was afraid. I was afraid if I asked before I knew that’d I’d be a good father or a good husband, that you’d say no. I had to prove to myself that I could do it. I had to prove to myself that I was worth being with you.”

“So that's what this army thing was about this entire time? You not feeling good enough? You wanting to make a difference?”

Alec nodded and tears filled her eyes.

“Well you’re good enough. You being here showed me that. I may be broken up inside and I may have somehow wanted that baby more than anything, but all I want now is you.”

He rose from his seat, still looking clad and disheveled in his uniform. He got down and kneeled beside her bed. He took one of her hands in both of his and brought it close to his face.

“Will you marry me?”

“Of course I will.”

He leaned in close and allowed her to bridge the gap in between them with her lips. The kiss was soft and slow, but it explored all the things they'd never had before on that night they’d first made love together. It explored a future they planned to have with one another.