"Juliet!" She stirred in bed, momentarily forgetting where she had fallen asleep.
"Juliet! Wake up!" She could hear the desperation in her partner's voice before she even opened her eyes.
"Juliet! You're bleeding." Her eyes snapped open and she saw Carlton staring at her, fear tracing his eyes.
"I'm what?" She asked, sitting up quickly and looking down at her stomach. Over the bump, she could see her maternity jeans stained with bright red blood, as well as the once light blue sheets. Her heart started racing uncontrollably, her mind spiraling around every terrible possibility, though it really only needed the one.
That she had lost the baby. Again.
"What do I do?" She asked, panic flowing through her veins, picking her up off the bed and steering her towards her phone. "What do I do? Shawn's three hours away."
"Call Henry. He can take you to the hospital. Then call Spencer and he can meet you there." She was grateful for the deep, calm tone of her partner's voice, telling her what to do.
"Hi? Henry?" Juliet said when her father-in-law answered the phone. "I need..." her voice trailed off. She was afraid to speak. Afraid to tell him what was wrong. Afraid to find out. "Can you..." Her hand was shaking. The words wouldn't come. She gratefully handed over the phone when Carlton put his hand out. She paced anxiously across the room, listening to Carlton relay information to Henry.
"Are you in pain?" he asked, calmly.
She stopped pacing for a moment and thought about it. Her mind instantly flashed back to the first time this had happened, the sudden cramp that had left her doubled over, unable to walk. But right now, she felt fine. Physically, that is. She shook her head cautiously.
"He'll be here in ten minutes," Carlton said, handing her phone back to her.
"This can't be happening." Juliet collapsed onto the chair in the corner of the room, putting her hands over her face to hide the tears that were rapidly sliding down her cheeks.
Her words sat heavy in the morning air, neither sure what to say.
"I'm so sorry," she said, motioning to the blood-stained sheets when she had finally regained her composure enough to speak again.
"O'Hara. It's fine. Perks of being under 24/7 care- there's always someone around to do laundry." Carlton's words came out in short bursts and while he was attempting to be comforting, Juliet couldn't help feeling a tinge of sadness that he could no longer emote through his voice.
"I should go wait for Henry," Juliet said, picking up her notes from the kidnapping and collecting her purse.
"O'Hara, you can't go outside like that. It looks like you just got shot."
"Well, I didn't exactly bring a change of clothes," Juliet said, examining the damage done to her jeans. The soft blue fabric had been ruined by a large spot of blood that wrapped around the leg she had been laying on.
"Well, just take a towel with you then," Carlton said, motioning towards the bathroom.
Juliet sighed, grabbing a stiff white towel off the rack and wrapping it around her waist. She looked in the mirror, watching her reflection carefully. Her eyes were red and her face pale.
You can't do anything right, can you? The voice deep inside her that came around every once in a while after her first pregnancy hissed.
"O'Hara," she heard Carlton yell gently to her. "He's here."
She began to walk out of the bathroom, her legs dragging heavily on the floor.
"I… I can't," she stopped in the doorframe, putting her hands out to stabilize herself as the world felt like it was spinning around her.
"Juliet," Carlton said from the bed, reaching his hand out to her. She walked slowly towards him and took it, feeling its weight in her own. "You're going to be okay. No matter what."
"You don't know that." She felt tears leaking from the corner of her eyes, and she brushed them away quickly.
"I'm okay," he said, nodding at his weak, bedridden body. "Aren't I?"
She let a soft smile form on her lips and she nodded. "Yes, I guess you are."
"Right, so you will be too."
She took a deep breath, feeling the weight of her pregnancy belly pulling on her chest. After a moment, she gave her partner's hand a squeeze before letting it fall back down to his side and walking slowly out the door. She took one last look at him before she closed the door, letting his sympathetic smile fuel her walk down the hallway.
Carlton had one of the farthest rooms from the common area, and with her mind racing a million miles a minute, she felt as though the door would never come. She walked slowly, her hand tracing the railing that lined all of the walls, eyes turned down to avoid making eye contact with anyone she passed.
"Juliet!" Henry said, already waiting outside of his pickup truck for her. He rushed to her side, one hand supporting her back and the other under her arm as he helped her walk down the front stairs and boosted her weight into his tall car.
"What happened?" He asked once he pulled the car onto the highway to the hospital. The speeding car exaggerated every bump in the road, causing Juliet's stomach to flop over again and again, stress and anxiety fueling her nausea.
"I don't know," she said, focusing on her breathing to avoid vomiting in Henry's truck. "I was fine last night. And I don't feel any pain."
She did a quick body scan, searching for a physical hurt that she wasn't feeling. She was afraid it was being masked by adrenaline.
"Oh my gosh, Shawn!" Juliet rummaged through her purse, looking for her phone.
"Here," Henry said, reaching into the cup holder for his. She gratefully took it and scrolled through the contacts until she came upon a picture that she had taken of Shawn and his dad at Christmas six years ago. Juliet smiled at the picture of Henry smiling widely, his arm around Shawn who had his arms crossed, making a face at his dad who had, for the first time maybe ever, won their little Christmas present game. It was the year she was sick.
"Dad, I don't know what this is but I'm sure it can wait," Shawn answered on the third ring, the sound of Gus and Selene's playful bickering in the background.
"Shawn-" Juliet started to say, but before she could, Shawn cut her off. He knew something was wrong before she even finished saying his name. Sometimes he really did seem psychic to her still.
"Jules! What happened? Are you okay? Is the baby okay? What happened?"
"I'm okay, Shawn." She tried to reassure, but her voice cracked, giving her away. "I, um, woke up bleeding,"
"Jules! I'm coming home right now."
"I'm so sorry, Shawn," she said, her heart stinging.
"Don't say that, Jules. It's okay. You're okay, that's all that's important."
The truck bounced over the speed bumps in the parking lot of the hospital and Juliet closed her eyes, willing herself to wake up from this horrible nightmare.
"Shawn, we're at the hospital. I'll call you later."
"I'll be there as soon as I can be. Big fat kisses."
"Big fat kisses," she said, wiping her eyes.
Before Juliet could get out of the car, Henry had already run into the main entrance and came out toting a wheelchair and a nurse.
He swung the truck door open and put his arm around her to help her down. Her feet gingerly touched the ground, her free hand holding tightly onto the towel, not wanting to see her bloodstained jeans again.
"Hi, my name is Erin," the nurse said, pushing the chair quickly through the waiting room and into a private room, Henry jogging close behind.
Juliet answered questions, filled them in, told them the whole story again and again.
Just tell me what's wrong. Tell me how this happened. Please. How could this happen again? We were out of the woods.
Finally, the doctor came in to start examining her. He pressed on her stomach softly a few times before pulling out the heart rate monitor and began wiggling the little probe along the side of her stomach.
She watched Henry against the wall, crossing his arms, uncrossing them, and crossing them tighter. She could tell he was holding her breath and became suddenly aware of the fact that she was holding hers too, dreading what was to come after the silence.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
The steady sound of the heartbeat suddenly filled the room, and Juliet began laughing involuntarily.
"Is that? Is she?"
She couldn't believe what she was hearing. She put her hands over her face and let happy tears leak out of her eyes.
"Your baby is okay," the doctor said, pulling out the ultrasound machine. We're going to do an ultrasound to get a closer look at what caused the bleeding, but she is still alive. Her heartbeat is strong."
"Oh, thank goodness," she heard Henry whisper from the side of the room, looking up to the ceiling.
The doctor ran the ultrasound wand over her stomach, pointing out the baby's features as he went.
"We're going to take some time to look over the results. In the meantime, we are going to get some labs from you and hook you up to some fluids to balance out the blood loss, and we will get back to you in a few hours. Any questions?"
"She's okay?" Juliet asked, still in disbelief.
"She's okay," he said, smiling and closing the door to the small room behind him, leaving Juliet and Henry looking at each other, still afraid to get their hopes up just yet.
"I guess we're okay?" Juliet said, finally feeling the baby kick in agreeance for the first time that morning. She felt the stress tears well up at the corners of her eyes, threatening to fall.
"I'm glad," Henry said. He was interrupted by a nurse coming into the room. A few pokes later and the nurse walked out with a few tubes of her blood, leaving her attached to a bag of fluids hanging from the bed. When she was a little girl, seeing that much of her own blood would have made her pass out for sure. But after being sick, she felt unfazed. When nurses start drawing pints of your blood a week, just to see if the medications are working, the site of blood becomes a minor inconvenience rather than something to worry about.
"I want you to know," Henry said calmly when the door had been shut again, "That I think you and Shawn are going to make the best parents."
"Shawn doesn't seem to know you think that," she said, a little more attitude than she had intended. But she couldn't help it. Nowadays, it seemed that every time she saw Shawn and Henry in the same room, it would end in a screaming match. It wasn't like she didn't like Henry. She respected him as a good cop and the father of the man she loved.
But it became quickly complicated when Shawn and Henry were fighting. Juliet loved Shawn with every fiber of her being. And if something was hurting the man she loved, it was up to her to protect him from it. But she didn't know how to protect Shawn from Henry, a man who she knew loved him, but sure had a funny way of showing it. So she would stay up late, frustrated at the man who was hurting her husband, and grateful that her own father had left rather than sticking around to wreak havoc on their lives any more than he had the handful of days he had come around since she had lived in Santa Barbara.
"I try to tell him. I do. But every time I talk to him, he gets in my head." Henry shrugged and pulled his baseball hat off his head, rubbing his thumbs against the worn rim. "And I always end up yelling. He just thinks I hate him."
"He knows you don't hate him," Juliet said patiently, thinking back to the late nights Shawn had spent pacing back and forth at the foot of the bed, complaining about his father's parenting tactics. "You're just a little hard on him sometimes."
"Listen, I know what you're going through. I know how you're feeling right now."
"Oh do you?" Juliet asked, closing her eyes. She wasn't even sure she knew how she was feeling. How could Henry possibly know?
"Shawn's mother and I, we um…" He hesitated, his fingers still working the edge of his hat. "Well, before Shawn was born, we almost had another kid."
Juliet felt her heart drop, afraid to know more. "Almost?" It came out as a soft, knowing whisper.
"She died right after she was born. She had a rare heart defect- hypoplastic left heart, they called it. But back in 1974, it was basically a death sentence. They didn't know as much as they do now."
She could feel him trying to reassure her. She could hear in his voice how much just saying these words out loud hurt him.
"Did she have a name?"
Henry's eyes got soft, and he smiled at an old memory.
"Rose."
"I like that," Juliet said, reaching her hand out for Henry's. He took it and smiled at her.
"You're going to be okay," He said, putting his hat back on. "You and Shawn and my little granddaughter in there. You're going to be okay."
"Thank you, Henry," Juliet said. She felt the baby start to kick again and she ran her fingertips over the little foot poking her side, calming her mind. "You should tell Shawn what happened. I think it might help him, I don't know, understand you better."
"We'll see about that."