Characters aren't mine.

One week later 8:15 AM Greg's voice

Shift was over, and we were finally home. "Well, at least he didn't yell." I handed Sara a steaming cup of decaf as I spoke. "That's something."

She sighed. "Yet. Once he recovers from his catatonic state he still might." Sara took a sip from her cup and frowned thoughtfully. "He had the strangest look on his face."

"Yeah. Gotta say, I've never seen the man truly astonished before. It was surreal, like watching Spock have a temper tantrum. "

"Nick still thinks we're joking, you know that, right?"

"Don't worry, Sara. When you start to REALLY swell up he'll realize we weren't kidding." I patted her little belly. "Such a sexy little tummy. "

"It's going to be getting a lot bigger. Glad you like it, though, since it IS all your fault." She winced and rubbed her lower back.

"Oh, I like it very much. Very much. Every time I look at you I remember that in just seven months I'm going to get to hold that baby in there in my arms."

She yawned. "I'm tired. I think I'll go to bed before I fall asleep sitting up."

"You do that. I won't be far behind you."

12:23 PM

"Greg! Wake up! Something's wrong."

Sara was sitting up, her eyes wide with panic and despair. She was gripping her abdomen. "It hurts. We have to go to the hospital."

I threw on some jeans and was putting on my T-shirt when I glanced at her side of the bed. My heart contracted in grief, for dark blood stained the spot where her hips had rested. In this situation as in so many others, blood usually meant tragedy. This day wasn't likely to have a happy ending.

Eight hours later our world had utterly changed. Our baby was gone, and a D and C had freed Sara's body from the agonizing process of expelling the remains. As I'd expected, there were no reasons, no whys or hows. I knew too well from my genetics background that the process of growing a baby from two haploid cells was fraught with difficulty and risk. At any point something in the development could go wrong - or the placenta could fail the child it existed to nurture, or the cord could twist and occlude its own precious lifeline. Whatever the cause, we no longer had a due date to look forward to. The obstetrician told us we could try again in a month, but I wasn't sure she'd be interested in doing so, at least not with me. My heart was breaking as I signed the necessary paperwork and prepared to take my Sara home. The center of our little world had died, and we were left to gather enough strength from one another to go on. I only hoped there was still an "us" now that the glue fusing us together was no longer present.

Sara's voice 12:24 PM

I was dreaming about puppies when the first pain hit. It gripped my belly like a jagged fist, and even as I sat up in the bed a sick sense of what it meant flowed over me. My lower back had been bothering me on and off since halfway through shift the night before, but I'd attributed the nagging ache to too much time spent hunched over a box of evidence. Now as I shook Greg awake I knew what was happening. I was having a miscarriage.

I hobbled into the bathroom and traded my pajamas for the clothes I'd worn to work the night before. I was bleeding, and not just a little bit - yet another confirmation of the tragedy unfolding inside my own body.

Greg was dressed by the time I came out of the bathroom. He didn't say anything, just wrapped his arms around me and pressed his face into my hair. His tears dripped onto my neck, and a felt a small sob shake him. My arms tightened around him, and we stood like that until another pain hit me. "We need to go," I gasped sharply.

At the hospital things moved quickly. The ultrasound revealed that my baby was no longer alive, and the physical revealed that my cervix was beginning to open. "The child probably died a few days ago," mused the doctor as I lay in the recovery room after the D and C. "Your body just now realized it." He'd paused, then added softly, "I know this was a planned pregnancy. Wait one full cycle before you try again. Since you've had a D and C it might take a few months this time. We scraped your uterine lining, and it may take a couple of cycles for it to regrow."

I was released into Greg's care shortly after that. Neither of us said much during the drive home, but when his hand found mine and lifted it to his lips at a stoplight I realized that was because we didn't need words.

I realized something else as well. Somewhere along the way I'd fallen in love with him.

Please don't hate me. This story has a mind of its own.Understand that I am in no way minimizing or reducing to a plot device the pain of pregnancy loss. I've lived it twice myself.