Now this chapter didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would to update. Life has thrown me quite a few curveballs the past few weeks/two months, so writing gets deprioritized. I want to thank you so much for the response to the last chapter, there has been some reviews to this story which I go back and read again and again, and again, and the response in general is pretty unprecedented when it comes to stories of mine. I hope you will continue to enjoy this story, and follow Rick and Kate's journey to parnthood and beyond :)

I also want to thank inkorrekteskonzept on tumblr for reading through this chapter and helping me making it better! You're awesome :D

How I wish I could walk through the doors of my mind;
Hold memory close at hand,
Help me understand the years.
How I wish I could choose between Heaven and Hell.
How I wish I would save my soul.
I'm so cold from fear.

TEARS AND RAIN - JAMES BLUNT

CHAPTER 10 – LIMBO

There was a chaos of sound as she woke, regaining consciousness little by little. Far away she could hear the incessant shrill of a monitor as someone went into cardiac arrest, and around her were hurried voices. Then she felt the pain. It shot up her arm and seized her body, vibrating in her with every jostle of the gurney she was on.

"Ma'am, can you hear me?" a nurse's voice demanded. She groaned, and attempted to turn on her non-injured arm and curl up around herself. The straps that had been put over her legs in the ambulance stopped her movements. "Ma'am?"

The gurney stopped moving, and she was swiftly lifted onto a bed. Someone shone a light in her eyes, and by instinct she tried to move herself away from the light.

"Ma'am, I need you to answer a few questions," the nurse said again as someone was cutting open her sleeve. "Do you remember if you hit your head?"

"No, no I don't think so," Kate said, eyes frantically looking around the ER she had ended up in. She'd been shot, she remembered that. She'd been shot in her arm. "I'm pregnant, I'm 17 weeks pregnant."

"Okay," the nurse nodded and looked over at the one Kate presumed was the doctor.

"Page Dr. Grant and have her check her out," the doctor said over her head. "Can you tell me your full name ma'am?"

"Kathrine Beckett." She couldn't help the scream that pushed out of her throat as he lifted her arm.

"Okay, Mrs. Beckett, you were shot on shift in your arm, and you lost consciousness at the scene. You have been bleeding quite heavily, and there is no exit wound, so we need to take you to surgery." She nodded her head, but wasn't able to comprehend what was happening. Surgery? "Dr. Grant from maternity will make sure everything is alright with your baby before we take you up. Are you feeling any cramping or pain in your abdomen, have you had any complications up until now in your pregnancy?"

"I can't… I can't feel anything but my arm," Kate groaned, noticing the blood that was staining the white paper on the bed beneath her. Moments after a woman with greying hair pushed through the doors and into the room she was in, and an ultrasound machine followed.

"What do we have here?" Dr. Grant asked, and smiled a comforting smile at Kate where she was lying on her back on the table.

"Mrs. Beckett, 29 years old and 17 weeks pregnant, so far a normal pregnancy," the doctor replied without Dr. Grant looking up at him once.

"Okay Mrs. Beckett, have you experienced any cramping?" The pain in her arm was all consuming, she couldn't think far beyond it. There was little else to be felt. Nothing could compare to the sensation of her arm being ripped apart from the inside.

"I don't know…" How could she not know if she was having a miscarriage? This was her child and her responsibility. A mother should know these things! Tears were rolling down her cheeks before she even understood that's he was crying. "Is she alright?"

"I'm going to have a quick look here." Dr. Grant moved her hand over Kate's stomach, pressing firm hands against her abdomen. Kate couldn't gauge anything from the doctor's face. She couldn't concentrate long enough to be able to figure out if that was a good or a bad thing. A squirt of jelly was put on her stomach, just like the days before when she had found out that she was expecting a daughter.

There was a pause. The room seemed to slow down a fraction as Dr. Gran examined the ultrasound picture she received on the screen. The shrill of the machine in the distance quietened to a muted beating, but she did not pay attention to that.

"Everything is looking good with your baby right now," Dr. Grant said, removing the wand she had pressed to Kate's stomach. "Heart rate is a little low, but I'm going to monitor her during your surgery to make sure everything is alright."

"Why wouldn't she be alright?" she asked through gritted teeth when the railings on the bed were pulled up with a quick snap.

"Your partner informed us that you received a blow to the stomach. With the shock, and blood loss, we want to make sure that your baby isn't affected by the stress." Kate nodded. She didn't remember being hit in the stomach, everything had gone black moments after she had been shot in the arm.

"Is there anyone you want us to call Mrs. Beckett?" the other doctor asked. He had never given her his name.

"It's miss…" she corrected.

"Is there anyone you want us to call Miss Beckett?" he corrected himself.

"Yeah, the baby's dad," she said. "His number…" She couldn't remember his phone number. This was the time she needed it the most, and she couldn't recall it. "My OB has it, it's Dr. Donovan, he's at the Family Tree Clinic." She didn't know at that moment if they could request his contact information. All her years of being an EMT and there was little she could remember about it. The pain ate her up from inside. As they rolled her into the elevator the bed jumped over the threshold, sending a jolt up her body, and shaking her arm. She bit down on her lip to keep from screaming in pain.

The first thing she regained as consciousness flooded back to her system were sounds. From the open door into the hall she could hear the low voices of nurses talking, and laughter from a room far away. Then she could feel her body. The sheets were tucked in around her – her whole body felt fuzzy. There was a dull throbbing in her arm which she knew should be painful, but didn't feel more than heavy. When she blinked her eyes open she was met with a vacant chair pulled up next to her bed.

She was in the hospital, she remembered. She had been shot in the arm during a pick-up of a man who'd been arrested following an altercation with another man in his apartment. The details were fuzzy, but she remembered the fear.

With slow working fingers she held her right hand over her stomach. It was still swollen, but she didn't know. She closed her eyes again, squeezing them shut to fight off the tears.

"Please be okay, baby, please be okay," she whispered to her stomach, rubbing her thumb over the protrusion. Yesterday, she thought it was yesterday, she had been scared. She thought that she didn't want to be a mother. She thought that it had been a horrible mistake, and that she would end up being the worst thing that ever happened to this child. She thought she would have to leave it. Now she couldn't imagine a life like that. A life without her baby, a life where she was not her daughter's mother. Tears pressed behind her eyes, and she couldn't fight them anymore.

"Hey… Hey!" she heard someone say from the door. Not even a moment had passed before large hands had intertwined with hers over her stomach. "Are you in pain?" Castle asked, and she shook her head, but the tears still fell across her cheeks.

"Is she okay?" she pleaded, grasping his hand tight in hers.

"She's okay," he said, and her body relaxed into the mattress. The sleepiness crept back into her bones. "I'm paging the doctor, she'll explain more." There was an edge to his voice, a worry which he didn't want her to pick up on, that kept her from succumbing to the heavy pull of sleep. Their baby was okay now, but what was it the he wasn't telling her?

Grasping hard at consciousness she focused on the lines on Rick's face as they waited for the doctor. Where had he been when they called? What thoughts had rushed through his head? His hair was disheveled, there was a 5 o'clock shadow along his cheeks and jaw, and dark circles around his eyes. Had he been up still, making last minute preparations for Christmas day? Did Alexis and Martha know where he was? Did he wake them up before he left, or did he just leave? How did Alexis take this disruption of Christmas celebrations? Would this sever whatever chance Kate had on a relationship with Alexis?

"Merry Christmas," she said, and squeezed his hand. The smile he offered back was bleak.

"Merry Christmas Kate." He squeezed her hand back.

"It's good to see you awake, Miss Beckett," said a voice from the door. Kate and Rick turned their heads towards the door where Dr. Grant was standing. "You're my last visit before I get off the shift." The smile on the doctor's face was soft and reassuring, but there was something beneath. Kate couldn't trust the smile as genuine, not yet.

"Is she alright?" Kate asked, her hand wrapping across her stomach the best she could.

"Yes, you daughter is doing well now." The doctor stepped into the room. "During surgery you were contracting regularly, and your baby was in distress. But it went away on its own." She paused, and looked over to Rick who was listening with rapt attention. He wasn't family, so this was the first he was able to hear about what was happening beyond "She is fine".

"But?" Rick asked, hanging on the doctor's words.

"At this stage of pregnancy if the contractions were to start up again there would be nothing we can do. The earliest stage we administer medication to stop contractions is at 23 weeks. You are 6 weeks from that stage." The silence that followed lay thick over the room, expanding like a dark cloud above Rick and Kate's heads.

"I don't… I'm having a miscarriage?" No! The voice in her head screamed. It trashed and threw itself against the barriers of her mind. Not her, she couldn't lose her too!

"No you are not, but you are at high risk for one." Dr. Grant looked over at Rick whose face had turned a sinister color. "Which is why I'm putting you on strict bedrest until 23 weeks, when I will do an evaluation to asses the risks." They would no longer be in the care of Dr. Donovan, now they needed someone who specialized in high risk pregnancies. Like hers. "No pressure on your pelvis, which means no sex, no orgasms. You are allowed to walk to the bathroom, stand up for a shower, and walk to the living room and back. And walk to go to doctor's appointments, which will be once a week until 23 weeks."

"No more work?" The doctor shook her head.

"I was also informed that you are living on your own... I would recommend that you have someone close by who can help you with food preparation, and daily assistance, since bed rest will get boring – quickly." Kate winced. The only option she had was her father, and he wouldn't be much support. She guessed that it had been years since her father had ever prepared dinner, and he could barely support himself.

"You can stay with me," Rick said then.

"No, I can't, I don't want to impose—"

"You're not imposing, I'm asking." He smiled at her, that smile which made her heart warm and head go dizzy. "My mother is imposing, you are not." She laughed a tired laugh, feeling the pull of the morphine.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"I should call your dad," he said, voice tentative and low. The fact that she barely spoke of her father, and the little he had heard of him, made it easy for Rick to deduce that the father-daughter relationship was strained.

"Yeah… he should know." Scenarios rushed through her head; her father unable to cope with the news, and drowning himself in the drink; her father rushing to her side, drunk; her father already drunk and not picking up. "How's Espo?" she asked, straying from the topic of her father and the image of a beer can clutched in is sweaty hands. "My partner."

"He came in to check up on you earlier, he was fine and heading home." That was good news, great news. That he was well enough to come to her when she was still under was good. She would have to call him later, but this was enough to settle her now, enough to feel the pull of the morphine again.

After Dr. Grant left, after giving the two of them more in depth information, Rick said he needed to leave too. He'd left Alexis and his mother at the apartment, and they were anxious for his return. He promised to be back later with a change of clothing for her, and her toiletries. When he left she thought back to the days previous where she had avoided him, and she couldn't remember the reason why any more. Alone she had no reason to fight sleep, and the morphine pulled her under.

"Katie," her mother called, laughter teasing in her voice. "If you don't get down from there we'll be late."

From her vantage point on the tree branch she could see that her mother wasn't eager to leave either.

"I like it up here," she said with a shrug, but had to bite her lip to keep a giggle from escaping.

"I know you do, but we'll be back here for spring break." Kate sighed, and looked over towards the cabin where they had celebrated Christmas. The Christmas tree had been stripped bare and left to lean against the side of the cabin. She knew the next time they'd see it the needles would be golden.

"I don't want to go," she whined.

"I know you don't, and that means that we did something right here over the holidays. Remember you didn't even want to come up here!" Her mother's smile was wide, eyes sparkling. "C'mon down, we need to get back to New York for our next adventures."

She hesitated on the branch, thinking about the busy streets in New York, and the early mornings, and soggy cereal. There were also her friends, and her neighbor's dog.

"Okay…" she acquiesced, pressing the balls of her feet against the bark of the tree, easing herself down to the ground again.

"Get your things and we'll head out." Her mother planted a kiss at the top of her head before Kate ran off again.

The next time she woke it was because of laughter. Someone was draping something over her body. It was soft and warm; which was nice because the room was chilly. As she opened her eyes she was surrounded by bright colored lights that nearly blinded her.

"Merry Christmas!" There was a chorus of voices, one loud and theatrical. Sitting on chairs around her bed were Rick, Martha, and Alexis. Rick and Alexis were wearing ugly Christmas sweaters. The dress Martha wore was the same sleek red as a Christmas ornament.

"What are you doing here?" Kate spluttered, her head looking between them, and the Christmas lights that had been draped over her stomach along with a bright red blanket. It looked ridiculous.

"Since you are stuck in the hospital over Christmas I thought we would take our celebrations here," Alexis said with a shy smile on her face. Rick was hugging the girl into his side, and Kate noticed the furious blush on her cheeks. "It doesn't matter where you are, as long as you are with family." There was something more glimmering in Alexis eyes as she said it, a close to hopeful and expectant look which Kate couldn't quite place. The word family was said with a nudge, and a weight where Kate understood the implicit meaning that she was now a part of a family dynamic of reciprocity. Alexis cared about her, and in that caring she was hoping that Kate wouldn't break their hearts and let both her and her little sister down. But Kate only knew that there was more expected of her, the full meaning of the look and tone was something she was not completely ready to accept. That she would break their hearts was a given to Kate, and if she understood how much Alexis expected her not to, Kate would sabotage everything in fear.

"Well said," Martha praised with a cheer. Rick helped Kate raise the bed so that she was reclining rather than lying flat on her back as Martha handed her a plastic glass. "This is eggnog." The woman paused for a momet, and then changed the plastic glass Kate had been handed to another one. "That was spiked eggnog, this is virgin." Martha gave a theatrical wink.

"Wow, you guys you didn't have to…" Rick clasped his hand over Kate's, and her words faded.

"This is what family does," he said. A lump appeared in her throat. It tasted bittersweet as it grew. It was happiness – she was finally someone who've made an impact, someone who mattered to other people. Gone were the days where she was alone. "Here, we brought presents," Rick continued when he noticed he noticed that she was too choked up to speak.

She was handed a small square package from Alexis.

"I didn't get you any…" Kate said, guilt settling like cement in her stomach.

"You're making the best gift of all, darling." Martha placed a hand over Kate's stomach. Kate managed a slight smile in return, but the guilt didn't abate. "Now open your gift."

She tore off the paper with her right hand, as Alexis explained that it was a gift from her. She'd seen it when she was out Christmas shopping with her dad and thought of her. The lump in her throat grew, feeling wholly inadequate and appreciated at the same time. Alexis didn't hate her for what she'd done to her family, she'd accepted her instead. Kate didn't know what she had done to deserve that, but she wanted to keep on doing it.

Inside the small box was a gold necklace with a pink tourmaline stone. It was smaller than the nail on her pinky, but still managed to catch the reflection of the ornament lights on her body.

"Wow, it's beautiful Alexis," she held it up in front of her to look at it more closely.

"It's your birth stone, and when the baby's born we can add her birth stone to it as well." Alexis spoke in a rushed breath, a blush high on her cheeks which Kate couldn't help but love.

"Thank you." She reached her good hand out to grasp Alexis' squeezing it and hoping that she would understand just how grateful she was for the gift.

"Now this one's from me," Martha said, handing her a thin rectangular present. "Since you'll be stuck in bed for a couple of weeks I figured you'd need something to do with your time." Inside the package was a DVD with 4 Broadway plays on it.

"Thank you Martha, I love it." She flipped it over and read on the back of it what plays it had on it.

They stayed for nearly an hour, Rick informing her that his gift wasn't ready yet, but would be soon. It left her feeling uneasy – the gifts she had received were thoughtful, inspired, and she didn't have anything for them. It wasn't even possible for her to get anything. She was tied to a bed until the beginning of February.

When the hour was up, they left reluctantly, Rick carrying the still lit Christmas lights in his arm, looking like she imagined a – sullen – human Christmas tree would look like.

Later that night as she listened to the sirens of police cars and ambulances she thought of Rick. It was hard to forget his smile, and to stop her own smile from expanding on her face as she thought about him. The way he had wrapped his arm around Alexis with his eyes twinkling with happiness and love, it had grabbed at her heart and squeezed it. A new yearning had started to build inside of her, not the yearning to flee from him, nor the yearning for a life that wasn't hers. It was a yearning for more of what she had. More of him.

Inside of her she could feel the tickle of movements that signaled her baby girl's presence. In all the chaos, with everything that had happened, she hadn't felt her move until then. A tear escaped her eyes as air flooded into her lungs. Relief.

"Stay with me baby, stay with me," she whispered, brushing her thumb over the small bump. "Please don't leave me."

If you're curious of my social media accounts where I sometimes talk about writing you can find me:

Twitter: sinisterkid92
Tumblr: redkiera

And as said above inkorrekteskonzept is the beta to this story, and you can find her tumblr under that name :)