Beating For Two

Chapter 13

My appointment on February 9th wasn't anything exciting, but nevertheless it felt somehow wrong to be there without Harry. He'd been with me to my last two appointments and when I was in the office without him, I realised how much having him there had comforted me. Not that I was uncomfortable without him, but it just felt like something important was missing. The examination didn't take more than half an hour, though, and I was told that all four heart chambers were functioning, arms and legs were all intact, and that the baby was growing the way he was supposed to. I was starting to wonder if it was about time we started doing some tests to see if it was possible to figure out what biologic mutation had caused this baby to come to life in the first place, but then I thought that I could really use some emotional support when asking those kinds of questions and decided that I'd wait until Harry was with me.

It was only after I left the doctor's office that I came to realise that I'd actually become a bit... dependent on Harry. The thought of going through all of this alone for the next four months made me frown and as I walked along the pavement on my way home, I thought to myself that it was a good thing Harry was the sweet guy he was. It could easily have been a real jackass that I'd hooked up with at that party instead of Harry, so despite the situation, I had to consider myself pretty lucky for at least having one person who was supporting me.

Except for sending a quick text saying 'new appointment, tuesday march 8th, nine o'clock' and gotten a quick 'i'll be there' in reply, I hadn't communicated with Harry at all since the day he showed up in my room. Embarrassingly enough, I found myself missing him when it had been a few days, but me being me, I chose to ignore it and continued my life pretending that I didn't know any Harry. I remembered what he'd said about it being depressing to see me alone all the time, though, so I tried to eat in other places than the cafeteria during lunch; I didn't want Harry to feel guilty just because I ate my lunch alone every day. Of course I saw him in the hallways from time to time, but even when we walked right past each other, he didn't acknowledge my existence; with his arm around Lauren or walking side by side with Liam, Zayn or Niall, he passed me without as much as a glance. Even though I'd agreed when he said we couldn't interact with each other at school, I hadn't thought he'd meant that we were gonna ignore each other completely. Apparently that's what he'd meant, though, and eventually I got used to it.

Friday, February 18th

Twenty-two weeks and four days

“So for Monday I'd like you to do tasks forty-four to fifty-three,” Ms. Henricksen said and earned herself a choir of complaints. She held up her hand and the classroom went quiet, “I know you think it seems like an unnecessarily big amount of tasks, but this is maths and it requires more work than most other classes you're taking.”

I was too tired to bother complaining or coming up with an excuse to avoid having to do the tasks, so while Ms. Henricksen was busy stressing the importance of homeworks, I stared out the window and begged for the last five minutes of the lesson to magically disappear. To think that I still had four hours left before my day was over was disheartening, to say the least, and all in all, I was in a rather foul mood. I wasn't angry or annoyed; I was sad, depressed and, despite sitting in a classroom with thirty other people, I was lonely, so goddamned lonely.

Since the last time me and Harry hung out, which was ten days ago now, I hadn't really talked to anyone. Of course I'd talked to mum and Owen and Eleanor, but for obvious reasons, I hadn't been able to really talk to anyone. Under normal circumstances, I would have been fine with the feeling of loneliness, but now, with the baby constantly kicking, constantly being there as a reminder of Harry, constantly being a reminder of what I wanted so badly, but couldn't have, I needed to talk to someone. No, correction, I needed to talk to Harry, because he was the only one who knew everything and who I didn't have to hide anything from.