I almost forgot that today was update day. Good thing I remembered, huh? This chapter is kind of (okay, really, really) angsty, just so you know. I think you'll probably all be mad at me…

Note: That pregnancy related stuff I warned you about before the prologue? Yeah, some more of that…you've been warned again.

DISCLAIMER: I own Danielle and…well, that's about it.

By the time Howard had finally reached the hospital desk, he was totally out of breath. He'd been running ever since he got the call – running out of work, running to his car, and now, running down the hospital corridor. All they'd told him was that Bernadette was in the hospital, and he didn't know why. He had to make sure she was okay.

"Excuse me," Howard said to the woman behind the desk, who looked up at him.

"Yes? What seems to be the problem? Do you need a room?" She asked.

"What?" Howard breathed. He then realized that she thought he was here to check himself in. He probably looked like he was having a heart attack after all that running. What could he say – he'd never been good at gym, and those tight pants he always wore weren't exactly made for prolonged physical activity. "Oh, no, no I'm not here for me. I need my wife's room number – Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz?" The woman typed this into the computer, and when it came up she frowned. He immediately thought the worst. "Oh my God, is she dead?!"

The woman behind the desk gave him a sympathetic look. "No, Mr. Wolowitz. Your wife is very much alive. She is in Room 1313. I'd be careful around her though, I'd imagine she's in a fragile state right now."

"Fragile?" Howard repeated. "Fragile, why would she be fragile?"

The woman's frowned deepened and she gave him a look of pure pity. He hated that look; it was one he got a lot after his dad left. "Mr. Wolowitz, I'm very sorry, but your wife has had a miscarriage."

Suddenly, Howard wasn't thinking about his heavy breathing or how hard his heart was beating or that his legs felt like they were on fire. He must've heard the woman wrong – there was no way Bernadette, his Bernadette, could've possibly had a miscarriage, because that implied that she'd been…

…Pregnant. With his baby. And hadn't told him.

But then Howard realized he hadn't heard the woman wrong. She was currently explaining that Bernadette – yes, his Bernadette – was experiencing an inevitable miscarriage, which meant she had yet to expel the ba-fetus. She called it a fetus, not a baby.

"Pregnancy loss is imminent and will complete in anything from hours to days to weeks." The woman concluded. "Once again, I am so very sorry for your loss."

"I think…" He said, still processing all of this information that had just been thrown at him. "I think I'll just go see her, and make sure she's okay, if that's alright."

The woman behind the desk nodded. "Room 1313," She repeated.

"Thank you," Howard said, before starting off to Bernadette's room. While he'd spent the whole way there running, now he found it immensely difficult now to put one foot in front of the other. Finally, after a walk that felt like it went on forever, he found Room 1313. For a moment, he just stood there, not knowing what he was going to see on the other side of the door. "Be a man, Wolowitz," Howard said to himself. Then, he opened the door.

There wasn't lots of blood. There wasn't a dead baby/fetus. What he saw was much worse. Bernadette was crying. And not just crying, she was full out sobbing. Howard had never seen her cry like that before. She didn't even hear him as he walked over, and she didn't notice his presence until he sat down beside her bed and ran a hand through her hair soothingly. Bernadette turned to look at him, her eyes red and wet, her crying beginning to lessen but her facial expression still unchanged.

He spewed the question out without thinking. He just had to hear some things from her. "How far along were you?"

She sniffled, knowing he knew. This wasn't how she wanted him to find out, of course it wasn't. She was going to make it special when she told him about the incoming addition, that he would be getting the child he always wanted and they'd be a real family. She didn't want him to find out from a stranger in a hospital that their little unborn baby was dying, that the baby he wanted wouldn't get a chance at life. She was going to tell him tonight. Had she done it yesterday or the day before, he wouldn't have had to find out this way. "About eight weeks," She said. "But they think the…the baby stopped developing around six and a half or seven." Suddenly, it was hard for her to look him in the eyes. She didn't want to see the hurt in them, because then she'd start crying again, she knew she would. She'd cried on and off ever since she'd realized she was bleeding, it getting progressively harder and harder, because in the back of her mind she'd known what that meant, she just refused to admit it to herself as she sobbed. When they told her she was going to lose the baby, confirming her nagging fears, she'd practically fallen apart. If she hadn't been such a wreck, she would've been shocked by the intensity of her emotions. She hadn't wanted the child in the first place; she'd never wanted to be a mother. And yet, when she'd heard the news she couldn't handle it. For the past week she'd been kind of, sort of, well…excited about having a baby with Howard. She knew he would be a good father, and she knew that he'd love their child very much – they both would've. And now, they weren't having a baby, they were losing a baby.

"How long did you know?" Howard asked. He wasn't looking at her either, and he was trying so hard not to cry, because that was the last thing he wanted to do right now. Be a man, Wolowitz. He repeated in his head over and over again, the same words he'd said outside the door. Be a man, Wolowitz. Be a man.

"…Just a week,"

"A week?"

His voice sounded so shocked and so sad, like he couldn't believe for the past week she'd known and hadn't said anything, that Bernadette felt even guiltier than she already did. She looked at him now and immediately regretted it – they both looked like they were about to cry. She can't remember the last time she saw Howard cry. It'd been a long time since he'd openly cried in front of her.

"I had to wrap my head around it before I could tell you," She said in her defense. "Little did I know by the time I found out it was already the beginning of the end…"

"One last question," He said, pausing afterwards. "…Did you love it?"

This question hurt so much more than the other two. "…Yes," She answered. "Yes, I did…yes I do."

Then, neither one of them said anything. What was there to say? Assigning blame wouldn't help. They were both too distraught to make any attempts at comforting the other. So, they were silent.

In a time like this, her mother would say that God was testing her. She didn't believe for a second that He would make her go through this indescribable pain and emptiness she was currently experiencing. No one should ever have to go through that.

It seems that some people are meant to do the unpleasant jobs, and right now she's one of them. And it is worse than she ever thought it would be.

I started this chapter around 8 and as I'm tying this AN now it is…9:51. Writing this chapter just made me cry, like seriously.

So ummm…review, I guess? Tell me you hate me, yell at me, it's fine. Or tell me you love me if you want but I highly doubt any of you will…