The Arrangement

Zoe

I couldn't pretend not to hear her crying so I sat up and balanced on the headboard. Her body went stiff as I fixed my position. I gently squeezed her shoulder "Get up" I whispered.

She sat still.

"I know you are up so can we please talk about whatever it is that is going on." I pleaded with her. She remained stiff and as I was losing hope she slowly got up and wiped her face. I held her to me and for the first time in a long time she let down her walls and cried. Her cries hit directly at my heart and I found myself shedding a few tears.

Once she calmed down she got up and out of bed, grabbing her skirt, she put it on all the while looking down and sniffing. She walked out the door and came back to find me in bed. "Can we go talk in the living room?" She whispered

"Sure" I got out of bed and got dressed. After being sure that Belle wouldn't fall out of the bed, I made my way to the living room, my mind filled with millions of thoughts. I found her sitting on the couch adjacent to the TV.

"Uhm please sit" once I was comfortable, she sat criss cross applesauce across from me. We sat in silence, every now and then she would open her mouth but nothing would come out.

"Take your time. I'll go make us some tea." I stood up and walked out. I quickly made the teas and walked back into the living room to find her staring into nothingness as tears flowed down her face. I reached out to wipe them and she snapped her eyes at me. In her eyes I saw fear and pain.

"Hey" I took a hold of her hands. "You don't have to tell me if you are not ready"

"N-no I have to. Its long overdue." She whispered. "Uhm..." She began

"When I was pregnant with Belle, I was just starting out with my learning, I was still getting a hang of being independent and it didn't help that my family was all the way over the ocean. I didn't know I was pregnant until my fifth month, I thought things were going so well for me, because I had a job and an amazing roommate, and that's why I got thick. Ava convinced me to go visit a doctor when my cycle passed. I was very scared and sceptical because I had the fear of being pregnant in my mind. Its part of the reason why I didn't want to see a doctor. After much convincing, I went to the doctor, I remember it clearly. It was a Thursday afternoon and I had finished my classes for the day. I had time since my shift at the diner would start late.

I walked into the doctors office shaking in my boots. She asked simple questions like 'how are you doing? How was your flow, when did your period start' and such. She asked me to pee in a cup and when I got back into the room, there was a pregnancy test on the table. She stuck it in my pee and said we had to wait for five minutes. That was the longest five minutes of my life. I couldn't sit down, I was too nervous. When the five minutes had passed, she slowly took the stick out and it was silent in the room. The silence got so defending I rushed to her table and pulled the stick out of her hands, turned it around and that's when everything got spinning.

I later woke up with an IV drip in my arm and a worried looking Ava besides the bed. The doctor shortly came in and said the test was positive, the shock might have caused my fainting. She did an ultrasound and all you could hear was the two strong heart beats." She sniffed. At the end.

Wait, 2 heartbeats?

"Yes, two heartbeats. I was pregnant with twins." Her tears flowed more

"Was? Where is the other twin? Belle isn't my only child?"

"The pregnancy was complicated, I was stressing because of school, if I'd get kicked off of campus because of my pregnancy, how I would afford two infants and myself. It got so bad that I had to get admitted in the hospital because I had preclampsia. I had to get a c-section because their h-heart rates were slowing down. After a tricky c-section, we were all in the clear but Baby 2 had underdeveloped lungs and intestines so she had to stay in the hospital. Three weeks later I got discharged and two days following that one I was told I could get Baby 1.