Torn [SHAWN MENDES]

~7~

Taryn woke up with a start. She'd had the dream again, and she knew what had triggered it. Looking at the photos of Shawn with his baby had been a huge mistake. She closed her eyes and tried to block the nightmare from her brain, but it was no use. Her cruel subconscious made her run through it so that she kept reliving the pain over and over.

"Shawn!" she cried out from the master bathroom.

She could hear his footsteps running towards the room before she saw him. He rushed towards her and kneeled in front of the toilet. "Again?" he asked, his voice trembling.

Nodding, she started to shake with hysterics. His strong arms wrapped around her as she heaved and sobbed, and before long he was crying with her.

"We need to call the doctor," she stammered after a few minutes.

This was a routine they sadly knew too well. They'd go to the doctor's office or the hospital where a Doppler monitor or ultrasound would confirm what they already knew. The baby was gone. This was the sixth miscarriage in three years, and each one was more devastating than the last.

The dream had fast-forwarded to when Taryn was at home in bed, groggy from the meds Dr. Abbott prescribed. Recovering while grieving was a special kind of hell and sometimes she wondered why she kept putting herself through it.

"I can't have babies," she said softly.

"We don't know that," Shawn soothed from his spot beside her. "I've read about couples who go through this and then they end up with a healthy baby."

She shook her head which caused the room to spin a little. "No! I can't do this again. I can't get pregnant and then have this happen!"

"Maybe we should wait awhile. The doctor always says to try again in three months, but let's wait longer. I'm going on tour, so we can start trying after I get home. How does that sound?"

"It sounds like you're not hearing me. I don't want to try anymore."

He frowned. "You're on Percocet and you've been through a lot today. We shouldn't be making any decisions right now."

It jumped ahead to six months later when Shawn had returned home from Europe.

"What's this?" he asked as he walked out of the bathroom with her pack of birth control in his hand.

"I went back on the pill."

"Why?" He knew why; it was clear she didn't want to get pregnant, but he needed to know why she hadn't told him.

"I've accepted that I can't carry a baby to term so I needed to stop torturing both of us. You need to accept this fact, too."

He placed the pills on the dresser and sat next to her on their bed. "I don't want to give up hope, but ultimately it's your body."

"Thank you for seeing it that way," she said with a sigh.

"We have other options. Your eggs are fine, so we could work with a surrogate. There's always adoption, too."

Taryn knew he'd suggest this. "You're right, but I need to step away from the idea of a baby for awhile. After everything we've been through, I need to heal."

He laughed uncomfortably. "We aren't getting any younger."

"If you're calling me old, you might want to sleep on the couch." She was only half joking, because it hurt to be reminded that her biological clock was ticking away even if she was never having a baby.