Once in a lifetime.

⚠️14

February

Juliet

I hear humming. The melodies are beautiful and I stay to hear more. I feel a kiss on my head and something wet on my hand. I try and focus, what is going on?

I try to open my eyes.

Light is too bright and the too white walls bind me and I squint up at the ceiling. My head drops to the left trying to see who is holding my hand so aggressively.

It's Dalton.

His hands cradling mine and his head resting on his arm. His voice humming. I reach over with my free hand and rake my fingers through his hair, his beautiful hair, normally every spot put in a deliberate place is still flattened and without product. His head shoots up. His eyes are red and his cheeks are so wet, I give the best smile I can as he grabs my other hand and kisses it. Then he's kissing both of my hands and then my arm, and my face and my hair and any skin that is showing.

"Thank God you're awake," he says into my hair, breathy and light but with so much emotion behind it.

"Why am I here?" It comes out groggy and horse, and then I'm so tired again.
"It's going to be okay, you're going to be okay." He sits back down in his seat, tears welling up in his eyes again. I look down at our hands and I crinkle my nose.

"Why are you in basketball shorts."

He lets out a spitting laugh and then looks down at his lap. "You had an accident, Aaron brought me a change of clothes."

"You never wear basketball shorts, at least not in public."

He laughs again. "Ya know we have to stop coming to this."

"Like what? What do you mean?" I ask.

"We spend too much time in hospital rooms." I smile, and he smiles back, tears streaming down his face. He rubs his lips against mine shaking his head no.

"Let's not do this again. Okay?"

"Okay. But I'm my defense I wasn't planning on doing it the last time. Or this time." He smiles up at me, and I see his eyes get lighter.

"So you're up." Dr. Avery walks through the door, smiling. I have forced Dalton to lay next to me on the way too small hospital bed to watch Harry Potter and 'The Prisoner of Azkaban' with me on the also too small TV.

"I am up," I respond.

"I'm glad to see it, I had no doubt." She checks my chart and then looks back up at me. "According to your vitals, you can be out by tonight."

"What happened to me?" Dalton didn't tell me much and I don't remember anything past straddling him.

Doctor Avery looks at Dalton and he shuffled off the bed. "You had more bleeding, but this time with a lot more blood than expected. The pain mixed with the blood sent your body into a shock, you passed out from the pain." She saw the look of horror on my face, I glanced at Dalton's uncharacteristic pair of pants. "Oh, it's not uncommon." She says, clearly thinking my reaction is from finding out I passed out. "People have passed out before and people will pass out again. You're lucky though that you got here as fast as you did. We kept you stable and now you're clear to go home once you have a small outpatient surgery."

I sit up, "Surgery?"

She holds my chart to her chest and nods, "Yes, just to remove...." She looks at Dalton and then back to me, "To be blunt Juliet, it's to remove the baby." I hear what she says but I don't fully process it.

It's Dalton's voice that I hear next, "The baby?"

She nods, then she goes on to explain why and how but I don't hear any of it. I watch the tv, waiting for Harry to come out from under the invisible cloak to face Fred and George. I wish I had an invisible cloak, it would help in situations like this, I would love to put it around me and then just walk out of the room so that I didn't have to hear or process any of this. If it wasn't bad enough that my body wasn't good enough to carry my baby, it's also not good enough to get rid of it either.

"Will she'll be okay?"

"Of course, it's a quick outpatient surgery, she should be done within an hour and then you guys can go home."

I can't even let my eyes meet them, but I still say, "Let's just do it."

"Jules,"

"My body Dalton, my choice. Let's do it so I can," I turn to the doctor, "Will I be able to fly?"

"Sure, in a week, you'll have to be careful but I don't see why not."

I sigh, "Let's do it so I can get out of this damn hospital." I feel nothing, and everything all at once. The only way I can think of describing it is that I feel completely alone in the world as if no one will ever understand me and what I'm feeling.

"Take care of yourself and be careful, I don't want to see you back here." Dr. Avery smiled at me and then walked out of my room. I had been done with my surgery for an hour and I felt different.

Not in a good way either, the kind of different where something is missing. 'That's because something is missing,' I told myself. That's when I realized that everything felt cold and dark.

I look down at my hands not waiting to meet Dalton's eyes, he came back over to the bed and sat next to me. He had been waiting for me, and I wondered when the last time he slept and ate was.

"Why are you in basketball shorts?" He grabs my hand but I pull my body away from him. "I'm so embarrassed." I can't believe I had an accident with my boyfriend. "Did I bleed on you?" We hadn't talked since before the surgery and I told him it was cause I didn't want to. I wanted to try and process all that was happening to me. It didn't work.

"Umm."

"Oh, God."

"It wasn't that bad." I feel like he's babying me.

"You had to change your pants because I bled on you. Oh gosh. Dump me now and get it over with." He laughs. "Stop laughing it's not going to make this any easier."

"Jules, I'm a boy, I've seen blood before."

I keep my face hidden in my knees, "Not from girls."

"Nice try, two sisters and a mom. They've all synced their periods at this point too."
"Ugh. Kill me. Just kill me to save me from the embarrassment."

He grabs my arm and pulls me closer, "I thought I was going to lose you, I didn't understand where the blood was coming from." I suddenly have a flashback of death, offering me his hand.

"Let's go to Texas. Tomorrow."

"What?" He laughs disbelievingly.

"I want to meet your family."

He smiles. "I want you to meet them too but, you're just now going to get out of the hospital, don't you think we should wait?"

I replay me taking death's hand only once before I say "No, I want to go now."

He nods, "Okay, I'll buy us plane tickets."

"Tonight."

"Juliet,"

"Please," tears start to blur my vision. "I want to go."

He looks at me questioning me, "Okay."

"Now kiss me before I start crying."

He smiles and kisses me. What I didn't tell him is that El had brought me into her and my brother's room the other day before my appointment. She was pregnant. I didn't just want to get away to meet his family but also because I couldn't stand to watch my sister-in-law do what I couldn't.