The Most Life Changing Thing

Reid and Prentiss

Chapter Nineteen

January 2011

That night, after fighting with Reid and him leaving her apartment, was the most miserable of her pregnancy. The whole last week her body had been feeling lousy. She was throwing up often, feeling flushed and dizzy. That night it was even worse.

Laying in bed, unable to sleep, she tossed and turned for hours, feeling weak, weary and sick of herself for all the bad decisions she had made in her life.

Finally, not long before dawn, she drifted into a restless sleep only to be woken up less than an hour later by cramps that made her cry out in pain. Emily got up from bed but was so dizzy she sunk to her knees.

Mumbling "No, I'm fine. The baby is fine," stubbornly, she tried to get up again but was too weak. It was all she could do to get her cell phone off the night stand and call an ambulance.

XXXXXX

Spencer Reid sat in the roundtable room waiting for the ten am briefing. The dark circles around his eyes were a tell tale sign of his sleepless night. It had been months since he slept anywhere but next to Emily.

He supposed he would have to get used to sleeping alone again. The thought did nothing to improve his foul mood.

Many hours had been spent going over and over his conversation with Emily in his mind- word by word, thanks to his eidetic memory- and adding up all the reasons she might think he wouldn't be a good partner to a woman with a child. He was too young (though teenagers had kids and he certainly was a decade older than that). He was too immature (did his love of magic, comics and Halloween really mark him as childish in her eyes?). He was unstable- his drug history, the risk he'd develop a mental illness, his quirks and social awkwardness.

But deep inside he knew it was not about him.

Of everyone he knew Emily accepted and loved him the most for all the things that made him different than any other man she could have chosen to date. Her not wanting to invest in the idea that they could keep dating as she went through her pregnancy and then gave birth and raised her child was not about who Reid was or wasn't at all.

It was all about who Emily Prentiss, at her deepest level, was and the trust issues she had that stopped her from wanting to rely on anyone but herself. Reid might not know much about love but he knew it couldn't work that way. Two people had to rely on each other, trust each other and be honest with each other- especially if a kid was involved.

A kid.

For a few weeks he had been mulling over the idea that he had impregnated Emily. At first it freaked him out but he grew to like...no, love...the idea. It started to feel perfectly right to know they had made a baby together. This relationship that came out of nowhere, his personal miracle, had created a life, a future for them all.

There would still be a future but would it be spent together? Emily was so good at shutting down. Would she just shut down now and let them stay broken up. Should Reid even try to breach the fortress she had built around her or would they only work out if Emily was the one to shatter her own walls?

Reid didn't know. He wasn't sure what would happen- more lonely nights without Emily for all the rest of his life or somehow would they work this out?

His head was pounding with a throbbing headache as he worried about this. He remembered as a boy he used to get bad headaches right after his father left the family. Headaches causes by emotional pain that manifested itself physically. Blinding pain that left him weak and doubled over.

Even light bothered him when he was suffering one of these headaches. It was as if the world was his enemy during them- light, noise, commotion all made it worse.

He slumped in his seat. Soon most of the rest of the team had come in and said good morning. Last through the door was Hotch, greeting them with a crisp "Prentiss won't be joining us today," which made Reid quickly straighten up and give his boss a raised eyebrow.

Hotch sat down and added. "She's out sick. Now lets get going. Garcia, the case, please."

Reid tried to focus on his job but his mind stayed on Emily. Was she sick with heartache or something else? He worried for her terribly.

It was awful to not know if the woman a man loved was suffering and also to not be there to help her through. It felt wrong to be away from her.

But if she stuck with her way of thinking that he wasn't wanted or needed in her or her child's future then Reid knew he would have to get real used to being away from Emily. Suddenly the rest of his life stretched out in front of him looking like the saddest, loneliest road he would have to walk alone.

Because even if he was surrounded by other friends and family, if he didn't have her...he would be, at heart, on his own.

XXXXXXXXX

A day later Emily slowly climbed the steps to her apartment, gingerly taking each step and clutching the railing tightly. An elderly neighbor woman passed her and asked "Are you all right, dear?"

"Fine. Thanks." Though she knew she looked anything but. She was wearing scrubs that they gave her at the hospital and some shoes that barely fit. She shuddered to think where a hospital would get shoes. They must have belonged to some person who came there and died.

She let out a cleansing breath and kept slowly climbing. Not for the first time in the last thirty hours did she think "I wanted to do this all alone, well I got my wish, didn't I?"

It was her own stubbornness that had kept her from calling anyone to come to the hospital and be with her. She had never been so terrified in all her life as she lay there for hours and wondered if she was losing her baby.

Once she got into her apartment she quickly did the alarm and then stumbled to the couch and lay down, letting out a long breath. She was still weak and that feeling was unusual for Emily. She prided herself on being strong, capable, able to take anything- a beating at the hands of an unsub, fighting off date rape back in college, the struggle of being pregnant as a teenager and enduring the abortion and aftermath. She could take anything she had to but it did take a toll to go through things alone.

She felt pathetic as hot tears streamed down her cheeks that afternoon. She wanted Reid- ached for him to be there to hold her, comfort her, tend to her, ramble about all the medical odds of this kind of thing happening.

The sun fell as she lay there on the couch. Later she rose, went to the kitchen and made herself some Gatorade with a dry mix plus water. After that she slowly made her way upstairs, intent to take a bath and change her clothes, but before she did that she checked her cell phone, which had been left on the night stand after the paramedics showed up.

Lifting it she saw that she had missed some text messages and phone calls. Garcia had called several times, probably concerned because Emily called off work yesterday and today. There was a text from Hotch asking if she was feeling any better yet and then one text from Reid.

It asked a simple question: R U ok?

No. She wasn't okay. How could she be? All she wanted was to find a way back to happiness and stability but it seemed so far away at the moment.

XXXXXXXXX

The team was out of town a few more days. By the time Reid came back home he looked as bad as he felt- like death warmed over.

Many times, since that first day when he had texted her, he had thought about texting or calling Emily but since she hadn't texted back he figured she didn't want to speak to him right now. The gulf between them seemed to be widening. The loneliness was settling into his bones, preparing him for a life after loving Emily.

Had he been foolish to disbelieve her words? She had warned she could only do short term. She told him it wouldn't last very long, let alone a lifetime.

But, damn it, his heart hadn't listened or believed in that. Not after she told him "I love you." Because if the love she felt for him was anything near what he felt for her then short term was just a joke because there couldn't be enough time for all they needed to share together.

Having a kid changes a person though. They put the kid first and only want the best life for that child, the best people around that child, and for the kid to not love someone who wouldn't be sticking around. Emily had to know that Reid intended to stick around. Did she really not want that? Really feel her and her child's life would be better enjoyed without him?

The weight of his pain wore him down, and his headaches nearly crippled him, as he made his way home that evening on the train. Walking the few blocks to his home he wondered how he could hate the idea of going home so badly. His home used to be a refuge.

But since he started to date Emily he had spent every night almost with her. Home was with her. His apartment was just a place now that had his stuff.

A couple of hours after he got home he was trying to lose himself in a book when there was a knock on the door. Surprised that anyone would be there he went and looked through the peephole.

Slowly he unlocked the door and disarmed the alarm, before opening it. His eyes washed over Emily. She looked more pale than usual, more tired, sedate.

"I didn't call to ask if I could come over," she said "because I didn't want to give you the chance to say no."

He stepped aside, allowing her entry. "I wouldn't say no."