Just For Tonight

Right?

"Well time can heal but this won't, so before you go, was there something I could have said to make your heartbeat better?"

Shining the light on my stomach slowly my eyebrows pull together as I notice absolutely nothing as we're now two days past when Kacelyn was set to make her appearance. Dr.Rowe just told us to wait it out, try and go on walks bounce on an exercise ball to try and induce labor but nothing has happened for us so far. I just want her out already. Moving the light around I wait for something, some sign of anything at all, and still just get. . . nothing. Somethings not right.

Sitting up from where I laid on the couch I push my hair behind my ears as I just stare at my baby bump trying to just will something to happen and for her to move as I continue moving the light around. My heartbeat pounds in my chest as I try to figure out what the hell to do now and how to make sure that she's okay and know that she's okay.

"Christian!" I all but scream out my voice faltering as I start to panic knowing we've got to get to the hospital. This is all wrong this isn't supposed to be how this happens. Christan's hasty footsteps descending from the stairs are drowned out by my own deafening heartbeat pounding in my ears.

Crouching in front of me the slight excitement in his face disappears as quickly as a flame is blown out as he takes in the panic on my face. "Ashtyn what's happening?"

"Something's wrong," I tell him voice completely breaking at the end as the words somehow escape my mouth, "We need to get to a hospital." My fight or flight response right now is taking over everything and choosing to fight right now for my daughter. The scene plays out like in a movie as the world rushes around me while I gather my bearings and stand up. Christian rushes back up the stairs taking them three at a time practically before disappearing around the corner seconds later he reemerges our hospital bag in hand. For as quickly as he should be moving it feels as though everything is playing out in slow motion around me and I'm just going with the motions as he ushers me out into his car before speeding off down the driveway not even taking the time to close our garage door behind us.

Everything is going to be fine. It has to be. There's nothing wrong and I'm just overreacting. Kacelyn is fine and she just needs to be helped out. She's just so ready to be here that she's not reacting like she usually would, right? She's just taken all the space up that she can and just physically can't move anymore, right? She was fine at the check-up last week and even was in the dropped position ready to be delivered basically. There's nothing wrong and I'm overreacting. Right?

Knowing that Christian is already speeding faster than he probably should doesn't make a difference in how agonizingly slow the world is moving around us past the windshield I'm staring straight out of. Houses and trees pass by and it somehow still feels like I've got more time than ever before to take them in and see each one as it passes by. It's a tortoise and the hare race right now and somehow it looks like we're the tortoise even though we're going at the hares' speed. Somehow though, even if we were going at the speed of light it doesn't feel like it'd be fast enough.

Looking down at my left hand resting on my bump I see my engagement ring reflecting the light back off of it. How did we end up here from where we were last week planning our future for the three of us? This can't be real right now if this is as wrong as I think it is. That's not how this is supposed to happen. This isn't how we planned this, not even fucking close.

Christians leg bounces a million miles a minute as we wait to hear something, anything on this god damn sonogram to give us some sort of hope to cling to for our baby girl, and there's just. . . nothing. The dams that have been built to hold out for any hope that I was wrong and everything is okay threatening to burst as every agonizing second passes while we're here listening to the scream of silence. Before finally there's the faintest shallowest wub we've heard before. Oh my god.