London

69 - "Eli Styles."

"Great work, Alex," the doctor says, "let's do it another time." 

The doctor instructs her a couple of more times and Alex obeys, pushing with everything she has. She's weakened by the pregnancy, but to me she's the strongest person I know. After another round of pushing and wondering if she's making progress I try to watch but one look is enough for me to sit next to Alex again, reaching for her hand. 

"I'm so proud of you," I whisper in her ear. "You're doing so well, Lex."

That's when she breaks down, tears start running down her face as she tries to keep up with the doctor's orders. 

"Alex, one more push, we're almost there," Susan says and I hold my breath with Alex as she gives the final push. 

I hear the cries of our baby, I hear the cries of Alex and I hear the cries of myself as I watch a tiny in dirt covered baby being placed on Alex's chest. Her eyes find mine as we look to the extremely little guy in her arms. 

"Congratulations," the doctor says. "We'll give you a second, I'm afraid we'll have to take him from you then."

"God," Alex mumbles, her entire body shivering even when she's covered in sweat. "He's so small."

I don't have words to tell any one of them. So far the little fellah seems okay and Alex survived everything. I bury my face in the nape of her neck, covering my face from everyone as I try to recover. Thinking that it only just begun.

****

Alex

"Should we tell anyone?" Harry asks me as we both watch our son in the incubator, hooked up on a lot of things that don't make any sense to me. I held him in my arms and he was breathing fine, crying and holding my finger. He should stay on my chest. "Do you want me to call Liam?"

Harry is only asking me because he's worrying. Hoping that Liam will make me talk. But I just gave birth when I wasn't one bit prepared. Don't I deserve to process that? I don't even know how to feel. If anything I feel nothing and how do you explain emptiness? Especially when Harry is clearly enjoying every little movement the baby makes. I can barely watch it. It doesn't seem like the same child. It doesn't feel like the child that bounced around in my stomach. Making me suffer and hate life for a full seven months, but also making me love it so much since the second I found out I got pregnant again. Protective as I was to make sure that nothing would go wrong this time around I focussed only on all that happened within me. I know I ignored Harry through it all while he silently suffered with me as the biggest punishment for him is when I don't talk much. I guess he expected me to become myself again after giving birth, but I don't know who that person is anymore. All I know is that everything feels wrong. 

"Alex," Harry says in a more stern way after calling for me a couple of times without a reaction. 

I eye him and he shakes his head. "What?"

"I liked you better in the car," he says and it does make me laugh out loud. Harry can be rude, but he knows who he's talking to. The testosterone in my stomach made me very rude towards him as well, but in the car I simply seemed to forget. 

"I was panicking," I tell him. 

He looks away from me again, a frown appearing between his eyebrows. "I was, too. I still fucking am. How are we supposed to do this? He might need to be fed this way for another month. Does that mean we'll have to come here every day and leave him at night?"

"I guess they will tell us."

"But I don't want to leave him," he says, looking at me again. I guess he's expecting me to say that I feel the same, but I don't feel it. The baby will be fine here. Clearly better than it was in my stomach. "How do you feel? Psychically I mean?"