Summary: She’s having his baby and it’s “none of his bussniess,” or maybe it actually is? Does Andrea finally let Ethan in and what happens after she wakes up to blood?
Warnings: Miscarriage, Abuse. Maybe smut?
A/N: italics are flashbacks and texts.. this took me forever and its too long im sorry
Thank you @erosdolan for the gif and beta reading!! ily.
Her eyes are deceiving her. They have to be. An ambulance’s lights below are beaming into her window in inconsistent flickers that burn her tired, unadjusted eyes. That has to be the red she sees when she lifts her sheets.
Andrea rolls over and flips on the light that sits between her and Hannah’s beds. When the light fills every dark corner of the room, she notices her hands tremble violently. With fingers that feel as though they could sear through her skin, she peels her blanket back again. Her breath drops, the sheets definitely red, and then when she pulls down her underwear to look at them, also red. Dark red. Blood red.
“Oh, fuck. Oh my god. Oh my god.” Andrea lets go of her panties and places her hand over her belly, closing her eyes tight and wishing for the ignorance that is sleep to take her back. It’s a stupid, childish move that proves fruitless because Hannah rustles in her bed.
“No, no, no,” Andrea mumbles, every fleck and flush of color draining from her face. The rest of her skin starts to burn with her fingertips, and her heart palpitates in a way that feels as though it stops between beats.
Hannah jumps up, surveying the room before her concerned eyes land on Andrea. “What- what’s wrong?”
Hannah gets her footing steady, she moves closer and reaches to pull Andrea’s blankets from her. Andrea cries out, holding the sheets to her chest before Hannah manages to pry it from her grip.
“Oh, shit – I mean.. It’s not bad. It’s not that much blood. It’s okay,” Hannah’s usually confident voice teeters with uncertainty, only working to turn Andrea’s blood colder.
Andrea shakes her head no.
“Okay, then you’re fine.”
“You’re not supposed to bleed while pregnant!”
“Fuck- I know, I know. Okay. Do we call an ambulance?”
Andrea’s silent as images flash in her mind of a child with her dark hair and Ethan’s nose; a baby with chubby hands and dark eyes that are wide and so curious for the world. She thinks of how often women say childbirth is the worst pain in the word, but that pain is always temporary, and it’s the most rewarding pain of all. She used to find that so fucking cheesy, but as she lay there now, she wants it for herself. She held a life in her hands, proof of it hanging from the fridge in a grainy black and white photo, and now she can feel it slipping through her fingers like sand on Myrtle Beach. She doesn’t want the last speck to fall away. It was just the beginning.
Then her mind wanders to her mother. As she sees her in her mind, she realizes how much she looks like her… The woman who was supposed to love her the most in the world, the same one who had a habit of telling her she would have been lucky if she bled like Andrea did now.
Maybe the world knew she would end up like the bitter woman who raised her.
Andrea refutes that idea — the world is wrong because Andrea has never loved anything more than the swell of her belly. Not New York, not the cat she had as a child, nothing… A scream pools at the back of her throat, begging to be released for the way life always seems to dangle things in front of you before snatching it away.
“Lets- let’s just get a cab, ambulances’ are expensive.” Hannah stutters. “I’m gonna call Ethan.”
Andrea’s eyes flick open. “Don’t.”
Hannah sighs; she’s poised to a fight, but when her eyes land on Andrea’s face, she sees something she’s never seen before: fear, and more shockingly, tears. So she bits her tongue of anything besides: “okay, let’s go. Can you walk?”
In the bathroom, Andrea chokes back sobs and hiccups as she changes her ruined underwear and adds a pad. Part of herself tells her to make it quick, but the other more considerable part knows what waits for her at the hospital, a goodbye she’s not ready for. And yet, she knows life won’t stand still for her no matter what she feels and that this is nothing but a speck of dust on the planet, so what else is there to do besides splash water on her face and hurry out?
Hannah leads Andrea down the stairs, whistling to the traffic when their feet touch pavement in front of their building. By some miracle, one of the yellow cabs slows and stops right before them. They rush down the rest of the steps and hop into the leather seats.
“Where’s the nearest hospital?” Hannah asks.
“Lenox hill on the east side.”
Hannah settles back into her seat and looks over to where Andrea’s head has lulled to rest on the glass that’s mucked up with fingertips and stickiness. Andrea just watches the lights and people and cars pass as they make their way to the hospital, losing count of how many intersections they fly by. However, she’s certain she can still feel herself bleeding, so she presses her eyes closed tightly and wills herself not to cry – gone were the silent tears, something heavier pooling deep within and she fears that if they start they may never stop.
She tells herself she’s okay, that life will go on, that she’s okay with what the doctors will say to her.
But Andrea finds that’s not her truth. Especially when the cabs halts and Hannah’s hurrying her out. The glass doors to the hospital slide open with sleek efficiency as a security guard sits by the door. The lights are bright and beam against the white floor. Andrea’s feet stop. They just stop.
She remembers the heartbeat that filled the room only a few weeks prior, and her tears slip to that rhythm. Her breath stuck in her chest, any air she sucks in feels deprived of oxygen. Andrea gasps, her hand clutching over her heart. “I need Ethan.” She exhales, growing louder, “I can’t - I can’t do this. I need-”
The staff must notice the scene playing out in the waiting room because suddenly, a wheelchair and three nurses are at her side.
“I can’t - he - I need,” she sobs. Ethan would understand the weight on her chest, he’s the only other person on earth who knew what she was losing, who also heard that steady beat. It would hurt him too, but there are some things in this life that you cannot bear alone.
Another first, as Andrea is gently moved into the wheelchair.
“Okay, okay,” Hannah shushes, pulling her phone from her pocket. “I’m gonna call him. I’m calling him.”
The nurse with blonde hair squats, “what’s going on, can you tell me what’s happening?”
“I-I- I’m twelve weeks, and I woke up to bleeding.”
The nurse swallows. “Okay. Can we take you back and get you checked in, while your friend contacts who you need?”
Andrea nods. As they’re pushing her wheelchair, she hears Hannah exclaim Ethan’s name. She also hears the fear, the trembling in her voice.
Behind the door, her vision is a mess of white. The nurses ask her questions; if she answers them, she can’t recall. They take her blood pressure and her temperature. She thinks she hears them say all that is good.
Andrea sits in a white, cold room that she doesn’t remember being taken to. She remembers them saying something about taking her blood to check her hCG levels, but she does not remember them pushing the needle into her arm. She knew enough about pregnancy now to know that hCG is a pregnancy hormone, and it’s what they will use to tell her her baby is dying.
“Where is she?!” Ethan’s voice booms through the echoey corridors of the hospital. It’s the loudest Andrea has ever heard him speak, the urgency in his voice matching that of what she feels in her gut. Relief runs through her like icy water.
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
romaincrisis
gummygunk
vaporwave
kianamaiart
jbbartram-illu
