Page 4 of Realm Walker's Awakening

Drew was silent by my side while he squeezed my hand and watched the screen with me.

The tech looked at me with gentle eyes, then back to the screen as she swallowed hard.

“I’m really sorry, but I’m not finding the baby’s heartbeat,” she explained sympathetically.

The cold and all-too-white room closed in around me. My breaths became choppy, and tears stung my eyes. My chest tightened until it became too hard to breathe and every pounding of my heart added to the soul-shattering pain.

That couldn’t be. She couldn’t be...

My mind spiraled into an endless darkness, my body tingling with numbness. I couldn’t use my voice or find any words. Then the nurse’s words echoed in my head like they were a foot kicking me down and keeping me from rising back and able to shake out of it.

“Check again,” Drew pleaded, his voice cracking.

The nurse nodded and looked back to the screen as she continued moving the wand around on my stomach, and still, no fluttering heartbeat could be heard. None but my frantic one the ultrasound was catching.

I watched, unable to peel my gaze from it nor keep from torturing myself any more than I was. But I could make out my baby on the screen, and the nurse stopped at a part on my stomach. She tilted her head this way and that as she adjusted the placement on my stomach.

“Lana...” she started as her sympathetic blue eyes turned to me with sadness. My stomach dropped with dread, and I prepared myself for the next thing she said because I knew it wasn’t good. “The umbilical cord is wrapped around her neck. She’s not alive.”

Those last three words echoed in my mind.

“She’s not alive.”

I didn’t want to hear,“She’s dead.”But hearingshe’s not alivewas just as bad.

After a few long seconds passed while I let what she said settle into my suddenly quiet mind, my world was ripped off its axis. It was only at that moment that I realized I stopped breathing and tears stung my eyes.

My world shattered. It ended with those words. I knew something was wrong with my baby while I had scrambled to get to the hospital; I didn’t want to face the very real and hard thought that she was dead. My baby had been gone, and I did nothing about it until an hour ago.

I was an awful mother.

I killed my baby.

“Lana,” Drew croaked.

Tearing my wide eyes from the ultrasound screen still showing my baby’s lifeless body felt like I was ripping my heart out of my chest. I turned my gaze to Drew, tears streamed down his face, and his chin wobbled as he held back the sobs.

I felt... broken. Lost. Incomplete. A failure. A terrible mother.

Just... nothing.

I wasnothing.

Tears swam in my eyes, and I finally squeezed them shut, gasping in breaths. My body shook, and I heard a shrill screaming cry. Only when Drew’s warm hands pulled me into him did I realize I was the one screaming that awful, gut-wrenching cry.

Even in his comforting embrace, I didn’t calm down. I continued sobbing, my shoulders rocking with them. Through it all, Drew held me, and from his shaking frame, I knew he must’ve been crying with me.

“I’m here, honey,” Drew murmured in a husky, broken voice while he squeezed me tighter into him.

“She... can’t... be...” I cried out between wheezing breaths.

He stayed silent, and after a while, I quieted too. Only because I had no more tears to cry anymore.

Pulling away from his embrace, I rubbed my face with my trembling hands and swallowed against the lump in my throat. My eyes stung, and no amount of rubbing at them would take it away, and my chest ached with every shuddering breath. It was as if it had been opened up and someone ripped out my heart, leaving behind an empty, gaping wound. I was sure that with it, a piece of my soul was torn away with the loss.

I was empty. So, so empty.

Large hands cupped my face, and Drew’s calloused thumbs stroked over my cheeks as he silently begged me to look at him. Pulling my hands from my face, I met his gaze. His eyes were red and puffy as they shone with tears that flowed freely down his tanned cheeks.