Matt
I was wheeling Hannah through the hospital, headed for the cafeteria, it was much nicer than the last time I did this, she was happier; happy that she was alive, that our baby was alive and that she could get out of the chair and walk if she wanted to, she just didn’t want to.

We picked out our food and some ice cream, Hannah took two chocolate and I took two vanilla, when we went to pay for it, it was the same woman who Hannah had accused of making her a charity case after she realised that Hannah couldn’t walk. The woman looked slightly taken aback by Hannah being here and a little intimidated by her, too.

“Can I have a coffee, please?” I asked with a smile.

“Coming right up,” The woman smiled back, then looked down at Hannah “You having one as well, sugar?” She asked.

“Oh, no,” Hannah smiled “None for me, thanks,” She placed her hand over her stomach and looked up at the woman, who had a look of realisation on her face.

“Oh!” She exclaimed “Congratulations, you two,”
~~~~
We decided to eat downstairs, Hannah wanted to do some people watching and be out of the hospital rooms for a little while. As much as she wanted to be with Erin all the time, she knew that she needed some space, and while we were spending time together, Erin and Brian needed to do the same.

“When do you think Erin and Brian will have a baby?” She asked me, shovelling some of her pasta into her mouth “’cause I know their babies are going to be gorgeous,”

“I don’t know, honey.” I chuckled “Maybe they’ll have one soon, maybe they’ll wait a while, I know she’s nervous about you having this baby with the way our lives are just now, so I don’t imagine she would want to do it herself, she’s being so protective of you, you know?”

“I know,” She nodded “But either way, we will have the Haners and the Sanders families growing up together, and any other babies that the other three make,”

I opened my mouth to say something else to her but she shifted a little in the chair with a gasp and a confused look as she straightened up.

“What was that?” I asked, noticing her hand covering her stomach “Do I need to find a doctor, or take you back upstairs?”

“No,” She breathed, a huge smile spreading across her face with a look of realisation “The baby moved,” The squeaked “It wasn’t a kick or anything, but I felt her move,” She was tearing up
“Our baby really IS okay,”
~~~~
We decided to eat our ice cream, that was slightly melting, back upstairs since Hannah was getting anxious to check on Erin again, she claimed that she could tell that something was wrong.

When we rounded the corner, everyone was sitting outside the room, even Brian, who was talking to a very nervous looking Jimmy.

“I think there is something bad going on in there, Brian… not like, cheating bad… but like the sad kind of bad,” Jimmy told him, biting on his thumb nail.

“We can all feel that something is going on, but we just have to be patient,” Hannah said as we reached them.

Jimmy jumped to his feet and moved to open the door to Erin’s room just as Bent came out.

“What is going on?” Brian asked his brother. Hannah grabbed my hand in hers and squeezed.

“Well, Erin said she was having some discomfort when she talked to you, and when I got in there she was crying… and when I uncovered the blankets… she was bleeding,” Brent told him, Brian just looked back at him blankly, almost like he was in denial, refusing to hear what the rest of us were hearing. No one had missed the gasp of horror and heartbreak that left Hannah’s mouth.

“She was probably so stressed that she ended up on her period,” Brian said, only to receive a smack on the back of his head from his brother.

“Brian, come on, this is serious… I double checked and the steering wheel hit her in her lower ribcage… but it was slanted and half of it hit her lower abdomen… she was two months along, Brian… and she lost it, she didn’t even know that she was pregnant, she showed no symptoms the last time she was checked. I’m so sorry, Brian.”

Brian left in a fit of rage, taking his keys with him but he didn’t say where he was going, but none of us were going to make the mistake of chasing after him.

“I don’t know if she’ll want to see you,” Brent said to Hannah “There is every possibility that she will blame you for this, given that you were the other driver, plus, you’re pregnant,”

That was four days ago, Hannah got let out of the hospital two days ago, and Erin got let home yesterday.

The day we left the hospital was the day that Hannah started to show.

I had been asleep on the chair and she had woken up early, too excited to go home I suppose, and I’d been woken up by her screaming in the bathroom, rushed in and found her standing in front of the mirror, as naked as the day she was born, holding her stomach.

Honestly, there was no way people were going to believe she was only four months pregnant, the change to her body that had happened over night was amazing, she looked completely different and more like she was six months pregnant… I could only think about how pregnant and uncomfortable she was going to be by the time D day rolled around.

The day we were informed of Erin and Brian’s loss of their unknown child, Brian didn’t come back for a long time, but I went for a walk to clear my mind while Hannah slept, and I looked in to see Brian holding Erin as she slept, his hand placed over her stomach and I could see the tear stains on his cheeks.

Hannah had gone into the room after we were told the news, despite Brent’s warnings, and from what I had heard while the rest of us stood outside, it didn’t go too well and I know that Hannah had cried herself to sleep that night and the other three nights after it.

Brian had invited us over for lunch to celebrate the girls being okay and that Baby Sanders was okay, too and the fact that the tour was starting next week. He seemed to have come to some sort of peace with their loss, but it was Erin I wasn’t too sure about.

We were due over there five minutes ago, but Hannah was still getting ready.

My phone buzzed beside me on the sofa, alerting me of a text message.

You two coming or what? We’re all starving over her LOL – B

Be there soon – M

I quickly sent him my reply and headed up the stairs to our bedroom to find out what was talking
Hannah so long.

“Hannah, baby, we gotta get over there, everyone’s waiting and we got the meat for the grill…” I trailed off as I entered the room, finding it empty “Hannah?” I asked, looking around. That’s when
I saw our bathroom door was shut.

I walked over to it slowly and leaned my forehead against the white wood.

“Baby?” I asked softly “You alright?”

The sniff, followed by a small sob through the door broke my heart.

She was hurting and I didn’t know what to do to make it better for her.
~~~~
Hannah
Brent had warned me that Erin might not want to see me, but I didn’t realise how bad it was going to be once I got in there.

“What do you want?” She mumbled into her pillow, not turning to look at me yet. I’d gotten out of the chair in the hallway and walked into the room.

“Erin I…” I took a deep breath “I know what happened,”

“Oh, you do?” She asked, sitting up and looking at me, a sarcastic smile on her lips “You know that I lost my baby that I didn’t even know about, in an accident caused by you?” I looked at the ground and nodded “Why should your baby get to live while mine doesn’t?” She asked rhetorically.

That hurt, that one really, really hurt, but I knew she was hurting right now and that she didn’t mean it. I knew it was my fault, though.

“Erin, you don’t mean that,” I said, my voice quieter than I’d meant it to be.

“Yes I do!” She yelled suddenly, making me jump “You were the one who was stupid enough to go out in that storm, and I came after you! It’s all your fucking fault!”

“Erin, please-“ She cut me off and continued to yell.

“Just get away from me,” She finally said, her voice lowering in volume “Get away from me and stay away from me, I don’t need you or that baby anywhere near me,”

I can’t stop thinking about it.

The only way I’ve found out anything about her over the past three days is via Brian texting Matt.

He text me once to let me know that he didn’t blame me and that Erin didn’t either, that she hadn’t meant a word she said that day. But until I heard it from her I wasn’t believing a word of it.

I tried to keep my thoughts happy and focused on my husband and our baby, who certainly wasn’t hiding anymore. I was huge, and it just happened overnight, too. Jimmy had been over every day and never left my belly alone, that’s when I was the most happy over the past few days, was when I could sit back and watch Jimmy interact with an unborn child who already loved him as much as he loved her.

I’d been getting dressed to go over to Brian and Erin’s house for a cook out, when something new happened. The baby’s movements were much stronger, and I burst into tears. Some from joy and some from sadness; over the fact that I couldn’t share the excitement with Erin and the fact that I felt badly that this was happening to me and not to her.

I’d been crying in the bathroom when Matt came to find me, then it took him ten minutes to convince me to let him into the bathroom with me and explain what was happening, another five minutes of sobbing into his shirt and then five more of him telling me to be as happy as he was about it, that our baby was growing and it was a wonderful thing and I shouldn’t let anything upset me about it.

Finally, we got to Brian and Erin’s house and everyone was there, Papa Gates, Suzy and his little sister included, as well as Kim, Gary and Amy.

The crew were here; the Berry twins and Dan the Body.

It was so weird to be with the Avenged Family without being at a wedding or a vow renewal.

Everyone was so excited about the baby, and apparently once you start showing that you really are pregnant, it’s an automatic invitation for literally everyone to come and feel your stomach. I didn’t get a chance to get anywhere near Erin, never mind talk to her, with all of the attention I was getting. Brian shot me a few smiles from across the room whenever I saw him, and I had Matt by my side the entire time.

Eventually though, I was whisked away by the two mothers and the two sisters into the living room where they started bombarding me with personal baby questions; did my breasts hurt, was I horny all the time, blah, blah, blah.

“Alright mothers, sister,” Brian said from behind us all as he entered the room “Give the lady with the baby some room to breathe,” They all scolded him for that and I laughed.
‘help me’ I mouthed over my shoulder to him, he just winked and nodded.

“Come with me,” He laughed, standing in front of me and holding both of his hands out.
I placed mine in them and let him pull me off of the sofa with ease. I would miss that when ‘ease’ was no longer a possibility in anything I did.

He wrapped his arm protectively around my waist and led me away from the demanding women who were yelling after us.

“Thanks,” I sighed when we finally got outside and to the far end of the yard.

When he let me go, I slowly lowered myself down onto the small wall.

“Not a problem, they were all over Erin when they got here,” He chuckled “You know, making sure she was alright, I mean, they were more sympathetic than demanding and intrusive with her,”

I just nodded.

“How is she?” I asked.

“She’s getting there,” He sighed “I can’t comfort her though, she won’t let me in, she won’t even let me near her, I mean, if she moves any further over in bed then she’s going to be sleeping on the floor,” He laughed and looked down “How’s the leg?” He asked, nodding towards my hideous boot, keeping my broken bones in place to heal.

“It’s fine, just annoying that I can only wear one shoe,” I laughed, then stopped and sighed again
“Brian, I feel terrible for what happened, I can’t even tell who was on the wrong side of the road, but it was me, whatever happened, it was my fault for going out there in the first place and it’s my fault your baby was taken from you,” My eyes were filling with tears, but Brian placed a hand on my shoulder and turned me to face him.

“Stop that,” He demanded “Right now, stop it, you can’t be stressing yourself out over this right now, you have more to focus on,” I scoffed.

“Matt’s upstairs with her right now, she locked herself in our room when she started to get upset that everyone was interested in Baby Sanders, and the only person she would speak to was him,”

“How are you dealing with that?” I asked “With her shutting you out, I mean,”

He was about to speak, when I jolted forward again, gasping and pressing my hand to the swell of my stomach through my dress.

“What?” He asked, panicked.

“Nothing,” I smiled “This has been happening since before we came over here,”

“What is it?” He asked, confused, looking down at my stomach.

“The baby, she’s moving,”

“Kicking?” I shook my head “Just moving,”

“Can I feel?” He asked hesitantly.

“Sure,” I smiled, taking his hands and pressing them to either side of my stomach “I don’t know if you’ll be able to feel anything from the outside,” I said quietly, both of us were holding our breath.

“Come on, baby.” Brian whispered, leaning in a little closer to me “Move for Uncle Brian,”
Then it happened. The baby shifted inside of me, it was still just a flutter, but a strong flutter at that. Brian broke out in a huge smile and breathed out a nervous laugh.

“Whoa…” He breathed “That was amazing,”

“You’re going to be great,” I told him, my eyes scanning his face “When your time comes, you’re going to be a great father,”

“Well…” He trailed off “Until then, I’m glad we’ll all have this baby in our lives,”

Notes

So, everything is tense and painful between the girls.
What will Erin tell Matt, will she open up to him?
Brian seems to love the fact there's still going to be a baby coming into the family, but clearly wants one of his own!
I hope this chapter is enjoyed by you all after Erin's amazing last update!
More to come from her soon! (:
We're on a freakin' roll, baby!

- LMV x