Before You, He Had Me

Thirty-Six

Updates between Thursday and Friday to this point: BYHHM 34 & 35 (now 36) and new Cal story! No Shame chapter 1! Go save that one it's gonna be good!!!

⚠️TW//high⚠️
(Miscarriage)

Bits and blurs.

Pain.

Confusion.

That sterile smell that nearly haunts her.

Meg's eyes fly wide as she realizes what it is, all the pain located in the same region, the stark white hospital room, the— not Calum beside her.

"Crystal?" She asks quietly, successfully getting the blonde to look up from her phone.

"Hey girl." Crystal looks up, Meg thinks she is smiling, but the mask over her face is covering it.

"What happened?"

"What do you remember?"

"Honestly, it feels a lot like when I woke up in the hospital in January. A lot of pain, blurry bits and pieces, Calum's panicked eyes. I half expected to wake up again, to have it be a nightmare of that night." She whispers.

"Not this time." Crystal sits gently, pulling Meg's hand into her lap, "And for the record, Calum would have been here if at all possible. He didn't like that he wasn't allowed to be the one to stay with you. But Covid restrictions and everything it had to be Mike or I."

"So what did happen?" Meg nods softly, already afraid of what she is feeling in her stomach.

"Cal said you'd been experiencing some pain and cramping. He woke up yesterday morning with you in bed covered in blood. He said the whole bed was ruined, he had it all over him, you had it all over you..."

"I lost them didn't I?" Meg swallows hard, her hand dropping to her stomach, and now that she is giving it her full attention she can feel the softness of her previously slightly protruding skin, laying slack and flat over her muscles.

"Ya." Crystal nods, tears collecting in the corners of her eyes. "They did an emergency D&C since the baby was far enough along in development that they couldn't rely on your body to pass it naturally. They said you probably lost the baby about a week ago, and it took your body this long to try to expel it. The cramping was almost certainly due to the miscarriage. I'm so sorry, Meg."

"I don't..." Meg sighs, unsure how to say what she is feeling, unsure of what she is even feeling. She didn't necessarily love the baby but she didn't hate them either, it was a weird situation. She hadn't kept the baby for herself, she had kept them for another couple to enjoy being parents to.

If she'd lost a baby she was trying to have with Calum she would definitely have been upset, if it had been their baby. But this baby wasn't their baby and it was never going to be their baby. She lost an opportunity she wasn't even meant to have, and she doesn't know how to feel about it.

"I'm tired." she finally sighs, turning back to Crystal.

"They said once you woke up they would assess and go from there, would you like me to call for the doctor?"

"I want to go home honestly." Meg half laughs.

"I'll call a doctor then, he is the one who can tell us when you'll get to go home."

***

"Cal. Calum." He stirs slowly, eyes blinking heavily as Michael shakes his arm.

"News?" Cal asks, having finally passed out from exhaustion around midnight.