Surrogacy

Chapter 7

07.

The sound of a faint baby cry woke Rikki up. Her eyelids felt heavy as she slowly lifted them, looking around dizzily with her eyes.

The first thing she noticed was that she was in a hospital room, with a hospital clothes on. She put her hand on her head that was pounding badly, before looking around the room again; she was alone and at first she was a bit confused before she heard a baby crying again and turned her head around. That's when she was the small innocent creature that was in it's hospital cot, crying.

It was then when Rikki remembered everything from the day before when she had given birth on Mako Island with Zane's help and she realized she was feeling some strange emptiness in her stomach, but she thought it was because she had finally given birth. She looked around annoyed; was everyone deaf so they didn't hear the baby crying?! She really wanted it to shut up, because it was driving her crazy.

"Alright, alright, I'm coming." She murmured, and pulled of her covers.

The first thing she did was to sit up in the bed, but that caused her too much pain and when she finally succeeded she was breathing hard because of how much it was hurting her. She then grabbed the end of the bed's frame, so she could stand up, but that was even more painful and she fell on the floor with a loud thud, just when Zane entered the room, carrying a plate. When he saw Rikki on the floor he quickly put down the plate and ran to her, lifting her in his arms and putting her back in the bed.

"What on earth you're thinking you're doing?! You can get up from the bed yet, you gave birth just yesterday!" Zane told her concerned.

"Well the baby was crying and it was driving me crazy so I wanted to see what's going on."

Zane only shook his head, then walked over to where the baby cot was, gently lifting the baby girl in his arms and then he carefully gave her to Rikki. When Rikki took the baby in her arms, she felt something white hot going through her heart and through her entire body. Something strong she had never felt before, something that was so powerful and beautiful, and yet so scary. She quickly handed the baby back to Zane.

"Please, take her away."

"But you have to feed her. She's probably crying because she's hungry."

"I can't. Please take her away."

Zane sighed, but took the baby in his arms. He looked at her small face and started making funny faces causing her to immediately stop crying and she started smiling instead. Even Rikki couldn't help but chuckle.

That's when the door of the hospital room opened again and Cleo and Lewis entered, followed by the others.

Cleo walked straight to Rikki pulling her in for a hug and when she let go, the curly blond noticed that the brunette's eyes were red and puffy as if she'd cried for hours; turning to look at Bella and Emma, Rikki realized their eyes were too. Will, Lewis and Ash looked sad and Rick and Cynthia were unusually quiet.

"Is everything alright?" Rikki lifted her eyebrows.

She noticed the look everyone exchanged.

"Guys?!"

"It's ok, Rikki, everything's fine." Zane lied.

But Rikki saw the look everyone exchanged.

"Something's going on and I want to know what!" Rikki demanded.

"Nothing's going on, Rikki." Cleo said with unusually quiet voice.

Just then a nurse entered the room.

"Time to feed your baby." She smiled at Rikki.

"She's not mine." Rikki hurried to say. "I was just a surrogate mother."