The parts you leave behind

Chapter 40*

Blair's POV

When I found out about my condition, I found a new favorite hobby. I liked to feel my own heartbeat, or hear it, or watch it on a heart monitor. I guess I just liked knowing I was still alive and fighting off the inevitable, but it brought me an odd comfort that I've never been able to explain. I just loved knowing I was living and breathing. Like it gave me some kind of strength.

Then, when things started getting real with Hayden I loved feeling and hearing his heartbeat. Still I always just lay my cheek against his chest so I can get as close as I can to his heart and feel the rhythm against my skin. Knowing I'm alive is cool and all, but it's just something about knowing the person you would do anything for is still healthy and breathing. That there's still going to be someone walking the earth when you have no choice but to be taken away.

But the point is I just absolutely love the feeling. I love feeling the way someone's heart beats, and when this life gets hard I often find myself putting my fingers against my pulse just so I can feel it. It's just became an obsession that I can't quite get over because it brings me peace within myself, it makes me feel like if my heart is beating like a normal persons then I can fight it off.

But listening to this heartbeat? I don't even know how to describe it. Maybe it's because I can't exactly hear it or feel it myself, I have to have a special kind of tool to even hear the beats. So maybe I just take those times I do get to hear it into special consideration, but honestly I'm not sure if that's it. I love hearing mine and Haydens heartbeats like I've never loved something before, but no words can describe what it's like to hear the heartbeat of the being we created together.

I'm not sure if anything could ever beat hearing that. There's so many things that run through my body at once that it's almost overwhelming. Because it makes me so unbelievably happy to hear how amazing it's doing, and that I'm doing an okay job at keeping it safe.

But then again it's also one of the most painful experiences ever. I hear it, and all I want to do is feel it against my own skin and know that it's real, except that's not going to happen. It's gut wrenching knowing you don't have a future with something you just want to hold against you for the rest of your life. But I take the experience of at-least hearing it at all, because I'll take whatever I can get.

"Blair?"

A voice breaks me out of my concentration before I look over to Hayden who's smiling at me. "Sorry..." I breathe out.

"You're okay. You just looked a little lost in your head...what are you thinking about?" He asks me quietly.

I take a peak at the doctor next to me as he types some things into the computer then back over to Hayden. "Nothing much. I just like hearing the heartbeat."

"Me too." He grins.

Looking back up to the ceiling I close my eyes because blinking hurts. Cancer is already rough on the body and with the pregnancy too I just want to sleep half of the time because it's been painful. Everything I eat, I feel like comes right back up. I can't take my medicine for my headaches anymore because they can effect the baby, and I feel like someone is constantly knocking me across the head. It's been hard and I'm really trying, but hearing the heartbeat is helping so I make myself open my eyes and look over to the screen again.

"...a really good and healthy heartbeat. And it looks like it's growing great." The doctor smiles as I take in his conversation with Hayden. "So within a few weeks you should be able to find out the gender, are y'all planning on finding that out early or waiting until the birth?"

Hayden slightly furrows his brows and looks down to me while I peak over to the doctor. "I think we're going to find out as soon as we can."

"That's good." The doctor nods his head then pauses the sound of the heartbeat on the monitor and I slightly frown to myself.