here she is!!!! be nice to her!!!!!! 19.2k! basically 20k! oh boy oh boy oh boy!
this fic is a collab of my writing and my greatest love @softforcal on tumblr! she is my baby, just like this fic is. HAPPY READING! check her stuff out!!!
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It's hard to imagine your life 40 weeks down the road. Where will you be? Stuck in your same cycle of work, eat, sleep, and repeat? Or will you find yourself in a daring new adventure -- the beginning of a blooming relationship or finally living a life without anyone holding you down and denying you the right to smell the fresh air alone? Most people, as Elise notices, find themselves not changing. They haven't been unmoving, however, but their routined lives have been the same. There hasn't been a drastic change, in actual, and while this might be the case for most people, it's often tedious and aggravating how slow progression happens.
Nothing is more tedious than watching the world rapidly change around you while you're stuck taking sluggish steps in the concrete that you've dipped your feet into, ankle deep in most circumstances. You're comfortable. You're okay.
Elise loved her pregnancy. The loving stares she received from strangers when she stepped into the room, she adored cradling her bump whenever she introduced herself to people, and she absolutely loved when she told people her baby's name: Meredith. Elise and Meredith.
Although it's humanly impossible, a part of her wanted to remain pregnant for the rest of her life, but needing to see her little one was getting more and more urgent.
Now she wishes she waited a bit more.
A nurse comes into her room with blue scrubs and a smile on her face when she sees her patient is awake. With a warm greeting, she flickers the light on and walks over to Elise's bedside to check her vitals.
"How are you feeling?"
Elise sits up, nodding. "I'm good. How is she?"
The nurse takes her stethoscope from around her neck and plugs her ears, pulling Elise's gown just a little bit to get to her chest. She listens for a second and then removes the device, laying it back around her neck. "I haven't got a chance to see her today," she tells her. "But I'm sure she's okay. Gonna go check right after I'm done with you."
"I assure you I'm alright," Elise chuckles, sitting up some more for the nurse to flip her shirt over her stomach and check the stitches. "I just wanna see her. Is today the day?"
The nurse smiles and reattaches the tape to her stomach. "You're not healed yet. If you start walking, the stitches might open."
"Okay, then wheel me over. I won't pull anything, I promise."
"I know you won't. Your doctor hasn't given any approval yet. Wait for her to come by later today."
"It's 7 in the morning. Can you at least tell me if Meredith's been crying?" For me? Elise looks at her doctor with eager sparkling eyes.
"Well, she doesn't cry a whole lot. Not yet anyways."
The hopeful look on Elise's face is gone in a flash, her brows pulling together as her brain processes the information. Her mind threads to the hundreds of parenting books she'd spent weeks studying, yet nothing comes to her head about babies not crying. The only thing that strikes her is fear...because her baby is a healthy baby so why isn't she crying? Isn't it the one thing they do?
It's been a habit of hers recently to drop the mother act with the giddy smile on her face and instead replace it with the wide eyes and drooping brows that make the nurse's heart tremble with sadness. It's no question that a baby torn from her mother can cause distress, but it's clear especially in Elise's case thanks to the machines she's found herself hooked up to. The insistent beeping begins to accelerate at the thought of her baby and all the problems that could be hurting her little heart that causes her to be unable to cry out. The beeping, in her ear, begins to overpower the sound of her own heart and suddenly it's all she can hear.
