The Michael Nichols story.

Chapter II: Easily gained is easily lost.

Two weeks passed by, and me and grace, Sarah's mother noticed a change in her. Sure enough after a clinic visit, she was pregnant. This sparked something inside of us. That something turned out to be parenting skills. We continued to bounce between names, plans and dreams as the next two and a half months went by like nobody's business. One night, I got a phone call. I specifically remember waking up, confused and checking the clock seeing the neon red numbers brightly in the dark room. 2:15 am, I blinked for a moment trying to figure out what had stirred me. Then I heard a song, listened intently for a second and realized it; "The Danger Zone", a song from the movie "Top Gun". Realizing it was my ringtone, I checked the number of my dimly lit screen and didn't recognize it so I declined the call. I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep and a few seconds go by before the song started playing again. Curious as why they called again so quickly, I answered it with the sleep starting to fade.

"Hello, this is Michael." I stated through my sleepy haze.

There was a pause, and I went to open my mouth a familiar voice spoke up.

"Mike..." I shot up; ripping the charging cord from my bedside table. Immediately I recognized the voice, it was my girlfriend.

"Sarah, what happened?!?" I was quickly overrun by the feeling of dread at the tone of her voice. It was no longer warm and inviting, but full of sorrow and.... It sounded like she was holding back tears. Before I could open my mouth, she started sobbing, and quietly gave me an address before hanging up on me.

"Shit, something is really wrong" I thought to myself, and immediately typed the address into my phone as I got dressed and sprinted out the door, past my half asleep and very confused mother. I jumped into my truck and took off like a bat out of hell.

Tires squealing yet again, I tore into the parking lot of the 24 hour emergency clinic my GPS had led me to. Quickly jumping out of my truck, forgetting to turn off the engine in my panic I dashed inside of the store. A nurse was standing in the lobby, and greeted me.

"You must be Michael, I'm Olivia; Sarah is this way" she calmly turned around and showed me down the hallway. Then, sitting on the exam table; sobbing and in sever distress was Sarah. I had seen her sad before, but not like this; something was definitely horribly wrong. Trying to get Sarah to speak up showed no progress and turned to see a doctor had entered the room, as I saw him I quickly shot him a look that was half confused and half scared as all hell.

"Come with me, we can talk in the lobby" The Doctor quietly offered.

"I'm not leaving her side! I NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW!" I had lost my cool and was screaming at the doctor. To my surprise he sighed and spoke again before I could raise my voice anymore.

"Sir, I need to ask you to please calm down, there are other patients here. Please come with me." He paused, not budging. I sighed and followed him. We reached the lobby and I was not in a mood for games, but what the doctor said shook me to the core and still sticks with me to this day.

"I don't know any other way to say this.... But Ms. Compton has lost her baby due to an unfortunate miscarriage, we are still working on how it happened exactly." He looked at me, not blinking waiting on a response, as I stood there stunned and in shock at what he had just said. The one thing that had given both me and the love of my life the most meaning, and purpose was gone. As simply as erasing a picture off of your cell phone, it was gone; and there wasn't a thing I could do to change it.

"This is a joke right? Like, this has to be a prank! This cannot be happening. Everything was fine yesterday!" I had realized I was raising my voice this time and stopped to avoid screaming.

"Sir, we still are not sure what caused this, or when. All we do know is she came in 2 hours ago in severe pain, and that the baby no longer shows any signs of life. The words hit me like a truck. My legs went weak and I collapsed to my knees staring out the window blankly at my still running truck. I felt a hand on my shoulder and I slowly stood up still looking down; shortly after shutting off my truck, and retrieving my keys I re-entered the exam room where Sarah was now standing, and she quickly hugged me.

"What does this mean Michael? What are we going to do?" she said this as she started crying again.

"We will make it through this together." I wasn't sure what we were going to do myself.

After that night, Sarah and I hadn't talked to many people for a few days, as we slowly recovered from shell shock. About 4 or 5 weeks passed, and we were well into our next year of school before we even said a word acknowledging what had happened. However you could hardly consider it a conversation. We were just sitting in my room, just silently holding each other, my head in her lap and her playing with my hair. Sitting silently wasn't exactly an uncommon thing sense the miscarriage, However Sarah was the first to say something.

"Michael..." I opened my eyes and looked up at her with a raised eyebrow.

"What if it was my fault?" She said this and stared into space for a moment as I thought. A few moments went by of more silence.

"It can't be your fault babe. Remember what the doctor said? It was due to some chromosome fuck up or something like that. There wasn't anything we could have done to change that, like the doctor said; these things happen. She looked down at me, and frowned at me quoting the doctor from that night.

"Hey mike" She had returned to a more neutral tone now.

"Hmm Babe?" I looked back up at her, although she was staring at the roof.

"Let's try to keep this between the few people who know. I don't like people knowing." I stopped, and pondered that for a moment, and nodded. Sighing, she started playing with my hair again, and I closed my eyes and drifted off.

At this point I've realized how far I have rambled on. Seeing as I have just shown you into just one of the events that have shaken my life to the core, and led to my ultimate decision. However; I need to continue on with my story, I haven't got much time left to write. Let's jump to a short while before prom, my senior year in 2016.