Omnipresence ♾ Zarry

iii.

It will be a month next week. Right on Halloween. What used to be Harry's favourite holiday will now be the worst, always leaving a sour taste in his mouth.

It's been a strange time. Harry has been alone a lot. Out of volition. He had plenty of people blowing up his phone, asking if he's okay but he tends to ignore most of them. He likes the silence and the sound of the old house settling around him. Jolene's little bell on her collar sounding off as she walks around. Harry considers getting a puppy too so he has a good reason to leave the house and ignore people. Or he can attempt to leash-train Jolene.

It used to be just a running joke between him and Zayn, talking about how their house is definitely haunted. It's an old Victorian, it wouldn't be unheard of. Only now does Harry truly grasp the little things they made fun of. Doors opening and closing out of nowhere, weird sounds at night, sometimes even during the day. It's creepy now that Harry doesn't have that other person to turn to and crack a joke about it. Well, at least he has Jolene. She'll protect him from creepy Victorian ghosts.

But she can't save him from an inevitable realization that Harry's come to in the past few days. Harry wrote off the frequent sickness and lack of appetite to his grief. He couldn't eat much and often took shots of whatever was in the cabinet to get through his day. It made sense. But after a week or so, he stopped with the drinking because he feared he'd accidentally overdose on paracetamol given how much of it he was taking to ease his hangovers. Two days ago, on an eerily silent but familiar afternoon, it finally clicked. It was very likely that he was carrying the child of his dead husband.

Fucking splendid, wasn't it? Just what Harry needed to add to his grief. He tried to dispute it in his head but when he spent another morning kneeling on the bathroom floor, even Jolene knew he couldn't fool himself or anyone else. So he went out to get a test because what else was there to do?

Harry started laughing when he saw that plus sign on the test. He was hypnotizing that plastic stick, trying to convince it to cooperate with his shitty fucking life a little but nope, it wasn't having it. So Harry laughed. He laughed because how can his life get even more miserable? Wasn't it enough that he lost his husband out of nowhere? Did he also have to deal with this now?

To be completely sure, Harry booked a doctor's appointment for Monday. If his doctor confirms the worst, he's going to book an interruption of the pregnancy right away because he cannot do this. He's not a fucking masochist.

The most ironic thing about it all is that they didn't even want to have kids. They went into their marriage knowing they were young, they had great careers and they wanted to enjoy life. A lot of their time was spent travelling and exploring the world, making the most of the measly few years they've got on this earth. Kids weren't a priority, at least not for a couple more years.

But when Harry looks back at it, looks at his daily planner, he notices a lapse in the pill. It was only three days when he forgot to bring the pills with him on a weekend trip to Edinburgh but they didn't have sex on that trip, he remembers it. Harry didn't think anything could happen anyway because he's been on the pill for over a decade, three days couldn't possibly make a difference. But they did. And it happened at the worst possible time in his life.

That is how he finds himself in his doctor's office on Monday and has to endure hearing the words that break him again: "Congratulations, your baby is right here on the screen. Do you want to take a look?"

Harry curses under his breath and shakes his head. He gets the doctor off of him and she looks at him like he's gone insane.

"Is something wrong?" she asks. "Is it not the answer you had hoped for?"

"No, it isn't," Harry says quickly, averting his gaze. "Does the clinic do abortions as well or do I need to go somewhere else?"

The doctor is taken aback. "Yes, we do perform them. Every Tuesday."