Sorry this chapter took so long to get up! I've been distracted by other things! Hopefully it was worth the wait!

I'll be there, but you might not see me
It's never easy to get through
But when the laughter dies away,
I'll take care of you

"I'll Take Care of You" – The Dixie Chicks

Upon opening her eyes, she immediately realized that she was no longer spread on that cold tile floor, blinking up at the light on her bathroom ceiling. She wasn't stupid or delirious enough to think she was dead, as she'd always heard and seen of reactions in books and movies. If this place was Heaven, she had definitely been mistaken in her adaptation of what she had believed it would be like. There was white, yes, and plenty of it; white walls and floors, blankets and machines. Her head felt heavy, as if there were a pressure pushing on it, crushing it in some cruel vice. She found it difficult to move her arms, and she attempted to shift beneath the blanket, blinking rapidly as she forced herself to adjust to her surroundings.

She had only been in the hospital once before; she'd been brought to the emergency room after that particularly grueling fall from the rocket in the Miss Teenage Hairspray Pageant of '62, when the swelling and pain in her ankle hadn't subsided after a few days. Her mother had been reluctant to take her, of course; Velma had been more concerned with the fact that she was now unemployed than the fact that Amber's ankle was sprained. Still, she had spent only a few hours in the waiting room, then a small office while they wrapped and treated her foot. She had never been in an actual hospital bed, wearing an actual hospital gown, and she wasn't completely sure how she'd ended up here in the first place.

She didn't remember much before she had passed out; though what she did remember made her feel slightly uneasy. She could remember the fight between Corny and Link, and the lightheadedness she'd been experiencing. She could remember running the water for a shower, and never actually getting the chance to step into the stream of water. After that, her mind was blank.

Her fingers fumbled for the small button that she'd always heard about on the edge of her bed; the one that would send nurses and doctors running to her aide, eager to satisfy whatever needs she may have. With a certain sense of accomplishment, she found and pushed it, then waited. She swallowed, looking around her. The clock on the wall told her that it was only quarter after six. That meant she couldn't have been unconscious for more than an hour; she hadn't even gotten home until after four and hadn't prepared for her shower until almost five.

She raised her arm to her head in an attempt to rub away the throbbing headache she suddenly felt, and noticed a long, thin wire running from the inside of her wrist to a machine located just beside her bed and turned, her eyes darkening as she realized what it was. An IV? For what? What, exactly, was wrong with her? She pushed the button again now, desperate for some sort of answer, when she suddenly remembered the fact that had slipped from her mind until now. She was pregnant. Yes, well, she had been pregnant, at least before she'd fallen unconscious. Was she still pregnant?

She hesitated for a moment, then sat back in her bed, her fingers slowly moving the blankets down and over her stomach. The lump was still there, but did that mean anything? Just because there was a bump, did that mean there was anything inside? She felt a thickening in her throat, and for a moment, she found it difficult to breathe. Her face was flushing, and she blinked, her eyes burning suddenly.

"Oh, God…" she heard herself utter the words quietly, her heart pounding in her chest. Had she miscarried? Oh, God, if she had, this would all be her fault. She'd neglected herself for so long and on purpose. Corny would detest her; she would become an unimaginable monster in his eyes, worse than anything Brenda had ever said or done. At least she'd cared enough to take care of her body when she'd been pregnant with Sophie, and Amber couldn't even do that. "Oh God, Amber, what have you done?" Suddenly, it didn't seem to matter that she was speaking to herself, or asking herself questions.

"I don't know, Amber, what have you done?" She heard his voice suddenly and glanced to the doorway, Corny's dark eyes watching her seriously, a cup of coffee in his hand. Sophie watched her nervously from beside him, her fingers curled shyly around his leg.

She almost cried at the sight of them, she was so deliriously happy to see his face again that she tried to free herself from her connection to her IV. Corny quickly realized what she was attempting, and rushed toward her suddenly, his hand reaching out so quickly to stop her that he nearly spilled his coffee.

"Amber, no! Stay there!" His voice was harsh and deep and Amber stopped suddenly, looking up at him unsurely with wide eyes, but pausing in her movements. He sighed softly, and Sophie began to enter the room when a nurse hurried past her and into the room, moving to Amber's bedside. She moved toward the bed without speaking, turned the alert button off and stepped aside, looking between Amber and Corny guardedly.

"Do you need something?" Her voice was cold, and not at all what Amber had expected from her. It was slightly unnerving to know that she had been in the charge of such an uncaring woman while she'd been unconscious.

"Uh, I-" She tried to speak, but her mouth was dry, and she couldn't find the words. In turn, the nurse looked expectantly at Corny.

"Could you get her some water, please?" He asked softly, then caught her gently by the arm as she turned to go, "And, do you know, is dinner going to be served soon?"

"Six-thirty," the woman replied dryly, and Corny nodded, glancing over at Amber affirmatively. Amber watched him as the nurse left, and he turned to her.

"Dinner?" She asked him stupidly.

"You're going to eat, Amber. I'm going to stay here to see that you do."

She shook her head slowly, her eyes falling over Sophie before moving back to Corny.

"Why…how long do I have to be here?" She looked to him for her answer.

He watched her seriously for a moment, then clenched his jaw.

"I don't know," he answered her after a moment, "You're dehydrated, and you can't leave until you get some of those essential nutrients back into your system."

Sophie moved to stand beside him, and the nurse returned a moment later with a Styrofoam pitcher of water and promise of dinner in ten. When she had gone, Sophie moved to sit in Corny's lap, her wide dark eyes still focused on Amber.

"Dehydrated?" She felt herself laughing a little, to which Corny responded by narrowing his eyes at her. "Don't you think all of this is a little extreme for dehydration?" She had been dehydrated before; a few times, in fact, and had never wound up in the hospital. She'd simply been told to drink liquids, and avoid strenuous physical activity. They'd never gone as far as to hook her up to an IV and keep her in bed, much less a hospital bed.

Corny scowled at her, shaking her head.

"Amber, you are almost four months pregnant, dehydration is very serious."

"What?" She sputtered for a moment, "I'm still pregnant?"

"Only by the grace of God," he spit the words back at her, "Do you realize that you are underweight, not for a pregnant woman, but a not pregnant woman of your height and size? God, Amber."

"What?" She answered, almost defensively, "I can't help if I don't want to eat, I-"

"You're lying!" He was closer to her bed now, "You do want to eat, you just won't. Well, you know what? You see those little tubes poking out your arms? They're giving you all those little nutrients that you seem to be so determined to get rid of, and you're staying in that damn bed until you get some common sense and realize that for once, you need to be worried about more than yourself."

Amber watched him speechlessly, blinking.

"God only knows what would have happened if I hadn't found you. If you'd fallen on that floor just a little differently, you probably would have lost the baby and killed yourself." He clenched his jaw, averting his eyes from her for a moment. "I have never in my life met anyone as selfish as you are, Amber Von Tussle."

She half expected Sophie to chime in with her two-cents at this point, and even looked expectantly at her, Amber's face burning with the sudden chastising she'd just taken from Corny.

"And you're not going back to that apartment," he told her suddenly, his voice loud and clear. Amber's mouth fell open slightly, looking at him indignantly.

"Where am I-"

"Because you don't see the necessity in taking care of yourself, I'm going to have to babysit you. I think Sophie could care for herself better than you've been doing. You're staying at the house so that I can make sure you don't try and kill yourself again." The nurse was in the room a moment later, uncovering a plastic tray filled with food that Amber couldn't specifically identify by smell or appearance, and left soundlessly, leaving the three of them in the aftermath of Corny's words. "Now eat your dinner."

Amber looked from the tray to Corny, her eyebrows furrowing slightly.

"I'm not staying at your house," she defied him quietly, and his eyes flashed dark as he looked at her.

"Yes, you are," he tested her, saying the words as eerily calm as he could manage, "And I'm not fighting you on this. Eat your food, or I will feed you like a child."

She glared at him for another moment, her jaw trembling as she curled the fork in her fingers, jabbing it defiantly into a small pile of mashed potatoes that still held their scoop-form. She glared at the offending food, narrowing her eyes. She felt the back of her throat burning and looked away from the food, shaking her head.

"I can't."

"Amber Von Tussle." He said each part of her name as if it were its own word, and her gaze caught on him. "Not only are you dehydrated, you are also malnourished. You-"

"Wait, what?" She asked suddenly, shaking her head, "Malnourished?"

"Yes, malnourished. You have deprived yourself of food for so long that your body has actually started to shut down on you." He sent her a hard gaze, "That's why you've been fainting. What else has been happening that you didn't tell me about?"

She pursed her lips together tightly, letting her eyes catch on the food in the tray below her. She couldn't tell him about her hair falling out, or the bruises she'd been garnering as if they were some sort of morbid trophies. He would only hate her further, so she shook her head.

"I don't know. I guess I wasn't paying attention."

She expected something different from him; expected him to chastise her or call her ignorant or selfish again. Instead, he moved a chair closer to the hospital bed, gently took the fork from her hand and dipped it into the mashed potatoes, pushing them gently to her dry, cracked lips.

"Open," he instructed her gently, and their eyes connected over the fork. Amber felt her face burning pink with the sudden mortification of being force-fed by her ex-fiancée, and kept her lips pursed together tightly before studying the pain in his face. Slowly, her lips parted, and he slid the fork inside. The food tasted almost foreign to her, and she swallowed the potatoes in a hard lump before he had more on the fork, pressing it to her mouth again. "This is what is going to happen," he told her gently, as he gathered some meat onto the fork and pressed it to her lips. "If I have to feed you, I will."

She swallowed her food, then received another bite. She had the strength now; she could have easily reached out and taken that fork from him if she wanted to. The truth was, she didn't want to.

"Why do you even care?" She found herself asking, somewhat foolishly after he had fed her half of what was on the tray. "I'm your ex now, remember? Aren't you supposed to be happy when bad things happen to me?"

He clenched his jaw and spooned some jell-o into her mouth.

"I'd never be happy to see bad things happen to you, Amber." He kept his eyes averted from her as he spoke, his voice low and sturdy. "Besides, you're carrying my baby."

His words hit her suddenly and tears filled her eyes. She looked away from him and the fork, blinking away the sudden proof of weakness.

"You finally believe me, that it's yours?" She asked, her face hot.

"I always believed you," he told her, his eyes connecting with hers pointedly. "People say and do a lot of things when they're mad, Amber. Usually, they work through those things at a later point in time." His eyes darted to Amber's bare ring finger, and he licked his lips before pushing the chair back and pulling the tray away from her. "That's enough for right now. I don't want you to overdo it and get sick."

"But I'm still hungry." She said the words, though she didn't mean them entirely. She was hungry, though not for any type of food; she was hungry for Corny, for his touch, and his love. She was hungry for the man she hated dated for two years, the man she had planned to marry before everything in her life went horribly awry.

His eyebrows raised a little, and he caught her gaze.

"Really? Well that's good, Amber. That's really good. I'll run to the gift-shop downstairs and get you some candy, what do you want?" He seemed so excited suddenly that Amber didn't have the heart to tell him she wasn't actually hungry, and he was gone a moment later, candy orders in hand. Sophie shifted uncomfortably against the wall on the other side of the room, still watching Amber with dark eyes. Slowly, she began to move forward, and she stood bedside suddenly, her fingers lightly tracing over Amber's arm.

"Are you really sick, Amber?" Her voice was small and soft; tinier than Amber had ever remembered it before.

"Ah," Amber sighed, narrowing her eyes at the tubes running from her and connecting to machines, "I think so."

"Are you going to get better?" She asked, after a moment.

Amber nodded slightly.

"Yeah, I'll get better." She was quiet for a moment, then Sophie moved, slipping her small hand between Amber's curled fingers, her fingernails lightly scratching Amber's palm.

"I'm sorry," Sophie admitted lightly, letting her head rest on Amber's leg. "I shouldn't have called you all those mean things. Daddy yelled at them for me after you left."

"He did?" This was news to her; she assumed they would have taken turns seeing who could call her worse names. No, did she really think that? Did she actually think Corny would do that? Amber herself, yes, she would do that sort of childish thing, but Corny would not.

"Yeah," Sophie nodded a little. Her voice lowered, and her head raised a little, looking at Amber's face. "Are you coming back to live with us now?"

"I…don't know," she answered honestly. Had he been serious about that? Wasn't it awkward enough to work with her ex-fiancee than to live with him?

"I think you should," she confided in her softly, "Because Daddy doesn't know how to cook very good, and he doesn't know how to help with my math homework as good as you do." She was quiet for a moment, Amber's eyes watching her, "Oh, and, don't tell him I told you, but he still wants to be going out with you, I think."

"What?" Amber's eyes widened. Sophie nodded dutifully.

"He makes me say prayers for you every single night, even when I didn't want to because I was mad at you," she told her solemnly, "and one time, when I asked him why I had to do that, he said 'Because Amber is still part of our family, and she always will be'. And I didn't think that made very much sense since you're not part of our family anymore, so I asked him if he still was in love with you, and you know what he said?"

Amber dipped her head a little, desperate to catch every word of this latest newsbreak.

"What?" Her mouth was dry, and she curled her fingers tightly around Sophie's small hand.

"He said, 'Amber gave us some very happy memories. I'm always going to love her, and you should, too.'" Sophie raised her eyebrows pointedly at Amber, whose postured sunk a little. That wasn't exactly the kind of confession she'd been hoping for, or the kind of love she'd been wanting. That was the necessary tolerable type of love that came with break-ups. That wasn't 'I can't live without you' type of love. That was, 'I can live without you and I'm going to'. She sat back against her pillows silently, her eyes focused on the blankets on her lap. Sophie sat quietly for a moment, and then tilted her head to look at Amber.

"Are you tired?" Amber could do little more than nod, and Sophie patted the back of her hand. "Okay. Let me tell you a story. Close your eyes."

Amber did as she was told and Sophie began to speak of princesses in towers, handsome princes, evil queens. Amber felt her body beginning to succumb to sleep, and suddenly, in the back of her mind, she regretted not telling Sophie bedtime stories all those nights she'd had the chance to. She suddenly regretted not being able to be a mother to her when she'd had the opportunity right in front of her.

Sophie's words lulled her into sleep, before Corny ever returned with her candy, and before Amber ever heard the words "Happily Ever After."