Freddy 06:58:17: Do u want us to come?

Tyler stared down at his phone. The last thing he wanted to do was see anybody at all. Not the doctors, not his family, not even Nicki. Every time he looked at her, it was like getting hit by a bus. Her vacant stomach and her tear stained face would haunt his dreams forever. He did his best to send an answer, but his stiff fingers and tired brain simply didn’t want to cooperate.

All he could produce was no.

He let his phone fall into his lap and relaxed the muscles in his neck so that his head rested against the cold, hard wall of the hallway he sat in. Nicki had fallen asleep eventually, but he hadn’t been graced with such luck. He snuck out of her bed hours ago and retreated to the spot where he sat now. The nurses and doctors darting back and forth in front of him provided the tiniest distraction; just enough to keep him from spiraling into a depression that he may never get out of.

“Mr. Seguin?”

His eyes rose to meet the scraggly man who stood in front of him.

“Yeah,” he muttered.

“I’m Dr. Baker. I’ve been assigned to your wife’s case,” he said, offering his hand to help Tyler up.

He shook it off and asked, “Case?”

The doctor stood back a bit, thankfully acknowledging that Tyler needed his space.

“There were some… abnormalities concerning her miscarriage. I’m a specialist, and it’s my job to figure out exactly what happened.”

“Does it even matter?” Tyler said under his breath, unaware that the doctor would hear him.

He crouched down in front of him, and earned dozens of hateful looks from the staff who were trying to make their way through the blockaded hallway. He wasn’t a small man, and he and Tyler together took up half of the width.

“I know it hurts, but it’s important that we find out what caused this.”

“Why?” Tyler inquired, raising his voice now. “It won’t change what happened.”

“Because her life might be in danger, too.”

The doctor’s words stung him. If there was anything, anything at all, that could have made him feel worse, it was that.

“She seems fine,” he pointed out, glancing across the hallway to her room. Besides the fact that she had continued to wail and bawl long after she’d fallen asleep.

“They didn’t tell you anything last night, did they?”

Tyler stared the man straight in the eye. “No…”

Dr. Baker exhaled a long breath. “Of course they’d leave this all for me,” he murmured. “Listen. That fever she had, it wasn’t from a cold. She has an infection, deep within her uterus, which I believe was the cause of the miscarriage.”

Shock struck him like lightening. “You can’t tell her that,” he whispered. It would destroy her.

“I’m sorry, I have to. I can only imagine how difficult this is, but she may be at risk. If you ever decide to try again for a child, it could put not only the baby’s life in danger, but hers as well. The chances of survival when enduring labor with the condition she may have are barely five percent.”

“What condition?” he asked, feeling as though the answer would only hurt him more.

“I’ve been looking through her medical records all morning,” Dr. Baker explained slowly. “I believe the root cause for the infection was untreated scar tissue buildup. She was stabbed nearly five years ago, correct?”

Tyler nodded his head hesitantly.

“I won’t know until we complete the proper exams, but it would seem the blade pierced her uterus, and it didn’t heal correctly. It seems unlikely that an ultrasound would have missed something like that, but I can’t think of any other reason why this would have happened.”

So many things were buzzing through Tyler’s head, and not a single one of them made any trace of sense to him. He wished he had a switch, something that could turn off the suffering. Somehow, the more he felt, the number he became. He wondered if this was what Nicki was talking about all that time ago, when she tried to explain what it felt like when Mark died.

Except he imagined that what he felt now was one hundred times worse.

A hand waved in front of his face. “Mr. Seguin?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s time I explained all of this to your wife. I think you should be there with her.”

Tyler let out a sigh and pushed himself off of the ground, with the support of the wall behind him. His body parts weren’t working correctly, and he figured his exhausted brain was to blame. He followed Dr. Baker into her room and was greeted with the most relieved look he’d ever seen on Nicki’s face.

“I thought you left,” she said softly, still hoarse from her shrieking the night before.

Every bone in his body told him that he should feel horrible for leaving her alone. That, especially after the news he’d just received, he should have been doing everything he could to be there for her. But he couldn’t. He felt distanced from her, like he was subconsciously pushing her away, and judging by the way her lower lip trembled when he didn’t respond, she knew it.

Tyler took a seat in the chair that Bill occupied the night before, across the room from where Nicki laid in bed. When he did, she burst into tears. He knew her well enough to realize that she needed him. And he was too selfish to do anything about it.

He let the doctor attempt to comfort her, and sat stoically as he told her everything he knew.

“It’s… it’s my fault?” she asked. She was absolutely devastated.

“These things aren’t anybody’s fault,” Dr. Baker tried to explain. “You took care of yourself and your baby. There wasn’t anything you could have done to alter the outcome.”

Tyler watched her as she cried. And cried. And cried. Eventually, she stopped looking to him for help and buried her face in her hands. For the very first time, seeing her cry didn’t pain him.

** * * * *

“I really hate to do this to you sweetie, but I need you to stop crying. We can’t get an accurate reading if you’re moving around this much,” said the nurse by Nicki’s side, trying everything in her power to calm her down.

She took a deep breath, but it was interrupted by another tremendous sob. Her world had just ripped apart at the seams, and they expected her to be relaxed.

“I’m sorry hon,” the nurse whispered as she stuck a needle into her forearm.

Instantly, everything around her slowed. Time itself seemed to nearly come to a halt. The agony, both physical and emotional, dissipated. The fog from the night before returned, clouding her thoughts. Nicki breathed slowly as a doctor lowered a strange looking machine over her. It seemed like an X-Ray machine, but in her debilitated state, it could have been just about anything.

Nicki felt a hand grab her own, and smiled for a moment before realizing that it wasn’t the hand she thought it was. Her father’s voice reached her ears, but his words failed to. Whatever he said, she was sure that it was comforting.

But the person she needed the most had abandoned her, and she wasn’t about to forget it. She begged Tyler to stay, but he left her anyways. He left her alone in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people after the most brutal tragedy of her entire catastrophic life. The person who was supposed to stay by her side, through sickness and health, good times and bad, deserted her.

She knew that a part of him blamed her for what happened. It was made obvious by the fact that he could no longer stand the sight of her. The look in his eyes was detached and uncaring; so completely parallel to the warm, loving gaze she had become accustomed to. And she couldn’t blame him for blaming her. Because she blamed herself, too.

As she fought with herself to stay awake, her father stroked her hair, the way he’d seen Tyler do so many times before. It broke her heart that he could never measure up Tyler when it came to soothing her. No one could. He didn’t even have to do anything; just having him with her was enough to give her strength. But when he left her at the hospital, he took everything she had. It wasn’t like much remained, anyways.

** * * * *

When Nicki woke up, she was alarmed by the unbearable throbbing in her head. She let out a cry and gripped her skull, hoping that the force would push the pain away.

“That should subside in a couple of minutes,” the doctor said, who stood at the foot of her bed.

Her father rubbed her arm and shushed her, and his unrelenting love lifted some of the negativity she was feeling. Nicki hadn’t been so distraught since she lost Jason, and that didn’t even compare to what she felt now. Was she ever going to stop losing people? That baby was supposed to be their light, the sign that all of the misfortune and heartache had finally come to an end.

“We have your test results. Would you like to wait for your husband, or should I begin now?”

“He’s coming back?” she asked, gaining an emotional lift from the idea of him by her side.

“Oh. I didn’t realize he’d left,” the doctor said apologetically.

He seemed to know more than he was letting on to, and it made Nicki wonder what Tyler might have told him. She sighed, trying to accept the fact that he wasn’t the man she married at the moment. Fear set in as she wondered if he would ever go back to the way he was; if he would ever love her again the way he had before. Something told her that he wouldn’t, and she did what she promised herself she would never do.

She questioned whether or not her marriage would survive.

Tyler leaving her raised an ostentatious red flag. It was impossible to ignore. Just a day ago, he was willing to do anything on God’s green earth to make her feel better.

The doctor took a seat where Tyler had been earlier and folded his hands over the clipboard in his lap.

“Unfortunately, the test confirmed my suspicions,” he said cautiously, well aware that Nicki was in a fragile state. “The scar tissue in your uterus must have gone undetected before, as no one would have known to look for it. It must have effected your baby’s growth in such a way that it would terminate the pregnancy. I want to assure you that this is not your fault. No one can be to blame for this.”

Nicki stared at the off white wall directly in front of her. She dared not take her eyes away from that one spot, as it seemed that spot was the only thing keeping her rooted to the ground, to her sanity. It didn’t matter what the doctor told her, she was to blame. Suddenly, she feared telling Tyler. He was never going to forgive her.

“However, there is some good news,” the doctor continued once he let the news sink in. “Scar tissue is normally very easily removed, and there are very able bodied surgeons at Mass General that could perform the procedure.”

The tiniest bit of hope began to rise within her, but she forced it down. Hope was the cause of the misery she felt now, and she wasn’t about to let it get the best of her again.

“If you’d like, we can rush you in today, since it technically could be a threat to your health – “

He was interrupted by someone barging through the door to her room.

“Freddy?”

Freddy stood in the doorway, looking as pale as the walls behind him. He made his way to her quickly and sat on the edge of her bed, unaware that her doctor was in the middle of something.

“Nicki, I’m so sorry,” he muttered, staring into the voids of her eyes as he placed a warm hand on her arm.

Her doctor cleared his throat and got Freddy’s attention. “If you don’t mind,” he said suggestively, obviously growing impatient.

“Oh, my bad.”

“You could do it today?” Nicki asked.

“Well, yes. But I have to warn you, although it isn’t high risk to your general health, there is the chance that you may not be able to properly carry a child afterwards.”

“But no matter what, if I don’t do anything about it, I won’t be able to anyways, right?”

“That’s correct.”

“What’s going on?” Freddy inquired frantically. “And where the hell is Tyler?”

The mention of his name caused Nicki’s chest to tighten, and she began to heave again. Freddy wrapped his bulky arms around her shoulders and apologized, trying to calm her down.

“He left,” she blubbered as the sobs returned.

“He left you,” Freddy repeated in disbelief.

She nodded her head before burying it between his shoulder and neck. At least he was willing to comfort her.

“I need your answer as soon as possible,” the doctor intervened. “If you want to go through with this, I suggest calling your husband and making the decision now.”

“Can I borrow your phone?” she asked Freddy, removing herself from his embrace.

“Course,” he said, reaching into his pocket and handing her his phone.

She dialed Tyler’s cell number and hit send, but was only greeted with his voicemail after the first ring. Nicki tried again, but with the same result. She tried the home phone, only to hear her own voice saying that they weren’t home and would get back to her as soon as they could. After three more calls, she dropped the phone back into Freddy’s hand.

“I’ll do it.”

Notes

Hi guys. I'm sorry if you hate me right now lol I kind of hate me. Seriously, as bad as it was, seeing your reactions to the last chapter was really insane and awesome as writer. I'm truly honored to have such incredible readers :) So you may have noticed that this was way shorter than the rest of the chapters and I've decided to keep some of them shorter, just so you don't have to wait forever for me to get a chapter up. I promise nothing will get left out, there will just be some stuff (like this) that would have been part of a longer chapter and I just decided to break it up! Thanks so much for reading <33!