Page 48 of Falling for My Boss

“It hurts,” I said.

Worry flickered across his face as he dropped down onto his knees beside the couch. He ran his hand back over my forehead and rested the other on my hip.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Are you feeling sick?”

My morning sickness had been extreme for the first couple of months, but I was starting to have days when I felt better. Somehow that made feeling this pain more frightening and upsetting.

“I was just doing some cleaning, and my stomach started feeling a little strange. I thought I had just eaten something that wasn’t sitting right with me, but it got worse. Then a really sharp pain went through me.”

I’d heard before about women lying on their sides while they were pregnant and it helping settle pain from gallstones and other issues. It was the first thing that went through my mind, even though I didn’t know what was wrong. I could only hope it would help, but so far, the pain hadn’t gotten better.

“Have you called your doctor?” Derek asked. I shook my head. “Alright. I’m going to call her.”

He dug in his pocket and pulled out his phone. The doctor’s office was already programmed into it, so it was only moments before he connected with her. Derek offered the phone to me so I could talk to her, but the pain was getting more intense, so I pulled back and shook my head. He described what I told him and listened carefully for a few seconds before ending the call.

“She wants you to go to the hospital,” he said. “She said go straight to the emergency room. They’ll be able to check on you and see what might be going on.”

The evening was a blur after that. I was so afraid, so worried about what I was going to find out when I got to the hospital, I almost didn’t want to go. That was the most illogical thing I could be thinking. Not going wasn’t going to change what was happening. If anything, it could make things worse.

But I was still afraid to hear it. That part of me just wanted to stay right there on the couch. It told me if I just waited it out for another little while, the pain would go away, and everything would be fine.

Derek wasn’t hearing any of it, and soon he’d convinced me of what I already knew—I had to get to the hospital.

It was the early hours of the next morning before we got home. Derek tucked me into bed and rested the strip of ultrasound pictures on the nightstand beside me before heading to the shower. I reached out and took the pictures, slipping them under my pillow so I could keep them close.

They were the first images I’d seen of our baby. Our first ultrasound appointment wasn’t for several more weeks, and I’d been eagerly looking forward to that moment when we would get to see its little face and hands. That night was terrifying and had my nerves on edge, but the wonderful surprise of getting to see the image of our little one early helped to ease it.

I always imagined myself as a mother one day. I wouldn’t say I really dreamed about it or that it was something I longed for. It was just something I assumed would happen in my future, just like eventually finding someone to love and settling down. Though I didn’t think about it in that way until I got used to carrying my Derek and my baby, I realized running from my family and trying to avoid them until I could get my trust fund was for more than one reason.

I wanted to protect myself, of course. I didn’t want to let my family use me and tell me what I was going to do and who I was going to marry so they could reap the benefits. That was my choice to make. I wanted to have a real partner, to be in love and to have a real marriage.

During my pregnancy, I realized I was also protecting my future as a mother. It was hard to really wrap my head around, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I must have been guarding the child I would one day have, the child I would never have if I was forced into the marriage my parents wanted for me.

Even though I didn’t spend a tremendous amount of time thinking about it, I could just see myself with a child one day. I could see myself taking care of a baby and raising a child. I wondered if I would have a son or daughter, what kind of child they would be, and what kind of adult they would grow up to be. But I never put a lot of thought into pregnancy. That was just something that would happen, that I would get through in order to get that baby in my arms.

Raising a child wasn’t going to be easy all the time, and I knew I would face stress and challenges along the way. It never occurred to me that one of those challenges would be the pregnancy itself. As it turned out, the horrible weeks of sickness to start my pregnancy were just the beginning.

That first visit to the hospital started a string of visits with complications that kept me on edge and stopped me from feeling healthy and truly excited. I loved my baby and was still looking forward to meeting what we learned during one of the visits was our daughter. But there were times as the weeks passed, and I kept going in and out of the hospital when it got harder to believe I would ever actually get to feel the happiness I so wanted.

Rather than getting to schedule normal regular ultrasounds or look forward to finding out about each milestone of the pregnancy, those reveals were most often buried in emergency room visits or frightening overnight stays for observation.

Derek was helping me into the house after another visit when the emotion of it all came down on me, and tears pooled up in my eyes. I gripped his hand harder, and Derek looked over at me.

“Hey,” he said when he noticed my tears. “What’s going on?”

“I’m just thinking about everything,” I said.

He got me into the house and brought me into our room. I slipped into bed, and he pulled the covers up around me.

“Let me get you some tea. I’ll be right back.”

He left, and I tried to pull myself together and stop crying, but the tears just kept flowing. When he came back in with a cup of my favorite herbal, I sat up and leaned my head back against the headboard, wiping my cheeks.

“Everything that’s been going on with the baby has me thinking about my family,” I said.

He nodded. “Me too.”

“Really?” I asked, scooping some honey into my cup and stirring it around.

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