A/N: Guys, I am so sorry it's taken me so long to post updates to this story, but I keep getting locked out of my account and then the doc manager doesn't work. I am still writing, just with a different username. I'm going to post this story in bulk because it's already finished, so enjoy!
In the early hours of the morning he woke, subconsciously noting her absence from his side perhaps, or even the distinct feeling of something being wrong.
"Connie?"
There was no answer, and he shifted, struggling to see her in the blackness of the room.
"Con?"
He heard a small shuffle, and then he reached his arm to touch her elbow. She was sat upright in the bed, her knees curled to her chest, her head turned away from him. He sat up and edged closer to her, noticing how cold she was despite it being a warm, July night.
"Hey..." He brushed aside her hair, and felt how her face was damp, and clammy. "Connie, tell me what's going on." He spoke softly, and calmly.
"I don't feel right." She whispered, exhaling as she turned her head to look at him. Her stomach cramped and she groaned sharply, Jacob's hands moving around her as he tried to pull the covers around her for warmth.
"Jacob, stop I'm, I'm too warm..."
"Con, I think we should go to the ED. Ee can do it quietly, Mum will take the girls-"
"No." She said with a definite strength that he hadn't heard from her all day. "They can't know-"
"This isn't right." He slipped from the bed and turned on the bedside light, moving around to her side and lifting her into his arms. She put her hands around his neck and shut her eyes, unsure of what he was doing but in too much pain to argue with him. His sharp intake of breath and sudden tensing of his hold on her made her eyes open with a start, and she grimaced again as her head spun and her stomach knotted.
"Jacob..." She trailed off, before looking to his eyes, determined to finish her sentence and ignore the pain in her head and in her stomach.
"Jacob, what-"
"You're bleeding, Con."
Connie looked down and then back up at Jacob, starting to draw her breaths in sharply as she began to panic. Her arms around his neck tightened and her body shook against him as he rushed her from the room.
…
Jacob wasn't quite sure how he managed to get them to the hospital in one piece, but a short time later his mother was on her way to look after the children and Jacob was barreling into the ED with his wife in his arms. Thankfully, the first person they met was Charlie, who quickly ushered them into an unused cubicle. Though Jacob rested Connie gently on the bed, her arms refused to loosen from around his neck, forcing Jacob to sit on the bed with her. "This is because I said I couldn't have it." Connie whispered, her voice catching in her throat. "Jacob, help me."
Those were words Jacob had never thought he would hear from her mouth. He had waited so long to hear them, but now they'd been said all it did was start an ache in his heart. "Get Elliot." He instructed Charlie, who nodded and quickly rushed away.
"Elliot?" Connie questioned, pulling back only a little, a confused frown on her face. "My Elliot?"
"Yeah." Jacob gave a slight smile, attempting to brush away the damp hair that stuck to her face. "He's been sorting out this place for you."
The man himself rushed in a moment later, and as soon as Connie saw him, the glasses resting on the end of his nose in such a reassuring way, she burst into tears.
"Ssh, Connie..." Jacob moved from the bed to allow Elliot to sit down. He took her in his arms, and Jacob saw her relax on a way that he had never seen her do with any other person other than himself.
"Elliot, the baby-"
"We're going to do a scan as soon as we can."
She exhaled shakily, looking at Jacob who nodded reassuringly.
"Connie, this happened with Grace, remember-"
"Yes, and she was in ITU for weeks, practically brain-dead-"
"Goodness, you haven't made her any more positive, have you, Jacob?" Elliot turned his head to look at Jacob, who smiled sadly at the pair, before moving over to the bed to place an arm around his wife's shoulders, and press a gently kiss to her head.
"But look at her now. You know the risks, Connie, you've had two children already. Let's seen what shows up on the scan, first." Elliot squeezed her hand, and Connie looked up, her eyes teary and red. She was shaking and pale, but not much could be gauged from that in terms of her condition, her fear and anxiety were contributing in a major way to that.
Charlie re-entered a few minutes later, wheeling the ultrasound scanner. Connie glanced upwards to Jacob, closing her eyes as she rolled up her top. She heard his gentle intake of breath at the tiny amount of swelling around her middle, and she turned her head sharply to the screen on feeling the freezing sensation on her stomach.
"Cold." She winced, earning a small, depleted chuckle from Jacob. She waited until the picture emerged, and when it did her eyes scanned quickly over the image, before focusing intently on where Charlie's finger pointed.
"There's a heartbeat, strong and steady." He offered with a smile. "And I'm no expert on this sort of thing, but I'd say you're about 9 weeks."
Jacob pulled his wife a little closer and dropped a kiss to her head. "I'd say that was probably the last time you wore 'that' skirt."
Connie managed a small smile at this, but was unable to focus on anything but the beating heart of her baby. The baby she'd thought about getting rid of. Tears stung once more in her eyes and she turned her face to bury it into Jacob's side.
"We'll put a monitor on you so we can keep an eye on the baby whilst we do some further testing, and we're going to put an IV bag up." Elliot squeezed Connie's shoulder. "But if I know anything about your offspring, it's that they're as stubborn as you are."
Once Elliot and Charlie had left the cubicle, the parents were left alone with only the company of their baby's heartbeat. Jacob sat beside his wife and just rocked her gently, his eyes on the small bump on her middle, wondering when it had appeared and how he hadn't noticed. When she was pregnant with Ava, by the time he'd found out there was already an expertly disguised bump, and by the time Connie had allowed him near her she was almost 7 months gone. His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by Connie drawing in a breath to speak.
"I didn't mean it."
"Didn't mean what?"
"...That I couldn't...that I didn't..." She attempted.
"Shh." Jacob dropped another kiss to her forehead. "I know. But this time will be different, because I'm here to look after you, and Grace will be fine. The only one we need to worry about is Ava throwing a tantrum because she's no longer the baby of the house."
Connie managed another smile at this before raising a hand to brush away old tears from her cheeks. "You're getting a vasectomy after this one."
"Oh, I am, am I? Maybe you should just stop wearing that floaty skirt." Jacob teased, earning a wider smile from his wife before she rested against his side once more.
…
"It's just a bug."
Charlie came through again an hour later, after Connie's insistency of waiting for her bloods to return without being fast tracked. The relief on both Connie's and Jacob's faces was quickly followed by a soft chuckle from Jacob, who wrapped his arms tightly around his wife before pressing a kiss to her forehead.
"You're both going to be absolutely fine." Charlie smiled, touching his hand lightly to her shoulder before leaving again, ushering away the members of the department who had by now heard that the clinical lead had been admitted, and soon enough they would know she was expecting.
"Anything for some time off work, hey?" He smiled at her, stroking her hair from her face as she lay back down on the bed, her fingers lightly tracing circles on the skin of her stomach. He gently placed his hand over hers, so they lay flat together on top of the small bump, and he could feel how his throat began to ache.
"I love you." He whispered, first pressing his lips to the side of their hands and then to her lips, before sitting back on the bed and taking his phone from his pocket, scrolling up the screen for a substantial amount of time before placing it back down on the bed.
"Ah. I think we might have some explaining to do." "Hmm?" Connie asked sleepily, roused from the safe half sleep she'd found herself enveloped by.
Jacob held up his phone, showing multiple notifications from both Grace and his mother. "I'll just go out and call my mum, I won't be long." He dropped a kiss to her head before standing up.
"What will you say?" Connie questioned, stretching herself now there was more room on the bed before her hand moved to rest on her middle again.
"I'll just tell my mum for now, we can work out how to tell Grace when you're feeling better, and in the mean time I'll tell her you've got a virus." Jacob went to pull the curtain aside, but hearing low murmurs on the other side, he slipped out instead, raising his eyebrows at the group who stood nearby before he made his way outside.
"Jacob? What's happened? I've seen your bed." His mother spoke as soon as she answered the phone.
Shutting his eyes momentarily at the memory, he managed, "The girls didn't see it, did they?"
"No, I changed it while they were still asleep." She heard her son sigh and immediately assumed the worst. "Has she...have you-"
"She's pregnant. About 9 weeks. She's got a virus that's knocked her out and caused the um..." He was unable to say the word bleeding and just cleared his throat before continuing. "Would you be able to take the girls to school? We should be back home by the time they've finished."
"Of course. I'll pick them up as well and drop them over with some dinner so you can stay with Connie." Martha offered kindly as Jacob yawned and then rubbed his face sleepily, already aching to get back to his wife. "Grace has been phoning you since she woke up an hour ago, should I tell her?"
"No! Not about the...not yet. Can you put her on the phone, please?"
A second later, Grace pulled the phone from Martha's hands. "Jacob? Is mum okay? Are you okay?"
"We're fine, Gracie. Sorry I couldn't answer your calls, but I had my phone on silent. Your mum has just picked up a virus from one of the patients and she woke sick in the night."
"Do you think that's why she fell over?" Grace questioned, although she began to look relieved.
"Probably. Listen, my mum is going to take you both from school and pick you up, but we should be home later today. And there's no need to worry about your mum, I'm looking after her." Jacob offered softly before he realised with a panic that Charlie was motioning for him to come in urgently. "I need to go, but I'll send you a message if anything changes."
With that, he hung up the phone and jogged to his colleague, "Charlie?"
"She's fine, but rather insistent that you find her a cheese and tomato toasted sandwich." Charlie replied.
…
"You hate tomatoes." He reappeared minutes later, amused by her sudden change in temperament.
"Well, I don't now. And take your jumper off, you're making me feel hot."
"You know you're hot, sweet cheeks-"
"JACOB!" She smiled despite her annoyance, and he rolled his eyes as he removed his jumper and settled in the chair next to her bed.
"At least it's savoury this time..."
"What's that supposed to mean?" She spoke, before taking a large bite and settling back into the bed.
"Grace got quite excited by the amount of sugar in our house last time. It won't be so hard to wean her off cheese and tomato sandwiches."
She laughed, brushing crumbs from her as he continued to chatter away, before noticing she wasn't really responding. He smiled sadly at her, tapping her nose affectionately.
"They're going to move you upstairs in a bit, you bed-blocker..." She jabbed his ribs sharply with her elbow, but he barely even winced, he wrapped his arms around her and laughed as she struggled to bring the sandwich to her mouth. They looked up quickly on hearing the curtain pull back, and Connie cleared her throat placing the half eaten sandwich in Jacob's lap.
Jacob rolled his eyes, moving back as the porters walked in to move her. Despite trying to give her usual icy glare, when the bed moved and Jacob was out of sight, her heart rate began to increase and she was unable to stop herself calling his name.
"I'm still here. As is your sandwich." Jacob offered from behind the head of the bed. Reaching down, he took the hand that rested on Connie's pillow and gave it a tight squeeze.