xXx
"…and so, while Columbus thought that he was…uhh…he was sailing to India, he was really…umm…really in the...the…" Ororo stammered, covering her abdomen with one of her hands while clutching a dry-erase marker in the other. She'd awakened that morning with stomach cramps and had been suffering with them all day long. Logan had suggested that she find a substitute for her classes and spend the day resting, but she'd brushed it off as simply another effect of the pregnancy and had been determined to carry on with her daily activities. Now, though, she was wishing that she would have taken his advice.
"Oh, well," she thought. There was less than a half-hour left of her Introduction to World History class, and after that, it would be lunchtime. Ororo was sure that over the hour-long lunch period, she would be able to find one of her colleagues who would be willing to come and sit with her last class of the day. For the time being; however, the last thing that she felt like doing was standing there scribbling notes on the board.
"All right, class, that'll end the lecture for today," announced Ororo, "for the next half hour, I'd…I'd like you to…oww…umm…just…" Her words were cut off instantly by a high-pitched whine as pain crashed over her body like a sinister wave. Her legs turned to jelly beneath her, and she landed on her back on the floor with a soft thud. She looked up only to see the pale, frightened faces of twenty-five eighth-graders.
"Oh, Goddess," she moaned in agony, instinctively lowering her head as another onset of pain gripped her. What she saw when she looked down caused her to wail in fright. A pool of her own blood, thick and so red that it was almost black, had pooled between her legs, spilling onto the wooden floor and soaking almost the entirety of her white skirt. The room began to spin around her, and she fell backwards, unconscious.
Instantly, the class sprang to life.
"Oh my God!"
"What the hell do we do?"
"Go get someone!"
"Who?"
"Anyone!"
The entire class got out of their seats and bolted for the hallway beyond the classroom. Some ran to Professor Xavier's new office, some headed for the medical wing, where they knew that the visiting Dr. McCoy would be, and some went for the gymnasium and the training rooms, hoping that they'd find Mr. Wolverine. The rest of the class simply ran to get as far away from their bloodied and passed-out teacher as they could.
xXx
"Call an ambulance," Hank McCoy ordered Logan, who was hovering over Ororo's unconscious form with a look of the purest terror on his face.
"Why? What happened to her? What's wrong?" Logan asked.
"Just do as I say," barked Hank, "her life could depend on it. I think that she's having a miscarriage."
Logan stumbled backwards, fighting to maintain his balance.
"Wha…what?" he stammered.
"You heard me, boy, now go and call an ambulance! Move, move, move!" Hank yelled. Without another word, Logan bolted from the room to search for the nearest telephone.
xXx
"I'm sorry, Ororo, I'm so sorry," Logan whispered to his girlfriend, who was being kept asleep by the drugs that were I intravenously pumping into her, "I know that I did this to you. It's all my fault. I told you I'd hurt you, 'Ro…I told you, and you didn't believe me. And I tried so hard not to, oh God, I tried. It seems like just a couple of seconds there that I thought things might be good for us, 'Ro…but that's never the way it works with me."
He reached out to stroke her cheek, and found that her skin was cold. This entire fucking hospital was cold; even beneath two layers of shirts and a jacket, Logan was shivering. He watched the steady, even rhythm of her rising and falling chest, listening to her breaths, and taking comfort in the fact that she, at least, was still alive, and also in what the doctors had said. Common in women her age, common for the first pregnancy…but he knew that no matter how "common" it was for the doctors, it was still going to shatter Ororo's world, and then he'd be left to pick up the pieces and try to fit them back together as best he could. And, this time, he wasn't sure whether or not he'd be able to put everything back the way that it should be. Not when he was falling apart, too.
A low, pained moan startled him away from his woeful reverie, and his head snapped to the side to look at Ororo, whose eyes had opened, but were still misted over from the drugs.
"Lo…Logan…" she mumbled, tossing her head to the right. He stood up and went to the head of the bed.
"Yeah, 'Ro…I'm right here by ya," he assured her.
"Logan, I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice hoarse.
"Oh, God, 'Ro, for what?" he asked.
"For losing the baby. I knew that it was happening. When I fell down and I saw the blood, I just got this...this feeling, and I was so sad, and I just…knew," she said, "All I could think of before I passed out was you, and how guilty I felt for thinking that you wouldn't want it, because it turned out that you wanted it more than me. I failed you, Logan, and I'm so sorry." Her body tried to cry, but could summon up no tears.
"Ororo, please don't do this to yourself. You haven't failed anyone, least of all me. You're as much of a victim as I am. Your body failed you," he replied fiercely.
"I…no, I…" she muttered, before her head fell back on the pillow and, once again, she was no longer a part of the conscious world. For the first time in half a year, Logan felt tears welling up in his eyes.
