I cling to the arms thinking they belong to Drake but when I look at the fight it is him who is throwing the punches now on the guy who landed on me.
I scramble out of the arms around me and hear Stan yelling at me. All of a sudden the volume in the pub hits top level and I can’t hear anything but a continuous hum of yelling.
“Stop him,” I yell at Stan.
He can’t get arrested on Christmas Eve, I won’t let him.
Stan makes sure I am well out of the way and goes over to Drake, who is now kicking the other guy who started the fight. I don’t see what happens next, a stabbing pain in my stomach doubles me over and I clutch my middle with both hands. Oh God, it hurts so much. I don’t hear myself cry out but I must have done because before I know it Drake is beside me on the floor, yelling something in my face.
Sheer terror covers his face and he pulls my hands away to look for himself what is causing me pain.
“Cammie, what’s wrong?” he yells.
I can hear him this time as the pain lulls a little.
“My stomach…it hurts,” I manage to tell him before another wave of pain hits me.
I cry out again and he lifts me in his arms. A path clears as Drake walks us out under the rest of the punters watchful eyes.
The drive to the hospital becomes a blur, street lights blend into one the faster Drake drives and the pain increases to a level I don’t want to experience again.
Between my cries for the pain to stop and Drake demanding a doctor to see me right away, I am taken into a cubical and laid onto an empty bed.
I curl my legs up to my chest hoping to relieve the pain. It doesn’t, it makes it worse.
I see brief images at a time. A nurse who looks my age is talking to me, she is asking me where it hurts and a bunch of questions I can barely answer. Thankfully, Drake is telling her what happened. I see her glance at Drake’s bleeding knuckles before she turns back to me.
“Could you be pregnant, Cammie?” she asks, after asking the usual questions.
Pregnant? Drake and I gasp simultaneously, his from the prospect of a baby and mine from pain and shock.
We have been using contraception but I am ashamed to admit, not every time.
I didn’t think of the consequences. I have been solely wrapped up in Drake it didn’t occur to me I could be pregnant.
“When was your last period?” she asks, moving on from the last question I didn’t answer.
Maybe she could tell from my face.
“Um, I can’t remember, about two months ago, maybe,” I manage to say.
“Okay, I want to examine you. Is that okay?” she asks.
I nod my head and squeeze my eyes shut for a second until the pain passes.
Drake has moved around the bed to give the nurse room and is holding my hand when I open my eyes again.
“I’m sorry,” I cry, only concentrating on him and not what the nurse is doing.
“Sorry for what?”
“I could be pregnant.”
The tears streaming down my cheeks are confused tears. We haven’t spoken about babies before and I assumed he didn’t want any. I certainly didn’t want any yet, the thought of having a baby terrified me. Now it could be real and the possibility that Drake’s baby is growing inside me isn’t so scary.
“You don’t have to be sorry for that, I’m the one who put it there if you are,” he smiles, trying to make me feel better.
I try to smile but another shooting pain envelopes me.
I am helped out of my jeans and underwear. The nurse explains I’ll be having a vaginal scan to be sure, because if I’m too early in the pregnancy the scan might not get a good look.
I roll my head away from Drake to see another nurse is watching a monitor while she moves whatever the hell is currently inside me.
“What is she looking at?” I ask the first nurse I saw when we came in.
“She’s trying to find a foetus. If you are pregnant we will see the baby on the screen.”
“Can you see anything?” Drake asks.
No one says anything.
I strain my eyes to see what they are seeing but I can’t make out a thing.
The second nurse finishes her search while the first nurse helps me back into my underwear.
“What’s happening?” Drakes asks again, this time more demanding.
The second nurse turns to both of us with a solemn expression and glances to the first nurse.
“For fucks sake, tell us,” Drake shouts.
I squeeze his hand telling him to calm down, the last thing I need is for him to be thrown out for abusive behaviour.
“I’m afraid you are suffering from a miscarriage, Miss Darcy. The baby is already gone and will pass soon.”
“Pass?” I cry.
“You will experience some bleeding quite soon, like a really heavy period with clots. The pain will subside once this happens, in the mean time we can help you with that.”
I tune her out. I didn’t plan to get pregnant nor did I want to be so why does losing this baby now hurt so much.
An hour later I lost the baby. I felt it pass and my heart broke for a baby I didn’t know I was going to have. Both Drake and I stayed silent. None of us knowing what to say to one another. He never left me though, he kept my hand in his and would squeeze it hard every now and then, telling me he was still here.
I left the hospital under guidelines to take it easy for the next week and to expect some minor pain and bleeding still.
When we pull up outside his flat, I can’t bear the silence any longer.
“It’s Christmas,” I say, noticing it is after midnight on the dash board clock.
When he doesn’t say anything I finally turn to look at him.
He is staring intently out of the window.
“Drake, please say something,” I urge.
“Wait till I open your door,” he grunts, throwing open his door.
Tears fill my eyes as I watch him walk around the front of the car to my side. What if he hates me now? He is always so attentive to me, making sure I am okay, but he hasn’t said a word since I cried out when I felt the baby pass.
My door opens and the bitter cold pricks my face like a thousand pins. I am more than capable of getting out of the car but I let him help me, if only for the close contact it gives us.
As long as he is close to me, he doesn’t have to say a word.
He stays close as we make our way up to his flat. I welcome the warmth that clings to us when we walk through the door.
I walk straight through to our room and begin getting ready for bed. Drake hands me his t-shirt I normally sleep in and returns to standing in the door way.
I climb into bed and pull the cover up to my chin.
“Do you need anything?” he asks.
You, I want to say but the mood radiating from him tells me he can’t give me that now.
“No.”
He is gone before I can close my eyes.
I expect him to leave and wait for the front door to slam shut. A crash comes from the living room and the sound of smashing glass floats through to the bedroom. I pull the covers tighter around myself as I listen to the pain in Drake’s cries as he trashes the living room. I let my own pain escape in the huge tears that erupt from my eyes.
It feels like hours listening to him vent and smash his furniture to pieces before he comes back into the bedroom.
My eyes are burning from exhaustion and crying but I can’t sleep until I know he is lying beside me.
I watch him cross the room in the dark and pull back the covers on his side of the bed. He takes his time undressing and when he climbs in, I move my back towards him and he pulls me into him.
“Drake, please talk to me.”
I’m almost begging. I just want him to talk to me. I need to hear him say something, I don’t care what it is, just something.
“I knew my life could bring you hurt and pain but I was selfish enough to bring you here anyway.
I honestly don’t care that you fell out with your family to be with me because I got to have you all to myself, that’s how selfish I am but I do care about you getting hurt.”
“This wasn’t your fault, Drake.”
His silence is alarming and the longer he doesn’t speak, the more worried I get.
“Are you listening to me?” I snap.
“It is my fault. I should have known, you’re normally grouchy when you’re due on but that hasn’t been for ages. If I had known, I wouldn’t have put you in that environment and you would still be carrying our child.”
Being in the pub seems like so long ago now. The surprise of finding out I was pregnant and losing the baby at the same time made me forget why I was in the hospital in the first place.
Shock creeps through my veins hearing him want our child. He destroyed the living room because he wanted the baby.
I don’t know how long we lay there in each other’s arms before we fell asleep but it was long enough for daylight to pour through the bedroom window. Our first Christmas ruined by two people who are probably passed out from heavy drinking unaware of the irreparable damage they have caused.
Chapter Six
Half of the time I don’t know how I feel. One moment I’m crying and the next I feel like a fraud. How can I grieve for something I didn’t know existed yet? Until the nurse mentioned the possibility of being pregnant I hadn’t given it a second thought, it wasn’t until it was too late and I saw how it affected Drake that I felt the connection expectant mothers feel.
Physically I feel no different but emotionally everything has changed. It is a confusing time and when I catch Drake watching me all I see is sorrow and guilt in his eyes.
Knowing he is grieving too helps me get by a little easier.
“You should eat something,” he says, pulling me away from my thoughts.
“I’m not hungry,” I tell him.
The thought of eating makes me feel queasy.
“Liar.”
He slips out of bed and drags his joggers on and throws his hoodie over his head. We have been in bed for the last two days. Drake hasn’t let me get of bed at all apart from to go to the bathroom. Our first Christmas day together consisted of waking up after midday and watching telly late into the night. I’m pretty sure neither of us were giving it our full attention. Drake wouldn’t let me see what he had destroyed in the living room and to be honest I didn’t want to see it anyway. This morning he was gone from the bed when I woke, I heard him talking to someone in the living room and then sounds like tidying up.
When he was finished he returned to bed and told me everything was fine. He had one of his friends or acquaintances on the phone, he called them to bring new stuff over and take away the broken stuff.
“Here, eat this,” he says, coming through the bedroom door carrying a tray.
He places it on the middle of the bed and climbs back under the covers.
“I’m not hungry, Drake,” I repeat, not bothering to sit up.
“Yes you are. Now eat, you need to build your strength back up,” he orders, harshly. Moving the tray holding a bowl of soup and a glass of orange juice towards me.
Assertiveness oozes from him and he leaves me no choice but to eat the God damn food.
“There’s no need to talk to me like that.”
“There is if it makes you eat something. Now pick the fucking spoon up and eat before it gets cold,” he half pleads and half shouts.
I don’t want to argue with him, I don’t have the energy.
“I’m going to eat only because you asked so nicely,” I mutter sarcastically, picking up the spoon.
For the first time in two and a half days he smiles and it reaches his eyes. I giggle in response and a light pushes its way into the darkness.
Once the first drop of soup hits my tongue the hunger I suppressed explodes. I eat with enthusiasm and Drake was right, I do need to build my strength. I scrape the last little spoonful of soup from the bowl and lay back down.
“Oh no you don’t, we’re going out,” he says, pulling the covers off of me.
“Where are we going to go?” I moan, trying to claw the covers back.
“Just out, you need fresh air and I need to get out of here. It makes me feel like I’m in prison, cooped up in this small space for too long.”
“Go on your own, I don’t want to go anywhere.”
Taking a deep breath Drake gets out of bed and I think for a second that he is going to listen to me, instead, he drags me by my feet until my legs are hanging over the end of the bed and I am sitting up while he kneels between my legs.
“I can’t change what happened, as much as I like to, I can’t. But I can’t watch you disappear into yourself, I won’t lose you. You need to eat and leave the flat and start doing everything we used to do. We can get through this, babe. I know we can.”
His determination and faith for us is what moves me. I don’t moan when he takes hold of my hands and pulls me up to my feet.
“I love you,” I say, and cuddle into his hard chest.
He wraps his arms around me and squeezes me.
“I love you too, but you need to shower before we go anywhere,” he chuckles.
The fresh, bitter cold bites into every fibre of me even though I have a two layered jumper and a coat on. Drake holds out his gloved hand and I take it and hold it firmly, walking as close to him for warmth as possible.
It doesn’t occur to me that we are heading in the direction of his local pub until he stops us outside it.
“We don’t have to go in if you don’t want to, we can carry on walking,” he murmurs, softly.
I try to look through the windows but the day is dark and cloudy and the lights inside make it difficult to see anything.
“No, I can’t hide forever.”
It’s not like anyone will know what happened to us the other night. Drake had me out of there before anyone saw a thing.
Drake opens the door and waits for me to enter first. I can feel his presence close behind me as he keeps close to me. The warm blast of air from the heater makes me shiver from the bitter contrast of the cold outside and I start to unwrap my scarf and take my gloves off.
“We’ll get that table,” he says, guiding me towards it on the other side of the bar with his hand on the small of my back.
Halfway across the bar a loud, deep belly laugh catches my attention. I don’t know why, it could belong to anyone but I still look around until I find who it belongs to.
I freeze mid step when I see it is the guy who fell on top of me and caused me to lose my baby. He is here today and by the looks of it, he is having a good time laughing and joking with the guys around him. There isn’t a scratch on him from the fight I found myself in the middle of, he is just here getting on with his life completely oblivious to what he did to me.
“Why have you stopped?” Drake asks, but I can’t look away from the guy who ruined our Christmas.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” he asks, desperately.
I still can’t look away, “It’s all his fault,” I whisper so only Drake can hear me.
He follows my line of sight and sees the same guy I do. “Why does he get to laugh like nothing has happened?”
It isn’t fair, I know I didn’t know I was pregnant but it wouldn’t have been much longer before I took a test and could share the news with Drake and who knows what would have occurred. Now, we will never know because this guy standing ten feet away from us took it all away with his recklessness and violence.
“What do you want me to do?” Drake asks, moving to stand in front of me.
I drag my eyes away from the guy to look at Drake. Pains in my chest begin to cripple me and I try to breathe deeply. I have never been this angry before and the vibrations coursing through my veins at the injustice of it all sends me into overdrive. I have been here long enough to know how they work, if someone is slighted they deal with it themselves. If someone is attacked, retaliation is
taken. Not once has the police been called, there is never a situation you need the police for in their eyes.
This is Drake’s world and it is very different to the world I was brought up in, nothing works in the same way and no one would get justice if they didn’t seek it themselves.
I clutch my stomach remembering the pain that crippled me only a few nights ago, it still feels real and I hold myself harder to squash the pain I know isn’t really there. He should be feeling this too, I think.
He shakes hands with the guys around him and grabs his jacket off of one of the bar stools and begins to leave.
Drake’s fingers clamp down around the back of my neck and he forces me to look at him.
“I know what I have planned for him for what he did but what do you want me to do?” he asks, again.
I have never been so sure about anything before, my reply comes out strong and even to my ears, violent.
“Make him hurt.”
I don’t for one second think it will take my pain away, but if he is in pain as well then I won’t be alone in suffering.
Drake nods once, knowing what I am asking for and pulls me to the bar.
“Stay here, don’t come out,” he warns, “Wait for me to come back in,” he adds before kissing the top of my head and leaving the same way that guy did.
How can I stay here while he is out there doing God knows what?
My hands go clammy as I realise what I just done. I basically asked Drake to attack a man.
“Hey, I didn’t think I’d see you for a while. Where’s Drake?”
I shake my head and see Stan is standing in front of me. I don’t bother replying, I grab his hand and start pulling him towards the door.
He lets me pull him outside and there is nothing to see, I can’t see Drake anywhere.