A/N: Please be warned this chapter is distressing. Trigger warning for pregnancy loss, miscarriage.

~xXx~

Chapter 24

Well, that just about did it.

How many times had I thought I'd hit my limit in the last few days? I'd lost count. But everything else... being tied and left for dead, finding out the truth of where I was… all of it paled into insignificance compared to the words that I'd just heard.

I stared at the doctor with my mouth gaping open. It was ridiculous. I wasn't pregnant. For one thing, I was gay. For another I was in the afterlife! I was in a bloody coma, I couldn't be pregnant! I looked on in horror as he felt around my stomach. My first thought was the horror of anyone seeing the state I'd let my body get into with all of the drink and the junk food, which I know sounds ridiculous. My second thought resembled someone smashing their head against the keyboard as I let out a strangled cry in pain. He knew I was in fucking agony! What was he poking me there for?

"by the feel of your uterus just starting to rise above your pubic bone I'd put you at about twelve weeks," he said, matter of factly like he wasn't ruining my life with his words, " Maybe more."

"Twelve weeks?" I screamed. Half the scream was from the pain in my stomach, the other half from the pain of my emotions. I could hear the doctors and nurses saying things that didn't make sense around me

"Looks like placental abruption," I heard one say. Well I knew that was ridiculous for a start. How could a placenta abrupt if I didn't have one?!

"I'm not pregnant!" I cried, begging them to take me seriously.

"Are you sexually active?" the doctor looked down his nose at me.

I opened my mouth to scream my sexual preferences at him but something stopped me because I knew in the back of my mind that, despite that fact, there had been a man sharing my bed. Quite why that had happened was something I didn't want to get into or even to contemplate right then as Alex's words about Keats and the gas and air rang in my head again, but I couldn't deny that it had happened and suddenly I felt myself crumbling; my defences were just falling away. I could hear myself sobbing and feel the tears rolling down my cheeks but I felt so shocked and numb that I was almost completely disconnected from them. The full implication of Keats's actions hit me like a new recruit meeting the filing cabinet. He had used me, he'd gotten inside of my head and now he'd left me with another heart beating inside of me.

"Kim?" I heard Simon saying my name anxiously but could barely take in what was going on as a nurse asked him,

"Are you the father?"

"What-? No!" he sounded as horrified by the accusation as I was.

"You've already been a colleague, a friend, and an alleged brother," she challenged him sarcastically, "thought maybe you had another ID to add to your repertoire."

"I am not the father!"

"Have you had sex with this young lady?"

Oh my god, I wanted to scream. I couldn't take this; the awful accusations that were flying around. Nobody understood; nobody.

"No!" Simon cried, "I'm gay!"

Something snapped inside of me as my secret spilled over.

"And so am I," I cried, my whole body wracked with anguished tears like I'd never cried before. I couldn't stop. They just poured out of me. My body shook as my eyes closed tightly and the tears that had been rolling down my face became a flood.

"Huh-what?" I could hear the shock in Simon's voice. I couldn't blame him really, he knew I'd been sleeping with Keats; it was an assumption anyone would have made but, shit, had he never had his gaydar installed? As for me, I just couldn't stop crying. Now that I'd started there was no way to stop the tears. I guess all the pain and all the anguish of the last six months or so spilled out in one go.

"Right, we need to get her scanned, see what's going on in there," I heard the doctor saying but his words flew right over my head until I heard him say, "prepare her for possible surgery."

What the fuck was happening now? Surgery? I'd never been more scared. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Simon standing there and staring at me, shaking his head in confusion. I don't think I'd ever felt so ashamed. I couldn't stop crying, the tears came so hard they burned my cheeks. I could hear Simon saying my name, again and again, sounding more worried about me with each and every time. I finally turned to him, knowing I looked a very sorry sight and the words came pouring out, the ones I hadn't dared to voice.

"I don't know why I did it, Sir," I managed to choke out, "I was so lonely and he was so nice to me... And then he did something and I… couldn't break the hold he had over me." My eyes closed. In my mind I could see him before me; the way he stared, the way he got inside of my head, "how did he make me want him? I don't understand…" There was so much more I wanted to say but before I knew it a doctor began to push Simon away telling him;

"You really have to go now, Sir, we need to take her for an urgent scan and it's possible that she will need emergency surgery to prevent her from bleeding to death. So whether you're her friend, her colleague, her brother or her weird straight-gay man-woman life partner, then you'll have to wait here."

I wanted to yell 'thanks a lot for pointing out the bleeding to death part!' - like I wasn't scared enough already - but before I knew it I was being whisked away and rolling down the hospital corridors, my eyes fixed on the ceiling as the tiles scrolled by like posts on a website. The pain was getting worse again and I started to cry out. I couldn't stop myself. Suddenly the mask came back over my face with more nitrous oxide surrounding my nose and mouth.

I suppose the best way to describe what happened next is; like a blur. A horrible, agonising, mortifying blur. My body wasn't my own property any longer; it belonged to the various medical staff that were swarming around me. I had no dignity left. I had no sanity left. I had no control over my thoughts, my emotions or my actions. The gas and air and whatever the crap was they'd shoved through my hand were sending my head twisting into fruitloops in the air. I could hardly work out how to move my limbs. But I couldn't stop screaming, that's one thing I just kept on doing.

I could hear them telling me to calm down but how could I? The devil had shoved one up me. I was pregnant, although seemingly not for long. I had never even thought about it. I'd never thought about my ability or otherwise to conceive. Contraception had never exactly been a consideration for me in the least. Sandra wasn't going to start shooing sperm out the tips of her fingers, was she? And anyway, I'd never even thought about having children. I couldn't comprehend the thought that there was a baby already in there, and fir twelve fucking weeks? What the hell? Yes, I knew my clothes had been getting tighter but I'd been shovelling junk and beer down my throat for weeks. That was the reason my clothes didn't fit any more. And throwing up? I'd done my share of that. Bloody hangovers, that's all it was. Shit, this was impossible. It couldn't be happening.

Before I knew it my smock had been pulled up and there was some goop being splurged onto my stomach. Great, more exposure. I knew I'd put on weight and I didn't want myself on display for everyone to see. I felt so self-conscious. That wasn't the thing to be focusing on really, was it? I couldn't help it. I was better off focussing on that than on the real matter, the one that was already killing my heart stone dead.

I closed my eyes as the ultrasound technician pressed her wand against my belly and tried not to think about what was happening. I could hear snatches of what was being said. There were a lot of long, laden pauses and, I am guessing, a lot of nodding. There were words I didn't want to hear... pregnancy, foetus, products of conception. No one said baby. I don't know whether for that I was glad or pissed.

The last thing I remember was the ultrasound tech giving my stomach one last hard poke with the wand, as though trying one last time to make the baby move. That was the single most painful memory, emotionally rather than physically, from the whole thing. Why did she do that when she could see there was no heartbeat? I could already tell that much from the things they were trying not to say.

"Alright, Kim?" one of them was talking to me but my eyes were closed so I didn't know who, "we need to take you to surgery right away."

"No," I whimpered. I don't even know why I was protesting.

"You're suffering from placental abruption," one of them told me, "if we don't get you into surgery right now then this is a life-threatening situation.

"It hurts," I whispered.

"The products of conception are stuck at the entrance of your uterus which is increasing the pain," the voice told me, "we need to take you for a D and C immediately."

I didn't even know what that was. My head had been squarely in the sand about reproductive matters. All I could do was to keep breathing in that tainted air and remember that this was exactly how I felt whenever he took me to bed.

The procedure is something I replay time and again to this day. No time for a general anaesthetic, I was still awake and numbed while they scraped and cleared away what remained of a baby who'd never had a chance. So cold and callous; I knew they must see this every day but I didn't. I fucking didn't. Where were my feelings in all of this as they dropped everything into a tray and muttered about sending it to pathology? I tried to beg them not to, I was delirious and although I hadn't known about the pregnancy I didn't want my baby… my baby… to end up pulled to pieces in a petri dish.

I don't really remember being moved to recovery, or how long it took before I passed out from the crying and the medication. All I know is that, as I passed into an anguished sleep, I had been through something that changed my life – and me – forever.

~xXx~

I love you Daisy. I'll miss you forever. I've never forgotten and never will.