Jasper's POV:
Alice stayed with me in the hospital all Saturday night and my aunt and uncle arrived around noon the next day. "How're you feeling Jazz?" Carlisle asked me when he arrived. I could see my aunt and my siblings waiting outside the door to get a chance to see me.
"It still hurts," I admitted groggily. They had given me something for pain, which was making me more sleepy than it was taking away the pain.
"It's going to hurt for a while Jazz. How are you feeling about the miscarriage?" he asked me with a grave look on his face.
"Upset. I didn't know we were pregnant, honest. But to know that I had Alice's baby and now she's dead…" I trailed off.
"Would you want to keep it if you could?"
"Yeah…" I admitted. "I like the idea of having her baby, just not the idea of having the vagina."
"Well you two can try again when you're older. You didn't do anything wrong: not even flying across the country, gambling, or the sex should have hurt the baby. But you were young and sometimes these things just happen."
"Are we in trouble?" I asked, caring more about what would happen to Alice than myself.
"For getting pregnant, no. It was an accident and you couldn't help that. I've been thinking about putting you and Emmett on birth control, but with your atypical anatomies, I wasn't sure what would happen. But with condoms, there's always going to be a risk of another accident."
"I meant about Vegas," I replied ignoring the part about birth control: I was not ready to think about that yet.
"Well you aren't, but Alice, Emmett, Edward, and Russell are grounded," he answered.
"I went too," I reminded him. I wanted to say, "Alice lost our baby too," but I could not bring myself to say it out loud.
"Your punishment's going to be extra therapy so that you can talk about the miscarriage," he explained knowing that I hated therapy more than anything.
"I'd rather be tied up in the basement, starved, and bitten by rabid wolves," I replied numbly.
"I know. But finding out that you had a miscarriage is a traumatic experience Jasper. You need to deal with it so that you don't sink back into another depression," he said.
Ah, so that is what they were all thinking: that I was depressed and going to try to hurt myself again. Would I never live that down? I turned my head to face Alice and said, "I'm tired," hoping to end this conversation.
"You can rest Jazz. We can wait to talk to you," she replied squeezing my hand.
"The others just want to come in and say hello real quick before they go back to the hotel room," Carlisle replied.
I was curious about what happened last night with the cops, so I nodded my head. My uncle ushered everyone else in and they all took turns offering their condolences and telling me that they wanted me to get better so that they could take me back home with them. But my aunt and uncle were still in the room, so I figured that it was not the best time to ask about last night.
"Thanks, but I'm still really sleepy, so I'll talk to you later," I said cutting the condolences short.
"Okay, I'm just going to leave Alice with you and I'll be in the doctor's lounge if you need me," Carlisle said before ushering my family back out.
As soon as they left, Alice closed the door, and came to sit by my bed to answer my questions. "We're all staying in the same rooms in the casino, except Edward is sharing my room with me and Mom and Dad are taking Edward's room. We were supposed to check out this morning, but Mom talked to the front desk and got our stay extended. She even put it on her card, because mine was almost maxed out already."
"What about Edward?" I asked.
"He went back to Eric's room and they exchanged blowjobs. He was heading back to his own room when the cops found him and asked if he was Edward Cullen. Then he was taken to meet Emmett and Russell down at the police station. The three of them were held there over night until Mom and Dad came and got them when their plane got in. No charges were filed, but they were told to never do it again and we all got our fake IDs taken away."
"They had to stay at the police station?" I asked incredulously.
"Yep, because we had no adult to take care of us and the hospital said that only one of us could stay with you. The cops wanted to hold me because I was the mastermind and let Russell stay with you; something about his boobs and the ID saying he was a girl made the cops want to go easy on him. But the doctor said that since I was the father of your baby, they wanted me to stay. The cops are having a bit of a laugh at our expense: it's not every day that the girl knocks up the boy."
"How much trouble are you in for planning it?"
"Not much. I'm grounded for the rest of my life. But really it'll only last two months because you'll be bummed about not being able to take me out on a date. As soon as my grounding starts to affect your life, it'll end, because they feel really sorry for you and are worried about your depression coming back."
"And the others?"
"Russell and Emmett got six months each, because Mom and Dad figured out that they were the ones I convinced to take us. Edward got only three months for going along with it."
"What about the weddings?" I asked wondering if any of us had been found out.
"No one knows about our wedding. I went back to the chapel to get the remaining photos and hid them all. Edward, Russell, and Emmett are all still keeping their mouths shut about the other wedding. I think Emmett will blab in about six months, in which case he and Russell will end up getting their groundings extended, but we're safe."
"They weren't suspicious that we all decided to lose our virginities on the same day?" I asked incredulously.
"Nope. Russell and Emmett said that they had lost theirs Friday night after the dance, before we talked them into a road trip. And I told Mom and Dad that we decided to take advantage of the plush hotel room to have sex. I said that it was my idea and I talked you into it. Plus we never did get around to losing the other virginity…"
"I don't want to anymore," I replied thinking about how awful sex the first time had been. Not only had I not liked it, but it had resulted in a miscarriage.
"I know. But when you do feel like it again, we'll start with the other way around. I'm just so scared that this'll happen again that I don't think I ever want to enter you again," she replied looking me in the eyes.
"I know," I replied. "But I want our baby back."
"Me too Jazz, me too," she said holding me and we both started to cry again; I fell asleep like that.
I woke up a few hours later when I heard whispering in my room. I opened my eyes and saw that Alice and my uncle were talking. Alice looked over at me first and said, "Hey sleepy head. Did you have a nice nap?"
"I thought you were sleeping with me?" I asked in reply.
"Nope, but I was lying with you until ten minutes ago when I saw that you were getting close to waking up: you have to pee, so I got Dad," she answered.
"Do you feel like trying to get up and use the restroom?" Carlisle asked me.
"I guess," I answered thinking about the pain being mostly emotional and that I probably could make it to the toilet.
Once Carlisle finished helping me to the bathroom, he helped me back into the bed and I noticed that Alice was unusually giddy. "What is it Alice?" I asked, as I could not possibly fathom why she would be anxious and bordering on excited when I felt so horribly.
"Our baby: Dad can take us to see it if we beg," she revealed.
"Is that true Carlisle? I can see her? I'd really love to see her just once," I replied, my spirits lifting. Even if she was gone, at least I would be able to set eyes on her this one time. Losing my baby without ever getting to see her just made the whole experience seem surreal, like it had not really happened. But if I had a chance to see her, then that might bring me some closure.
"Yes, that's possible. But there's not much to see: you were eight weeks pregnant, so the embryo was only thirteen millimeters long," he answered and I started doing the math and trying to figure out how big my baby was. I knew that was a small measurement, but I was a little too groggy to do the calculation and math was not my best subject. Carlisle picked up on my confusion and clarified, "About half an inch."
Although half an inch was quite small, it was more than visible with the naked eye, so I replied, "I'll take it. Can we go see her now?"
I felt concern coming from Carlisle as he sat in the chair next to my bed. "Jasper, I'm worried that you might have unreasonable expectations for what you're going to see. You keep calling it a girl and referring to it in the present tense. It was too soon to tell the gender and it was dead before they removed it," he told me sadly.
"I know that she's dead, but I just have a feeling that she was a girl," I replied shrugging. "I just want a chance to see her and hold her and know that she was real." By the end, tears were falling from my eyes and I was trying not to cry.
"Dad, isn't there a way to test the cells to see if it was a boy or girl?" Alice asked.
"Yes, but there really is no point other than just to know. And it would defile the embryo to do so: I was going to ask you two to authorize cremation," he replied.
Alice did not reply, but looked off into space with her eyes glazed over in another vision; sometimes all she needed to see was to know what decision she should make.
"She was a girl Jazz," she announced smiling at me.
"Will you take us to see our daughter now?" I asked looking up at Carlisle.
"Yes, just let me make a few arrangements and grab a wheelchair," he replied before leaving the room.
Carlisle was back ten minutes later with a wheelchair and Alice held my hand as he wheeled us through the hospital. The room we arrived in looked like an operating room, because it was sterile and everything was surgical steel. There was one long surgical steel table in the middle and sitting on it was a lone cardboard box.
"You both need to put some gloves on," Carlisle said passing gloves to both me and Alice. "I'm going to put the embryo in Jasper's hand and then I can take a few pictures of you two holding her if you'd like."
"Yes, we would like," she answered and we both put the gloves on. I tried not to look at the box, so concentrated on Alice; she was my strength. "You're gonna be fine Jazz."
"When I talked to the doctor on the phone, I informed him that I was both your legal guardian and your physician and that I'd want to take a look at the embryo, so he was extra careful in removing her: she's perfectly intact, which is really rare," Carlisle said as he walked back over to us and placed a tiny clear ball with a pink center in my glove clad hands. "The clear fluid is the embryonic sac and you can see the embryo inside."
I lifted my hand to eye level and looked at the little ball. I could clearly see a little pink head, although it took up about a third of the embryo and had a squarish look to it. There were two dark spots visible for the eyes, but what I kept coming back to was the little arms and legs, each with the digits just visible. Looking at those little fingers and toes was just heart breaking and I could feel Alice beginning to lose her control, even though she was normally the strong one.
"She's perfect Alice," I said holding our baby up for her to see.
Alice and I silently stared at our daughter for several minutes while my uncle took several photos with a hospital camera.
"Was there ever any future where we got to keep her?" I broke the silence, crying as the tears flowed freely from my eyes.
"No. By the time I saw her she was already gone. I think this may've been another one of those times when there was just nothing I could've done to change the future," she replied crying as well.
"Will you take a close-up of her?" I asked Carlisle holding out my hand.
He nodded and came over to take one of just my hand, but he pretty much just stayed quietly in the room with us and took a few more pictures as Alice and I mourned our daughter.
We stayed for half an hour longer, until Alice broke the silence. "Mom's on her way back with the others."
After that, Carlisle took our daughter back into his hands and I keep my back to the box so that I would not see. "We can have her cremated. There's not much of her, but all of the placental tissue and the box itself will add to the amount, so you'll have some ash to scatter. How does that sound?" Carlisle asked.
"We don't have any other options with an embryo of this age," Alice replied knowingly.
I just nodded and Carlisle took us back to my room to sign some paperwork. "Normally they would just cremate the remains and not return the ashes to the parents, but since I'm a doctor, I won't have any problem getting the ashes for you two before we leave," he said as Alice signed the last signature.
After that, Carlisle left and came back five minutes later with my aunt and siblings, each of whom was carrying a vase of flowers.
"We brought you some flowers Jasper," Emmett said as he entered, placing a vase of red tulips on the end table to my right.
"We were all crying all day without you in the hotel," Russell said setting down a vase of yellow and peach colored roses next to Emmett's tulips.
"Yeah, this sure turned out to be the suckiest vacation ever," Edward said setting a vase of white carnations on the table to my left.
"I thought a few flowers might cheer up the mood in here Alice," Esme said handing her a vase of pink lilies.
"Thanks Mom," Alice replied hugging her, before getting up and placing the lilies on a table under the television.
"Carlisle, can you show them the pictures you took?" I asked. "Alice saw that she was a girl."
"I can arrange it," Carlisle replied, but did not leave the room to do so. Instead he stayed in the room and took Esme into his arms.
"I would have loved to have a niece," Russell replied, with Emmett standing behind him and squeezing his shoulder.
"Me too," Emmett and Edward both replied simultaneously.
"When your father and I found out that we couldn't have babies of our own, we said that it'd be okay, because someday one of you would give us grandbabies," Esme said tearing up in Carlisle's arms. "I wish with all my heart that this would've ended with a healthy granddaughter."
We talked for another ten minutes before Carlisle went to borrow a laptop, which he downloaded the pictures onto and showed our family. It was too soon for me to look again, so I declined the laptop when it came around, but once everyone had seen and there was not a dry eye in the place, I asked, "She was beautiful, wasn't she?"
"Absolutely Jazz," Alice replied immediately.
"Gorgeous," Russell answered.
"Perfect," Emmett added.
"Tiny," Edward said.
"My first granddaughter," Esme added.
"Mine too," Carlisle replied.
Author's Note: Sorry about the tear jerker; I wrote this the day my tear ducts gave out and I just wanted to test to see if I could still make even one tear. Unfortunately, the answer was no, although I was crying tearless sobs. Did anyone else shed a tear for Jasper and Alice for me?
