Chapter 273: Past.. Not Present…
Fabian exhaled hard, glancing down at his own fingers before lifting his eyes back to mine. The sorrow sitting in them cracked something open in my heart immediately, a thin, cold thread of dread rising up my throat at the thought of losing yet one more thing.
“I am so sorry,” he rasped, shaking his head slowly, his eyes glassy and wet.
I stiffened, twisting fully to face him, my pulse hammering hard enough that I could feel it in my throat. “What are you sorry for, baby? What’s going on?”
He gripped the back of his neck hard, his breathing uneven, his eyes unfocused like he was looking somewhere far past me. My fear climbed with every second he didn’t answer. “Fabian—”
“Did you know you were pregnant?”
The question stopped me cold. I pinched my brows together, certain I’d misheard him. “Pregnant?”
“Yes, baby. Pregnant.” His voice cracked on the word. “You were pregnant. One month along.”
The words failed to land properly at first, sliding past the ache already building behind my ribs. Was. Not is.
“The doctor mentioned you probably couldn’t have known,” he continued, his voice growing thinner, further away, “underneath everything else you’d been dealing with this past month, and that—”
His words dissolved into noise after that. I couldn’t even follow the shape of his mouth anymore through the sudden blur flooding my eyes. I had been pregnant. Past tense. Not present.
There had been another life inside me, growing quietly while I complained about being emotional, sensitive, dizzy, exhausted, and I hadn’t known. I hadn’t known, and now I never would, not really, not the way you’re supposed to know your own child.
Fabian didn’t need to explain the rest. I already knew. Nicolai. The knife. The wounds I could still feel throbbing beneath the bandages right now.
The pain that split through my chest wasn’t like anything I’d ever known, gut-deep and merciless, seizing my breath and stuttering my heartbeat all at once.
I didn’t understand what was happening to my own body in that moment, only that my hand had found its way to my chest, clutching at it, and through the blur and the sudden ringing in my ears I saw Fabian’s eyes go wide with panic, saw him rise over me, reaching for me, saying something I couldn’t hear over the roaring building behind my own skull.
The pain was too enormous. My breathing kept slipping further and further away from me with every second.
The doctors rushed in soon after, nurses close behind them, hands on me everywhere at once, voices overlapping in words I couldn’t process, an oxygen mask settling over my face until my breathing slowed enough to stop terrifying everyone in the room.
But nothing about me felt calm on the inside, no matter how steady my chest looked from the outside.
I lay back against the pillow as my body grew heavier, my eyelids drooping under a weight I couldn’t fight, darkness creeping in at the edges and pulling me under despite everything in me wanting to stay awake, to feel this, to not let it slip away unfelt the way the pregnancy itself had.
The tears slid sideways down my temples as my eyes finally shut, my breathing evening out beneath the mask.
I had been pregnant.
And I had lost it.