Beating For Two

Chapter 5

Friday, December 10th

Twelve weeks and four days

At ten forty-five the next morning, I was sitting on a chair in the waiting room at the doctor's office. I was nervous as hell and it was mostly for one reason: What if Harry had changed his mind and didn't show up? Then I had to wait even longer to make up my mind about the whole abortion-question and in all honesty, the thought of removing the little thing inside me got more and more unappealing by the hour. But after having met Ian the previous day and heard what his opinion on kids was, I'd gained yet another reason to abort it: In order to avoid scaring away mum's new boyfriend.

I sighed, wondering for the hundredth time what I'd done in my previous life to deserve to be put through this hell. Surely I would have had to have been a serial rapist. Or maybe I had been the guy who assassinated John F. Kennedy.

My mind wandered back to what I'd experienced while lying on my bed yesterday, the shooting pain in my stomach. It had to have had something to do with the baby and it had been so excruciatingly painful that I was pretty damn sure it hadn't been something good.

What if the baby was hurt? What if it was dead? What if the pain I'd felt was because of a miscarriage? But shouldn't there have been blood if that was what had happened? Then again, where would the blood come out? I didn't exactly have an... opening, unless my ass counted, which I seriously doubted. So was it possible that I'd-?

I felt myself pale at the thought. What if I really had miscarried? What if the baby had died? On pure instinct my hands found their way to my belly and held tightly onto it, as if that was going to help thing. I looked down and bit my lip. Despite still considering the possibility of an abortion, the thought of the baby already being dead was- well, it was awful, to put it mildly. I didn't want it to be dead, I wanted it to be alive and healthy and happy. But what if it wasn't? What if I right now had a dead, very underdeveloped baby inside me? The waiting room was empty besides me, so there was no one around to see me have an internal panic-attack. My breathing was getting more and more laboured as I sat there, and I did my absolute best to keep quiet, to prevent myself from starting to gasp out gulps of air. Awful images of tiny, aborted fetuses that I'd seen on a documentary on TV ages ago filled my head, and I closed my eyes for a second, shaking my head in quiet despair.

“I don't want you to be dead,” I said hoarsely while running my thumb gently over my fabric-clad tummy.

“Am I- am I early?” a hesitant voice said from somewhere to my right and my head shot up. Harry stood there, eyeing me with something in between concern and discomfort.

“Oh, hey,” I said, hastily rearranging my face the best I could, “Sorry, I'm just- no, nothing. I'm glad you came, wasn't sure if you would.”

“Yeah, me neither,” he said as he sat down on the chair next to me. I checked the clock that hung on the wall opposite of where we sat. Four minutes to eleven. Harry coughed quietly and turned to him again. “Sorry if I'm prying, but what were you saying about something being dead?” he asked.

“Nothing, it was nothing,” I said quickly, not very willing to share my rather paranoid concerns with him.

“You sure? You sounded pretty upset and looked like you were ten seconds away from hyperventilating,” he said, raising his eyebrows at me.

“I cry all the time these days, usually for no reason at all, so relax, it's nothing,” I said.

“Yeah, but you said something about something being dead,” he said, then bit his lip, looking a little nervous, “And you looked like you were, you know, talking to your stomach.”