☁️ HARRY ☁️
Working the Christmas shift always felt like you were working for about thirty six hours non stop. You'd think that working on Christmas Day would be pretty chilled out and quiet since everybody was at home with their families enjoying good food and spending time with one another, though it was actually quite the opposite in the ED.
The waiting room was just as busy as ever with children complaining of coughs and colds, adults with drunken head bumps and sprained wrists, elderly people with sad tears in their eyes, nothing particularly wrong with them, just looking for somewhere where they won't be as lonely.
We didn't just have a lot of physical injuries either, Christmas Day was the biggest time of year for people with a mental illness to have a crisis. I couldn't even count on my fingers how many times I had just simply sat beside someone as they poured their heart out to me, telling me that they couldn't take it anymore, they couldn't bear to be alone without their family or without a loved one who had maybe passed. It was just too much for some people. It was too much for them to cope with, too much going on and too much reminding them of the fact that they were very much alone. Though no one is ever really alone and I think we were proof of that.
They weren't alone because they could come here and we would listen. A mental health emergency is just as important as a physical emergency and so I would stay here all night if it meant that everybody had somebody to talk to, somebody to listen to their mind. And whilst I wasn't trained in the topic, I could still listen. You didn't have to be a therapist to simply listen to someone, though I know some veteran doctors would disagree. A lot of people just didn't have the time, but I made time and that was the difference.
"Hi Diane, how are you doing?" I greet everybody with a first name basis and a warm smile, all throughout the year but especially at Christmas time. Everybody needed a little bit of sparkle in their lives. Everyone needed to feel worthy and important.
"Doctor Styles- I can call you that, right? You treated one of my kids once, I can remember your tattoos" she looks up at me with wide eyes, a slight panic in her tone that alarms me slightly, especially considering how calm she was right now. I wasn't sure if she was having some sort of mental health crisis or something else was bothering her. She didn't physically look to be in pain and I couldn't see anything that was bleeding or visibly broken.
"Yes, doctor Styles is fine" I allow, more so concerned about her well-being rather than whatever she called me. She could call me any name under the sun and still I'd sit here and listen to whatever she had to say.
"Doctor Styles- I think I'm having a heart attack" she admits to me with pain stricken across her face. Though she still sounded far too calm for me and that is what was panicking me the most. If you're experiencing a real heart attack then you don't have time to panic. You don't have time to scream and shout. Near enough every patient I've seen experiencing symptoms of a heart attack is calm. They don't have it in them to be anything but calm.
"Okay" I nod my head, keeping a straight face whilst I calculate what needs to be done. "So it's a pain in your heart?" I ask for clarification whilst I lean in a little closer, swinging the stethoscope off from around my neck to just take a listen.
"I keep having these weird twinges and- and my dad had a heart attack earlier on in the year and I don't know if it's hereditary but he died and- and I've been running around cooking and being there for the kids all day and all day I've felt this weirdness in my chest and- and- and-"
"Diane" I stop her when her eyes glaze over and she's near enough hyperventilating just trying to talk to me.
Her heart sounded fine if you asked me. It was slightly elevated and I'd have to carry out more tests before I give her the all clear and send her on her way. But I don't think this was a heart attack at all.
"You said your dad passed away earlier on in the year?" I ask her, keeping my voice gentle so I didn't upset her. It must've been a hard subject for her if she was close to tears right now, or perhaps that pain in her heart really was bothering her and I needed to run some test urgently.
She sniffles before she nods, her hands fidgeting with one another in her lap whilst she tries to distract herself from the thought. I probably wasn't much help bringing it up, but I needed to get some things clear.
"Is this your first Christmas without him?" I lower my head a little to try and meet her eye line, my own heart aching a little.
I can remember the first Christmas without my step dad after he had passed away, it felt a little bit too much to bear but we had gotten through it as a family and I think that was the most important thing to do this time of year. Families just needed to be there for one another, though I appreciate it was hard after a loss, especially a loss as significant as your father, there were members of the family that'd hide away from it and pretend it never happened, you had family members who looked just like him to the point where you could hardly look them in the eyes anymore, you had people who wanted to talk about them constantly and then you had the people like me, the ones who were still trying to figure out how things went missed and how perhaps if we had acted faster then we wouldn't still be experiencing this hurt.
"I'm fine- it's fine- can someone please just check my heart? My daughter will be wondering where I got to, I told her I had burnt my hand and I'd only be an hour, I just don't want her to worry" she brushes off my attempts to dig a little deeper to see if perhaps this was more of a mental issue rather than an actual cardiovascular problem.
"Your heart rate sounded a little elevated but that could just be down to stress or anxiety, I'll go and get a nurse to run some thorough tests and we'll get some blood work drawn up" I tell her, though I think what she really needed was just someone to talk to, someone to make the load feel a little less heavier.
"How long will it take? I know you're busy and I know you've got a lot going on but.. my kids just worry and I don't want them to think that something bad has happened" she asks in a hushed tone as if they were in the room with us. She was the one in need of help right now and still she was worrying incessantly about her children. She reminded me of Lana in a way, but I suppose that was just a mothers instinct.
"We'll run monitors on your heart for a little while and it might take an hour or so for your blood results to come back, and then it depends on what happens from there, but I'd say you're looking at about three hours" I give her a rough estimate, trying to be as precise as possible though you could never be too sure. "I can try and rush the tests if you're that desperate to get home to your kids, I know what it's like" I pull a favour for her though I wasn't entirely happy about doing so, I liked to run thorough tests on everybody that came into my hands to make sure nothing was missed, but I was almost certain that in this case, it was all psychological rather than medical.
"You've got kids?" She looks up at me with glassy eyes, still worried about both her health and her children.
"Uh- yes- well, I've got one on the way and my girlfriend has a little girl, so I know what it's like" I dither around an answer. Harmony wasn't my child and I was well aware of that, Owen was her dad and I wasn't trying to take over that role, I wasn't trying to fill any missing gaps, I had only been in her life for a matter of weeks and yet still I understood the anxieties of parenthood and how desperately a parent worried over their own child. I saw from Lana just how detrimental the happiness of her child was.
"Do you think I'm having a heart attack?" She asks me quietly through the silence of the cubicle, though the waiting room just next to us was full of such hustle and bustle. I don't think it had quietened down all day.
"Until we do all of the tests, we can't rule anything out, but right now, your heart rate seems normal, it's a little bit faster than we'd like, but that could easily be anxiety, I'll go and get a nurse to take your bloods and we'll get started monitoring you, you're in safe hands" I assure her with a gentle smile, adamant to get her back home to her children as quickly as possible. Back where she belongs.
"Thank you doctor Styles, seriously- thank you" she looks at me with all sincerity, before I send her another tight lipped smile and make sure to rush her bloods as well as marking her case as urgent. It wasn't necessary, but if it really was a heart attack or some kind of medical emergency then I didn't want to cut any corners. Just because she wasn't presenting as having any symptoms didn't mean that it wasn't serious.
The nurses agree to try and see her as quickly as possible, though nothing was guaranteed, especially when patients continue to filter in the waiting room, an endless road of bumps and bruises, though many of them could be treated at home so Diane had a better chance of getting pushed up the list, depending on the severities that were yet to come in.
"Is Doctor Styles still here?" I hear a very familiar voice prick my ears when I least expect it. "Can I see him please?" I whip my head over to the reception desk where the voice was coming from and I really shouldn't have been overly surprised to see my two girls standing at the reception, asking for my name.
"You can't request a certain doctor, they're all very busy, you need to check yourself in and a doctor will see to you soon" the receptionist explains by the protocol to Lana. She clearly didn't recognise her, especially considering the shift change hadn't quite happened yet. I hardly recognised anybody on this shift, I didn't have any familiar faces to land myself upon and that was pretty hard when you were trying to get a job done.
I have to step forward to intervene before Lana ends up awkwardly explaining our situation just to get to see me, though the lady on reception would most likely turn her away.
"Lana- baby, is everything okay?" I step in, placing my hand upon her shoulder to make her turn to me.
My biggest fear was something happening to the two of them, well, three of them now. And if Lana was here in the ED when she wasn't supposed to be working then something had to be wrong. Maybe it was the baby, or maybe Harmony had hurt herself running around the flat. Something had to be wrong if they were here.
"Harry" she breathes a sigh of relief and a smile relaxes onto her face. She didn't have a look of worry casting upon her feature, nor did she look panicked in any way. That's when I look over to Harmony who was sitting upon Lana's hip to see if that would give me any clues as to why she was here.
Harmony was looking pretty exhausted from the excitement of the day, though it was probably way past her bedtime and I expect she had been up since a ridiculous time this morning. But she didn't look hurt in any way. In fact quite the opposite when she looks right towards me.
"We thought we'd come and pick you up from work, bring a bit of joy to your hard day, and plus, this little one has been desperate to see you all day" Lana explains and I can finally let out a breath of relief when I know that everything is just fine and they weren't here because they were hurt or anything of the sorts.
Lana was here out of the kindness of her heart.
She'd often rave about how I had a heart of gold, but I don't think she ever took much notice of her own heart and realised that in actual fact, she was the one with a heart made of solid pure gold. She just never stopped to realise it.
"Come here little bear" I open my arms out for her as Lana places her down on the floor, a little red sparkly Christmas dress sitting haphazardly on her body. She had a present in her hand, roughly the size of an A4 piece of paper wrapped up in Disney princess Christmas paper and a tag stuck in the corner.
"Harry!" Harmony sleepily stumbles into my arms with a wide smile on her face, more than happy to see me.
I hold her so close and bring her to sit effortlessly on my hip as if she was a little baby. I could only imagine how utterly adorable she was as a baby. I'd have to ask Lana some time to show me some pictures of when she was just a babe in arms.
"Thank you for my presents" she whispers into my ear, her arms wrapped tightly around my neck giving me the most bone crushing hug in the best way possible.
Lana had scolded me at first when I went to their flat yesterday with an abundance of presents in my arms, the majority for Harmony but a few special ones for Lana and one especially for our little baby who was thirteen weeks tomorrow. Already I felt like time was flying past. It felt like it was only yesterday that Karmen was sitting me down and delivering my fate.
"You're welcome poppet, did you have a nice day?" I ask quietly her when she rests her head upon my shoulder and Lana is watching on with a smile on her face.
"We played all day with my new toys, oh and we made you something!" She perks up when she remembers she's still holding the gift in her hands.
"For me?" I pull back in surprise. I knew Lana had felt bad when I came bounding into her home yesterday with armfuls of presents for the three of them, she had said that she had only written a card, but to me that was more than enough. I didn't expect anything more from her, I didn't need her money, I didn't need a gift. She had already given me the greatest gift this year.
"Lana I told you not to" I shake my head at her. I knew money was tough for her, especially at Christmas and I didn't expect her to get anything for me. We had hardly known each other for a few months. I was still yet to know some of her favourite things.
"It's only something little, and besides, Harmony was distraught when I told her that you was working today, it was more of her idea than mine" Lana explains taking a step forward to watch as I flip the tag over to see what was written upon it.
"To Harry, merry Christmas lots of love from Alannah, Harmony and..." I trail off, looking up at Lana with wide eyes as I refuse to finish what it actually says on the tag. Lana had written Bump on the end of that sentence but I wasn't about to say that right in front of Harmony.
"She can't read, it's fine" Lana waves off as if it wasn't a big deal. She must've been coming around to the idea of finally telling Harmony.
Lana was adamant that she was going to tell her parents and her sister about the baby today, but I had received a text at about lunch time from her telling me that she just couldn't do it. I was yet to tell my parents, but the plan was to share the news with the tomorrow, though I ideally wanted Lana with me when I announced our news. I think it'd feel less daunting if she was there with me holding my hand, though I know that she'd probably panic the moment I asked her to meet my family. It was a big deal.
"What is it?" I furrow my brows, mostly unsure of the shape of it. It felt like a photo frame of some sort.
"Open and see" Lana shrugs as if she had no idea.
"Let me put you down Harmony so I have two hands to open it" I tell her, settling her feet down on the floor and she's quick to pull her dress down a little and then jump on her little toes, excited for me to rip open her gift.
"Open it! Open it!" Harmony claps her hands together in delight and Lana has to remind her to be quiet, especially considering where we were. Perhaps a hospital waiting room wasn't exactly the place to be doing this but Harmony was so happy and her little face was lit up like a Christmas tree. I couldn't say no to that face.
"Is it a puppy?" I tease her as I peel away the paper.
"No! It's not a puppy! Open it Harry" she giggles, unable to even stand up straight she was bursting with such excitement. Harmony was a giver, just like her mum. She had that heart of gold that shone from Lana, it was hereditary clearly and I think our baby had a strong chance of having that heart of gold that she possessed too.
I try not to make too much mess of the paper, gently tearing it away and then shoving the rubbish into my scrub pockets to reveal a handmade photo frame covered in all sorts of colours, there was glitter stuck around the edges, princess stickers, unicorn stickers, little flowers stuck on haphazardly with glue, all of it made entirely by hand and it brought the biggest smile you could ever imagine to my face.
It wasn't even the present that made me smile so wide. It was the fact that both Harmony and Lana had taken the time to sit and do this together, they had spent time making this special for me. It wasn't the present, it was the thought and the time it had taken.
It made my heart so happy.
Though it wasn't only the photo frame that was their present to me, in the middle of the frame was a picture of the two of them in their matching Christmas pyjamas. Harmony was smiling sweetly at the camera, her hair in two near pigtails, Lana sitting right next to her with a hand on her stomach emphasising the little bump that she was sporting just recently. Harmony wouldn't have been able to guess what was going on just from that picture but Lana was cutting it fine.
"Oh look at my girls!" I hold the frame up closer to my face to inspect the glitter work all around the edges. It looked as though Harmony really had dumped a whole pot of glitter upon it but it couldn't be more perfect. It was made from the heart and that's all that I cared about. It meant more to me than they knew.
"It's me and mummy!" Harmony jumps up to point herself out as if I didn't know, even now her face was filled with such happiness and excitement, she really made the magic of Christmas come alive.
"I can see that!" I gush, completely in love with it already. I'd cherish it forever more. "I love it so much! Thank you Harmony" I bend down to take her into my arms to show my gratitude. It really meant a lot to me that they even thought of me on Christmas Day, especially the fact that they had come to pick me up from work after a long day. It meant more than I could even truly comprehend.
"Thank you Blondie, it means a lot, seriously, you have no idea" I stand to take Lana into my arms, her scent overwhelming me after I had been deprived of it for a whole twenty four hours. I could hardly go a minute without missing her. We had become a little attached at the hips just recently.
"It's only something small, and it was Harmony's idea, she wanted to make something for you and I thought that it could be from the three of us" she shrugs again like it was nothing, but this meant more to me than gold.
"I love it, all of it, I'm going to put it in my house straight away" I assure the two of them that it'd find a home upon one of my shelves to be displayed to anyone who would ever walk through my door.
"You have a house?" Harmony looks at me in amazement as if she had just assumed I had been living on the streets this whole time, though I suppose it was probably past her four year old mind to even think of things like that, not to mention she had never been to my house and so how was she to know any better?
"I do, you'll have to come and visit one day" I tell her, though I'm sure she'd be coming over to visit a lot more in the future.
I still wasn't sure on how our living arrangements would work out once the baby was here, it wasn't something we had spoken about but I suppose I just had to gain both Lana and Harmony's trust before I ever asked them to move in with me. I just feared that Lana would find it far too much. She had her own home and that was her comfort and security, that was hers, it was her place to call home and if she moved into my house then perhaps she wouldn't feel as if she still had that. I didn't want to put her out in any way. I wanted to make her feel as comfortable as possible even if it took months, I was willing to wait.
"I'll just go and grab my bag and we can go, I bet you're tired little one, hey?" I ask Harmony who still had bright eyes though she looked as though she could clock out at any minute. It wouldn't surprise me if she was to fall asleep on the way back home.
It usually takes me ages to actually leave work, normally I'd just finish up with a few patients, see them through or just pick up a job that I think will take ten minutes but it usually ends up taking about an hour. Normally you couldn't pry me away from work, but when I had Lana and Harmony waiting for me, it took me approximately ten seconds to grab my bag and make a mad dash out of the door just so I could spent a few minutes more with them.
"Here, I'll take her" I offer to Lana when Harmony was back on Lana's hip, cuddled into her with Paddington tucked into her arms.
"No, I've got her" Lana shakes her head.
"Lana she's heavy and you're pr- carrying precious cargo" I quickly switch up my words before little ears are overhearing the wrong thing. She was still oblivious and until Lana was ready, I planned to keep it that way.
Lana debates it for a few seconds but eventually gives in and carefully hands Harmony over to me as if she was the precious cargo, though we could both agree that she very much was so.
"Did Santa come and visit you last night?" I ask Harmony as she rests her head upon my shoulder, her eyes fighting sleep as the seconds tick by.
"Brought me a baby doll to play with and an art set" she mumbles tiredly and I can't help but shoot my eyes over to Lana when I hear that she had her very on baby dolly for Christmas, perhaps that would help to ease the idea of an actual baby brother or sister to play with. A doll would be good for her to practice with at least.
"Did he? That sounds like so much fun, you'll have to show me another time" I tell her as we reach Lana's car. I pull the back door open and gently place Harmony down into her car seat, triple checking that Paddington was still in her arms and that we hadn't lost him on the way.
After I check her seat belt is definitely secured I tuck myself into the passenger seat and pull out the photo frame that I had just been gifted as well as one of the ultrasound pictures we got given last week that I hadn't allowed to leave my side once. I took it with me to work, I kept it by my bed side and I even took a picture of it on my phone so I could look at it at all hours of the day and be completely mesmerised by this little life that Lana and I had created together.
It's all I could think about at all hours of the day. I was completely captivated by them.
"Do you know what picture I could also put in here?" I look over at Lana and get the fuzzy black and white picture of our baby out from my bag to hold up against the frame. I think it was a pretty good way to display such perfection.
"Baby's about the size of a peach now I read online" Lana tells me, she too had clearly done her research.
"What baby?" Harmony pipes up from the back seat, suddenly not feeling so tired anymore and it's funny that.
In record time I'm tucking the picture back into my bag and pursing my lips tightly together, though I was hardly the one to say anything. Lana had been the one to let the cat out of the bag and I was slightly grateful that it was her rather than me.
"Oh uh.." Lana attempts to wave off whilst she looks at me with wide eyes as it to ask how the fuck she was supposed to get herself out of that one. She couldn't look at me for advice, I hardly had a clue what I was doing. I wasn't sure what the right words were to say. I didn't know how to do this or how to explain such a thing.
"Now?" She mouths at me, desperate for me to give her the reassurance she needed, but I didn't know. I didn't know when the right time was.
"We are in the car" I give her a shrug of my shoulders, leaving it up to her. Though by this point the two of us seemed to have quite the track record of having these types of moments in the car. But it wasn't necessarily the setting that made the difference, it was purely the moment.
"Uh, Harmony..." Lana turns her body around and speaks her words unsure whilst she tries to gather the right words to say. No one was an expert on this.
I couldn't even really believe this was happening like this, at seven o'clock at night on Christmas Day in the bloody hospital car park. It didn't quite set the scene but that wasn't important right now.
"Mummy and Harry have something to tell you, okay?" She prepares her daughter before she speaks the words that'll change everything for Harmony. I just couldn't believe this was playing out in this way. I couldn't believe that this was just happening on a whim.
I also turn my body around to face her, my heart pumping faster than ever before as I prepare for this whole thing to blow up. I just had a fear that it'd all end in tears. I wanted Harmony to be happy for us but you just never knew what kind of reaction was festering in her mind.
"So um.." Lana fumbles over her words, not at all sure of what she was supposed to say to her little girl. There was no easy way to say it, she just has to come out with it and hope for the best I suppose.
"Mummy's got a... a baby in her tummy" Lana breathes, her words still sounding unsure but at least they were out in the open rather than cooped up inside of her brain. The hardest step was always the first one and I knew she'd feel a whole lot better sharing this news with her daughter rather than having to work around to clock to hide it from her. It didn't have to be a secret anymore.
The car feels eerily silent when Lana's words fill the void, all that can be heard were our deep breaths as we wait for some kind of reaction. We both look at Harmony as if she was a ticking time bomb, just waiting for her to give us her final reaction.
"Why?" She cocks her head to the side and it was not the reaction I thought we would get from her. I wasn't expecting her to say that.
Lana turns to me for that one, her eyes searching my face for the right thing to say, but I still didn't have it. But Lana is nodding at me as if she's urging me to take the wheel and explain this one to her.
"Uh- well, it's just.. it's just what happens" I tell her awkwardly, unsure of how to even talk to her right now. I didn't know what I was doing. "Your mummy's got a baby in her tummy which means that in the summer, you'll get to be a big sister and you'll have a little baby brother or sister to play with" I try my best to steer away from explaining the whole anatomical process of how the baby actually got into her mummy's tummy.
"How does that sound Harmony?" Lana looks at her with hope filled eyes, just waiting for her daughters approval.
Harmony has to think about that one for a little while, and it doesn't surprise me at all that she's confused, she was bound to be. She probably had an endless list of questions for us both and even then she'd still have more that she just couldn't voice. At four years old she was bound to have so much running around that little mind of hers. She was yet to learn how the world even works and here she was trying to fathom that there was a baby growing inside of her mums tummy. It was a lot to comprehend. It's almost like I could see her little mind whirring away trying to figure it all out.
"Like a real baby?" She squints her eyes, her tired brain probably making it a little tricky for her to catch up. She had had a long day.
"A real baby is in mummy's tummy" Lana confirms, "do you want to see a picture?" She offers, holding her hand out to silently request the ultrasound picture that I had hidden on an instinct.
I hand it over to Lana whilst the car is quiet and my mind is still worrying over how Harmony will digest this all.
"Look, here's the baby" Lana holds the photo up to show Harmony her baby brother or sister.
"Wow" she mumbles so quietly, mesmerised by the blurry picture that probably just looked like a little blob to her, but to us, it was our family. It was our child that we had made together. "It's tiny" she comments.
"It's still got a lot of growing to do, but in the summer the baby will be here" Lana explains to her.
"Is it a boy or a girl baby?" She needs to know before she gives us her final reaction, everything had been pretty vague so far and I think both Lana and I were subtly holding our breaths, waiting for a reaction that could be a make or a break.
"We don't know yet, we can find out in another month or two" I tell her, though I wasn't sure if Lana actually wanted to find out or not.
You didn't get many surprises in this life and so I suppose it would be nice to keep it as a surprise, though I knew I'd hardly be able to wait a second longer to know who we were going to get to love for the rest of our lives. I wasn't sure if Lana had found out with Harmony or kept it a surprise, but it was something we'd have to talk about closer to the time. We still had plenty of time, there was no need to rush anything.
"I think I want a brother" she tells us with a straight face, though perhaps it'd take a while for the real excitement to hit her, or at least I was hoping so anyway.
"A brother? That'd be nice" Lana nods in agreement, but I wasn't so sure a little boy was residing in Lana's stomach.
I hadn't voiced it to anybody but I was almost certain that a little girl was in there. I hadn't even really considered it being a boy, my mind had just defaulted to a girl, mostly because Harmony is a girl but I know that isn't quite how it all worked. Not only that, but I had gotten quite fond of calling them my girls, that was including the baby too.
"I think it's a girl" I tell them both, though I was mostly thinking aloud. A girl just felt right, but I'd be happy with whatever baby was placed into my arms, I just wanted them to be healthy, that was all I asked.
"What? No! I'm the girl!" Harmony firmly shakes her head adamant that there was not to be another girl within the family. She was the little princess and she would make sure of that one. She didn't want anybody else taking that title.
"Well we don't know what it is just yet, so don't worry poppet, how about we just get you home and tucked up in bed? I think it's been a long day, huh?" I suggest before this got a little heated and Harmony started to actually resent the idea of getting a sibling. We needed to make this as exciting as possible for her.
She nods her head and cuddles Paddington right up to her neck when we all sit back in our seats and Lana hands me the scan picture that had followed me everywhere for the past week. This picture was like gold dust to me.
The drive back to my house was mostly silent, Harmony was out cold in her car seat, Paddington limply in her arms as her head was lulled to the side. Lana tried to keep it as quiet as possible for her, aside from the murmur of a few Christmas songs coming through the radio.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed to be seeing them go so soon, but it was late at night and Harmony needed to be getting home, she should've been tucked up in bed already and I should really be getting home to sleep, today had felt never ending, though perhaps I didn't want it to end. Not when I had my girls within arms reach. I didn't want to have to part with them, even if I knew I'd be seeing them again tomorrow, it still pained me to do so.
"This is the best Christmas I've had in a long time" Lana begins her little speech as she pulls up outside my dark house that was in need of some life within it. It was in need of someone else to fill the spare bedrooms, the other side of my bed needed someone to keep it warm.
"Next Christmas we'll have a little baby here with us" I can't help the smile erupting upon my lips. Just the thought made me feel giddy. "They'll be about six months old by Christmas time, the perfect age really." I could picture it now. Harmony and the baby in matching Christmas pyjamas looking cuter than you could ever imagine. They'd leave milk and carrots out for Santa and his reindeers and Lana and I would have to sneak around the house to lay their presents beneath the tree. It'd be perfect.
"And I can't wait, I can't wait to have a little family with you" she doesn't even bother to fight the smile from spreading like a wildfire. "You really are something special Styles" she says at a mumble, her face inching closer and closer towards me until our noses are near enough touching. All we have to do is close the gap.
"Shame there's no mistletoe" I whisper with Lana's breath fanning against my lips, she was so close.
That's all it takes for our lips to be sealed and all I can do is grab hold of Lana's body to pull her in closer, I savour her scent like I was going to lose her and it's all I need right now. All I need is her touch, all I need is her hands laced in my hair, all I need is her lips on mine. It's perfect. It's all perfect. I don't think I could write a better ending to the day.
"Harmony's in the back" she mumbles against my lips, the feeling vibrating throughout my whole body, butterflies in my stomach and my head spinning around in a daze. I was so trapped in my own mind, though I couldn't complain, my mind was simply full of Lana by this point.
"I need to be getting inside anyway" I tell her before this progresses any further. We couldn't when Harmony was in the car, we'd needed to find a moment reserved just for the two of us.
"We'll see you tomorrow, yeah?" Lana looks up at me with those green eyes full of such wonder.
"I'm seeing Gemma and my mum tomorrow, but you can still come over, my mum would love to meet you I'm sure, and we could even tell them about baby if you're up for it?" It was a far fetched idea that I'm sure Lana was probably talk herself out of by the morning. It was a big step and I wasn't expecting her to do it right away, and besides, she hadn't even told her own parents yet, I'd understand if she wanted to tell them first.
"I'll be round" she nods against me, though I don't think she really knew what she was agreeing to.
I press another precious kiss to her lips before I slide out of the car, taking my bag and my gifted photo frame with me, but I don't trudge into my house without opening the back door and ever so gently brushing my hand over Harmony's innocent resting face.
"I'll see you soon little bear" I tell her before lightly pecking her forehead, just enough to reach her in her dreams but not enough to wake her up.
"Love you" she sleepily mumbles, shifting her weight around slightly, but not enough to wake herself up. She was still far away in her dreams, merely sleep talking at this point, but I still hold her words so closely to my heart.
They were the best Christmas present I could've ever asked for and I don't think either of them knew just how much their pure presence meant to me.
It was the greatest gift of all time.
☁️☁️☁️☁️
I just love them so much I think I could write them forevermore😭
LANA MEETS THE STYLES NEXT!
Love to you all <3
Twitter: @hollytpwk