Adopted by Lin Manuel Miranda

IQUT

AN: Still not medically correct.

Ps. Don't read in public if you are crier and you give a crap about what people think about you.

I wake up after the procedure. I look around the room to see Nurse Frangipane checking my vitals and Anthony, Lin, and Vanessa all looking relieved.

"Hello, beautiful", Anthony smiled as my eyes shifted around the room.

I decided to skip the niceties and cut straight to the chase.

"What happened?" I ask, looking to Lin and Vanessa, who were embracing each other.

"Well", said Vanessa smiling, "they aren't sure yet, but Dr. Joseph said everything went according to plan.

I let out a breath that I didn't realize I was holding. I feel tear welling up with tears.

"Thank the heavens. Thank the freaking heavens", I mutter under my breath. I start sobbing tears of joy and relief when I realize one thing was missing.

"Where is the baby? I want my baby", I demand. Just as I was saying this, I see Nurse Dun holding my newborn child in his strong arms. He smiles at me and hands me the baby.

She is wrapped in a pink blanket, and like perfection. She is perfection.

I, yet again, start to cry as I cradle my child in my arms. She is mine. I am 17 years old and I have a baby.

The negative thoughts start to pool into my brain, and I quickly react to them. These dang hormones.

Anthony puts his arms around me as I continue to cry and hold my tiny, small baby. He rubbed circles into my back and whispered comforting things into my hair.

Once I regain myself, I blink back forming tears and smile up at my parents, who are also crying and smiling down at me.

"I'm so proud of you, Corisinade", my mother said. "I will never have the strength and courage you did to go through this, and I thank God that I didn't have to go through anything similar to this."

"Cori, you are my little girl. And you always will be. But you have your own little girl now. And I have to warn you- I'm sorry. I can't give you a speech with out knowing this kid's name", Lin said, crying harder than all of us combined.

"Vanessa, Lin, meet your granddaughter, Alivia Vanessa Ramos."

There was a collective amount of gasps and awws, even though there were only three people in the room, and one of the people already knew the name.

There was another round of tears and laughs and passing around Alivia when Dr. Joseph came in telling us that he needed to run two more tests on Alivia.

I reluctantly give up my baby and I roll over on my side to get more comfortable. I quickly find my eyelids grow heavier, and I let myself fall asleep on Anthony's arm that was on the hospital bed.

I wake up what seems like centuries later and I look around to room to find that no one else is in the room besides, obviously, me.

I wearily put my feet on the cold tiled floor, and I grab my IV machine, which I saw had been moved to a transportable, rolling IV holder, and then walk out of the room, and head towards the nursery.

I walk slowly and carefully down the many halls, seeing as I wasn't in a delivery room, just thinking about my life.

Everything is going to be different. I have a kid. And my beautiful Alivia isn't going to have a father and mother together. I'm not going to have a support system.

I know that my parents and the cast would help me out, but it won't be the same as having a loving boyfriend, or better yet, a husband.

I shudder at the thought of all of the judgment I would get, at all of the hate Anthony would get, and just how awfully hard everything will be.

I round yet another corner and I see my family crowded around the nursery, and they were all, what looked like, crying.

I speed up, running towards them, dragging my IV behind me. Anthony turns his head towards me first, and his face tear stained automatically light up.

Anthony and I collide and he pulls me into a hug, my face was buried in his chest, all of could smell was his sweet get musky scent.

I manage to pull away from Anthony, just to find myself pulled into another hug, this time my mother and my father hugging me, sniffing at the same time.

"What is with the tears and hugs?" I ask, not really wanting to know the answer to my question.

The shifting eyes. The staring at the floor. Just like when they told me that I had to choose between the risks being in my favor or in Alivia's.

Shoot.

"Tell me now", I said, surprisingly calm.

"Cori", Anthony said, more tears streaming down his face,"Alivia passed away about five minutes ago."

I feel the whole world start to spin around me. I get extremely dizzy and fall over onto the wall, but Anthony is quick to help me up and lead my down to the chairs across from the window looking down on the nursery.

All of those babies. None of them mine.

"No. No, no, no. This can't be", I cry. "How did this happen?"

Anthony puts his arm around me and I lean on his shoulder, my mom sitting down on the other side of me and my dad sitting on the floor directly in front of me, either one of them caressing an arm or a leg.

"Appearantly the risk of the medicine that induced the labor had a chemical Alivia was allergic to. No one could do anything by the time the doctors ran the tests and started to see the reaction", my mother said while rubbing my arm.

I start to feel more tears stream down my face, no doubt making my face blotchy and red. My eyes become puffy and I start to choke on my tears.

But I don't do anything. I just sobbed into Anthony's chest, him crying nearly as hard as me, but much quieter.

Lin and Vanessa were crying too, for the loss of Alivia and for pity for Anthony and me.

There are moments that the words don't reach. There is suffering too terrible to name. You hold your child as tight as you can. And push away the unimaginable. The moments when you're in so deep. It feels easier to just swim down.

Hello, darlings! I would like to apologize for that heartbreak. And I would also like to apologize for throwing in the It's Quiet Uptown lyric. I was tearing up before that, but once I typed that up it was like someone turned on the faucet to my eyes.

I'M NOT CRYING YOU'RE CRYING.

Again, sorry. This is like a really bad soap opera. So much drama.

Thank you for putting up with my lack of updates and my depressing story lines.

Thanks for voting, sharing, and commenting your hilarious reactions to my plot lines!

~Tara and Ash

Ps. Not proofread. I also wrote this chapter through a veil of tears.