And To All A Good Night [h.s. one shots]

Acquiescence by dontyaworrydarlin

Six minutes and twenty-five seconds.

My finger twists my wedding ring nervously, taking my lower lip between my teeth.

Six minutes and forty-four seconds.

A knock.

Seven minutes.

"Isabella? Hi. I'm Dr. Leon." A guy with pearly whites and eyes that could hold every emotion in them. I move to shake his hand, giving a nod of my head as I watch him grab his chair and move it to sit in front of me.

"I know that when you were last here, you had us implant some of your eggs. As I'm looking at your chart, I can see they were able to pull ten eggs. We have tried four of those and none have successfully implanted," he breathes, his voice soft and I know the inevitable is coming.

"I regret to inform you that at this time, the fifth implantation did not take. I'm sorry, Mrs. Reynolds."

The ball drops. The inevitable happened.

When I turn to look at Tomas, he isn't looking at me anymore.

01.

Marriage. For better or for worse. In sickness and in health. That's what you vow. You promise your significant other that you'll be there for them through everything, the good and the bad. You'll hold their hand on their cloudiest of days. You'll wait for the rain to stop and for the skies to clear up.

That's what you're supposed to do.

When the tides recede and you know there's a raging hurricane causing torrential rain on their mind, you sit with them to give them just the feeling that someone is there.

You're there. They can breathe.

I bring my fingers up to run slowly over the wedding photo that sits on the mantle, my head tilting to the side a bit as my eyes dance over the lights that are hanging over the fireplace. For a holiday, the house that I reside in feels awfully empty and quiet.

Tomas comes up behind me, his hands coming to my waist and he rests them there, imprinting himself on me in a way. I'm draped in his cologne, the scent wafting around me and clinging to the inside of my nose.

In a way, I suppose it feels like my definition of home.

I lean back into the touch with ease, a small sigh falling from my lips as I place the picture back on the mantle. I remember that day as if it were yesterday. It's one of my fondest memories. The day I was truly my happiest. I just never thought that would all change one day.

You see, I've always been a hopeless romantic. Always holding out for a fairy tale and for a while, I've had that fairy tale. Or so I thought.

Even from a young age, my dream was to fall in love. I listened to stories of prince charming and clung to them with a vice grip. I was even voted as most likely to marry their high school love as an accolade.

And I did that. Tomas and I have been together since we were sixteen. I am now twenty-four. Eight years together and four married. We've been waiting until things were fine financially before we started trying to have children, except when that day came I got some gruelling news.

News I'll never forget. News that made me fall to my knees and grasp my chest because I felt like all of the air had been sucker-punched out of my lungs.

My fairy tale was no more.

It was all over in five minutes. The second we walked into the doctor's office. All it took was five minutes for the ceiling to shatter and the comfortable bubble I had hidden in to burst.