PLEASE READ:
After this update, I am NOT SENDING PMs OUT ANYMORE! I'm going to my cottage for two weeks and we have dial up so it's slow and frustrating.
There will be a link in the first post to the latest chapter.
And from now on I will be updating once a week. Every Tuesday. I'm busy with university prep and I'll be out of town, and I don't have a day within the next while that I won't have some family members visiting from out of town.
Chapter 7
He didn’t spend the night there. He had to go into work for an emergency of some kind. But he came back early in the morning before her first chemotherapy appointment on Wednesday morning. “Hey, Syd?” he called out when she was getting Lara dressed to go to the babysitters place, “What hospital are you going to?”
“Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, why?”
“That’s where I work. I know the head of oncology there, Dr. Markham, right?”
“Yeah. His son is actually my doctor. He’s supposed to be one of the best out there.”
“He’s really good.”
“I forgot to ask you, but what part are you involved in?” she asked.
“Paediatrics,” he said. “I decided on it a few months after we broke up.”
“Oh,” Sydney sighed.
“Mommy cwofs!” Lara squealed happily pointing at her dress.
Vaughn laughed, “So, was that a clothes, or coughs?” he asked curiously.
“Clothes,” Sydney said with a smile, “I can’t get over the way she talks. It’s so adorable.”
“You’ve done a great job with her Syd. She’s beautiful and intelligent, just like her mother.”
“Vaughn, I’m not beautiful. I’m plain and too thin now. I have love handles, I’ve got stretch marks, and I’m pale, and I’m stick thin.” She quickly listed the things she found wrong with her body.
“Syd, you’re on meds that cause you to be thin like that. And you’ve always been pale. And the love handles and stretch marks are there because you brought a new life into this world. I’m sure they’re not ugly, but beautiful.”
Sydney and Vaughn began to laugh, which caused Lara to look around at the two adults. She started giggling to join in with the grownups. This caused Vaughn and Sydney to laugh a little harder.
“We should get going,” she sighed, “Don’t want to be late today.”
* * * * * *
Sydney signed into the hospital with Vaughn at her side, “I’ll be here when you get out,” he said to her when she went into the hospital room to change and have the drugs administered.
* * * * * *
Sydney awoke in a hospital bed with Vaughn at her side. She sat up and suddenly gasped. She lurched to the side of the bed and threw up into a basin by the side of the bed.
Vaughn woke up as he heard her throw up into the basin. He stood up and walked to her side and held back her hair and called the nurse in. She told Sydney that it was completely normal to be doing that after the treatments.
“Let’s talk,” Sydney suggested when she laid down again.
“Alright. Have you been in touch with anyone else from high school?” he asked.
“Francie and Will,” she said.
“Francie and Danny were dating last time I saw them, so what happened?” he wondered.
“They broke up a few months before we did. Now Francie and Will are engaged.”
“Whoa!” he gasped, “When did that happen?”
“Last week. Francie called me the morning after; she was insane.”
“So it wasn’t like… a year ago and no one bothered to tell me about it?” he laughed. “It seems that I’ve been out of the loop.”
“Well, you should get back in,” Sydney sighed, “What about you and Alice, how long have you two been together?” she asked.
“Only three months. We’re not too serious; it’s more of a comfort thing.”
A comfort thing? Sydney wondered, “What does that mean?”
“I’m not in love with her. I don’t really see myself loving her. We’re just together so we don’t have to be alone. Or at least that’s how I feel about it. We’re comfortable with each other.”
“So, why not find someone who you can love?” she asked.
“I always have this sinking feeling that it’s going to be taken away. It always has been taken from me.”
“Do you ever think about what it might have been like, to not lose the baby?” she asked.
“Every day.”
“Do you think we’d still be together today?”
“Yeah, I do,” he sighed heavily. They sat together in silence, “We can’t dwell on it Syd. There wasn’t anything that we could have done differently.”
“We never actually talked about it though.”
“Because we couldn’t.”
“I know, but we should have. Maybe we would have worked out.”
“Syd, losing a baby, that’s one of the things that’s impossible to work out.”
“But maybe I have to!” she screamed.
“Syd,” Vaughn sighed.
“I can’t get over it Vaughn,” she cried, “Something I did killed our baby. Now I’m being punished for it.”
“Oh, Syd. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong, the doctors told you that.”
“That’s what they say, though. I know I did something wrong. It was my body. It was inside of
me, and it died. I killed our baby!”
“Syd, you have to forgive yourself. You can’t dwell on it. When we lost the baby, we lost a part of ourselves along with it. You having cancer has nothing to do with the baby. Neither does losing Danny. You’re not being punished. It would have happened later in the pregnancy if it hadn’t then; and they told you that it could have killed you if it did. Where would I be now if I had lost you too, that day? It would have killed me. And don’t you
ever think that it was your fault we lost the baby.”
“You’ve been thinking about this a lot, haven’t you.”
“For six and a half years.”
Sydney sighed and grasped his hand, “When can I go home?” she asked.
“I’ll find out,” he said as he stood up. He walked into the hallway and came back a few minutes later, “We can check you out tomorrow afternoon.”
She nodded, “Thanks,” she said sincerely.
“It was nothing.”
“Just… thank you.”
************************************************