Roy and Riza immediately made their way to the hospital as Doctor Ballard ordered; Maes drove them and then returned to Gracia to inform her of the situation. The two barely managed to stumble into the emergency room before being escorted into an exam room. She grabbed a bucket upon entering the room, heaving hard though she brought nothing up. Riza ran a hand over her stomach and front, feeling the stickiness of blood—this intensified her shaking to a point where Roy was nervously trying to hold her steady. Hardly five minutes later, Doctor Ballard herself came bursting into the room, out of breath and clearly flushed from running.

Ballard immediately tugged on her stethoscope, resting the cool metal on Riza's chest to listen to the blonde's heartbeat. "Riza, dear, I need you to calm down and listen to me. Can you do that?" Another moment past and Doctor Bethune came into the room, frowning. He was trying to shoo Roy away from Riza's bedside.

"Miss Hawkeye, can you look at me?" Doctor Bethune tilted his head into her line of vision and the two locked eyes. As soon as he had established this contact, he rested his palm against her forehead, feeling that it was cool and clammy. "She's showing some signs of shock. Mustang, did she show any other signs like this?"

The blonde was weakly reaching for Roy's hand, her slightly smaller hand trembling uncontrollably. She winced and leaned forwards, bringing her knees as close to her chest as she could. "What…what's wrong? Is the baby going to be okay?" Roy's grip on Riza's hand tightened when he saw that she was crying.

"You listen to me, Riza—panicking is not going to help. You need to calm down." Doctor Ballard smoothed some yellow hair from her face, clicking her tongue. "You—Roy. How much blood has she lost?"

Roy shifted his weight from one foot to the other, analyzing the question. "I've seen worse. What you see," he added, cringing at the large stain on her skirt, eyes moving down her left leg with a small trickle of blood, "is exactly how much." Riza watched this exchange with a glazed look of concern on her features.

"Doctor Bethune," Riza murmured, "nobody's said if the baby is okay…but..." she scrubbed her hand over her eyes, now almost sobbing. "Nobody will say anything!"

Bethune glanced to Doctor Ballard and Roy who were quite engaged in quick and slightly panicked dialogue before trying a small smile at Riza. "Doctor Ballard told you, it's going to be all right. But I have to agree that you're too upset for us to help you. We really do need you to calm down and take a few deep breaths because I want to run some proper tests and I certainly can't do that while you're like this." Bethune tugged on the other doctor's arm, getting her attention. "I could use your help—check the fetal heart rate."

While Doctors Ballard and Bethune poked, prodded and ran tests, Roy stood close to Riza's head, stroking her hair. "You'll be okay, you know," he mumbled, sounding awfully unsure of himself for someone who was trying to console a very pregnant and very distressed woman.

Riza sniffled. "The baby too?"

Hesitantly, he nodded. "Yeah, the baby too."

Twenty-four hours later, test results were finally returning and it seemed that the worst was over. The bleeding had stopped around three o'clock in the morning, a development that soothed Riza's frazzled nerves to a point where she could fall to sleep. Roy had chosen to spend the night with her despite her telling him to go home and get rest. Doctor Ballard came into the hospital room on tiptoe, her smile just slight when she saw that her patient was still asleep.

"She gave us quite a scare last night," the friendly old doctor whispered, lowering the charts she was holding just slightly. "I'm glad she's still resting. She needs it. You did the right thing by her, you know, bringing her straight here."

Roy smiled tiredly. "I owed it to her—she was angry with me. Besides, I can't take any credit for knowing to bring her here. My friend Maes was the one to call your office and he's the one who relayed the message that we had to come here immediately."

Ballard sighed. "However you knew to get her here doesn't matter—you did. Had you wasted any amount of time she probably would have lost the baby…and after everything she's been through I'm just glad it didn't come to that."

"So the baby is okay?"

She nodded slowly. "Yes. We were lucky; the baby was in about as much distress as their mother. Said distress has since been alleviated—not to mention that we think Miss Hawkeye is going to be the proud mother of a particularly healthy looking baby." Doctor Ballard smiled at Riza, who remained asleep, clearly unperturbed by the conversation. "She's doing a good job by that child. What was she mad with you for?"

The question was thrown in so nonchalantly that Roy cringed. "Oh…that small rebel attack a couple of blocks away from Central Headquarters. My team got called to the scene. She's been my aide and guard for years so she was furious when I told her she couldn't come." He sighed, replaying the image of Riza snapping away from him as though he had struck her when he told her she would be a hindrance. "I said some extremely unintelligent things."

The older woman sighed, leaning forwards. "Well she knows she's to stay off of the field. That you tried to keep her off can't surprise her."

He shrugged. "You can't think something like that would keep her from at least trying, do you?" Roy could feel the smirk growing on his features, the thought of a submissive Riza amusing at the very least. "I think she wouldn't have allowed herself to not at least make an attempt."

"I suppose not. I should know her better by now." Sinking into a chair, Ballard tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear with a hearty sigh. "She won't be happy with me when I tell her that the best way to proceed from here is staying in bed until she's full term."

Roy cringed. "No, I don't think she'll be happy about that at all."

Author's Notes: Thus ends cliffie! I think someone asked me this before and I can't remember if I answered. This is mangaverse, and technically it's AU because it doesn't fit into the original FMA timeline. So though it's totally set in Amestris with the military etc and I would say that if it did happen in the manga it'd be earlyish manga, it really can't because...it doesn't fit timewise. Not that this information is crucial to understanding the story.

I don't own FMA. Still. Very sad about that, alas.

Reply to anonymousninja: Go medical profession majors! I did my research for this one. It's a placental abruption, but a relatively mild one--not the most severe, where they have to deliver the baby straightaway. I would have sworn on my life that I read somewhere that nausea could be a result of that...let's say she hurt so bad her stomach got angry sigh. She's about 5 and a half months, maybe 6. Ish. But she's built small (very thin and muscular, do you know what I mean?), and my research did say that if you are thinner and smaller and it's your first pregnancy then you can show a bit earlier. But 5 and a half months seemed like the optimal place to put this. You don't really need a list of all my sourcing etc, but I just wanted to share that becuase I did do my research. In the next chapter Roy calls this her 'placental whatever-its-called' or something of that nature.