OUT OF THE RED ↝ dave grohl

one-hundred-nine.

She opened her mouth, wanting to scream, but the sound caught in her throat as another flash of pain swelled over her.

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How long had it been?

Reagan wasn't sure. There was no clock nearby and she didn't have a watch. Hazily, she made a mental note to start wearing one. It would have been nice to have in order to determine how much time had passed since she'd made it to the bathroom.

It couldn't have been long as her imagination was telling her. If she had to accurately guess, she would have said maybe an hour and a half, but it was hard to speculate on. It felt like years had passed inside the bathroom.

Kate was calling for her. Her sister's voice sounded so faraway and Reagan wanted more than anything to respond, to scream for Kate to come quickly, but she couldn't.

She'd forgotten how to speak. She'd forgotten how to function.

She sat on the tiled bathroom floor, her eyes averted away from the toilet. She didn't want to look there. She had already looked once and that had made her vomit into the small trash can tucked under the toilet paper roll.

She wasn't going to look again.

"Reagan!" Kate called. Reagan heard her footsteps jogging up the stairs and she wished that she had the strength to get up on her own, to exit the bathroom before her little sister could enter. There was blood on the floor.

Reagan couldn't. She couldn't do anything but sit, leaning her head against the sink's cabinets as she stared blankly at the wall. The juxtaposition of shock and alertness that she was feeling, all at once, was making her nauseous.

"Reags?"

Kate's voice was behind the door. She knocked and Reagan looked up, trying to think of what to say, but nothing came to mind. She couldn't have simply said 'I'm in here' when she didn't feel like she was in the bathroom. She didn't feel like she was even in her childhood home at all.

She didn't feel real.

The door opened.

Kate walked in and fell to her knees.

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Reagan should have known.

She should have known that she was doomed from the moment she'd gone into an early labor with Gracie, only to hear from her doctors that it was because of her body betraying her. That's why it had happened.

Whether she'd been made that way or because she had indirectly caused it, Reagan didn't know. She didn't care. All that mattered was that it had happened again and this time, she had nothing to show for it.

No baby in her arms to hold.

Her hospital room was silent. She wanted to whip off the papery sheets she was under and walk herself out, maybe even walk all the way back to Los Angeles, but she was vacant of any energy. Sitting upright in bed and staring out the window at the bleary gray skies was the only thing she was capable of.

Dave was there, somewhere in the hospital. Kate had called him and he'd ended up on the next flight out of L.A., meeting up with them after Reagan had already been admitted.

She was glad that he wasn't in the room anymore. The only thing worse than going through what she'd just experienced was having to look into his eyes, feel him squeeze her hand, and speak to her in a raspy voice that bordered on sobs.

He'd given up trying to get her to talk, taking a break to go grab some food.

For once in her life, Reagan didn't want to be around him.