Catfish - Michael Clifford

Chapter Twenty

Three weeks later

Ivy wiped the blood from her nose. She was sick of these nosebleeds. She'd been having them for 3 weeks now, along with the dizziness. She knew she should go to the doctors and get checked out but she just didn't want to hear the answers. She kept telling herself that it was just the after effects of the tablets. She knew that probably wasn't the case, but she was terrified. The worst thoughts went through her brain. Maybe they'd missed something when she was in hospital, maybe she had brain problems, maybe her head injury was worse than they thought. Michael and Nova were both worried about her, and they only knew about half of the nosebleeds and dizzy spells. If she was on her own or at work, she wouldn't mention it to either of them. Ivy knew it was wrong not to tell them but at this point she just didn't want to make a fuss. There was so much going on in everyone's lives. Nova had been offered a promotion, and Michael had to deal with all the PR problems with the fact that Calums nudes had been leaked, along with shooting the Good Girls video.

Michael had been away for three days working on set at the video shoot, and was due to be back tonight. Ivy had gotten in from work and changed out of her uniform straight away. She didn't know what time he was going to be back and she didn't want to still be in her HMV uniform when he did.

After what felt like hours he finally arrived on her doorstep. Even after all this time her heart still fluttered at the sight of him standing there. He was wearing a chequered blue flannel shirt, black jeans and a snapback turned to face the back. She praised the weather getting colder for the fact he kept wearing more shirts these days. She couldn't resist him in those shirts.

He didn't have it on long once he'd gotten into the flat.

She pretty much dragged him into her room and ripped it off of him. He, of course, did not resist. Ivy kissed him hard, and he returned it. They barely even came up for air. They didn't even bother with foreplay today, he pulled her leggings and knickers down and was thrusting into her with all the strength he had. It didn't take long to get her to the point of her moaning his name, begging for her release. When she finally got it, it sent him over the edge. He spilled into her and collapsed onto her chest.

"Did you miss me by any chance?" He said breathlessly.

"Maybe a little, and I may or may not have a thing for that snapback, and you in a shirt is just, too much. If I hadn't have done that now, it would have been later in the arcade toilets." She joked.

"Well I'm okay with either." He laughed back.

"We can stay here if you want, Novas at her mums for the night so she won't be back." She offered.

"Okay, but I still want to go to the arcades because I learnt some new bowling tips and I want to see if I can beat you."

Ivy laughed at him.

"You learnt some tips?" She continued laughing.

"Yeah and I'm going to win this time."

"Yeah we'll see."

There was an elder couple on the bowling lanes when they got there, but they didn't seem to recognise Michael, so they went onto them anyway.

They set the scores up and began to play.

Ivy was winning, as usual, but Michael was scoring a lot better than usual. She decided to be nice to him and purposely started losing, letting Michael pull in front and end up winning.

"It worked yay! I actually won!" He said whilst taking a picture of the score monitor. "I'm showing that to the boys, they'll never believe me otherwise."

She smiled up at him and was glad she'd let him win. He was always sulking when he'd lost.

Michael gestured for her to get into a picture with him and she obliged. She could feel the dizziness coming back but chose to ignore it. He took the picture and smiled down at it.

"Such a good picture, I'm setting it as my background."

She smiled at how goofy he looked at the minute, but inside her heart was fluttering at the thought.

"So can we have another game or do you want to play something else?"

"Um, I think I want to play the 2p machines, the sitting down ones though. My, um, legs are sore." She lied.

The dizzy feeling was getting worse, and she had a sudden overwhelming moment of nausea before everything went black.

********

Ivy's eyes fluttered open and all she could hear was sirens. There was a bright light shining in her eyes so she couldn't actually make out her surroundings.

The light moved away and a hand moved to hers.

"Shes regaining consciousness." A voice she didn't recognise said.

"W-what happened?" She stammered, seeing Michael next to her.

"You passed out. I didn't know what to do so I phoned an ambulance, and because I said about the accident they wanted to take you in for more tests."

She didn't respond. Instead she just squeezed his hand. This is what she was scared of. She didn't want to be told there was something wrong with her. She fought back with the sting in her eyes, she didn't want to cry and look weak in front of Michael, plus his eyes looked puffy already. Had he been crying?

The sirens continued until they reached the hospital. The paramedics pulled the bed out of the back of the ambulance and pulled it into one of the wards in A&E, whilst Michael followed behind.

"When they've assessed you, do you want me to ring your dad and let him know what's happening? And Nova? I've already text the boys saying that I won't be back, but I haven't told them why." Michael asked.

"Let's just see what they say." She told him quietly.

After an hour, 2 vials of blood and a urine sample had been sent off to be tested, and she had been asked a lot of question. She came clean about all the nosebleeds and dizzy spells. The consultant came round a couple of hours after that, to talk to her.

"The good news, is that it has nothing to do with the car accident. There's no evidence in your blood that there's anything wrong in your head. I mean we can always send you for a CT scan if you are worried, but we don't think its that."

"Okay, so what does this mean?" Michael asked.

"I'm not sure if you should be in here whilst I explain." The consultant started. "Are you the partner?"

He nodded.

"Okay well it's up to Miss Pearce as to whether you stay or not."

Ivy nodded at her to, anxious to find out what was going on.

"Okay, well you have very low iron, which is what is causing all this. So we can give you tablets for that, which you'll have to take everyday, and if they still don't work you'll have to go to your GP for regular injections."

Ivy sighed with relief.

"Oh that's okay, its a pain but I was so worried it was going to be worse."

"We found traces of something else in your blood."

Ivy's heart sank again, and she gripped Michaels hand as tight as she could.

"We found low levels of HCG hormones."

"What does that mean?" Ivy asked.

"It means that you're pregnant."