[UNEDITED][JASON][TISSUES?]

        “I fucking hate you Jason Parker,” Erin’s screams echoed around the room, her nails digging into my hands to the point they were now drawing blood.

        I didn’t bother to answer her back because it had been like this for the past eighteen hours now. She had been throwing her insults and causing maximum pain to the first part of my body she could grab hold of, but she was the one who had refused both an epidural and gas and air.

        She was as stubborn now as the day I first met her. I wouldn’t want her any other way though.

        “Next time, I swear, you had better keep it in your fucking pants or I am cutting it off,” Erin hissed as she rode out another wave of pain, her eyes filled with tears. The moment the door opened, she snapped her head in the direction of the doctor who had just walked into the room.

        He didn’t acknowledge either of us, instead he walked over to the end of the bed, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves. It looked like something from a horror movie and I could have sworn he was about to murder her.

        “Erin, I need you to push for me,” he spoke once he had finished prodding around.

        “What? Are you fucking mad?” Erin replied and it took everything I had to hold back the laugh which was stuck in my throat.

        “The baby is ready to be born. I need you to push when I tell you to.”

        “I tell you what, how about you fucking push when I tell you to and then you let me know how it fucking feels?”

        “Erin, baby, you can do it,” I smiled, putting my free hand on the top of hers. Even with sweat running down her face and pained expression on her face, she still looked beautiful and I knew she could do this, even if she didn’t think that she could.

        I remember when Erin told me she was pregnant. I was the happiest day of my life. I was finally going to be a father and it was definitely the most wonderful feeling in the world to be able to say that, to be able to say that I was with the woman I loved and she was going to be the mother of my child.

        I also remember how apprehensive she had been about the entire thing, worrying that it was far too soon into the relationship to have a baby, but she quickly came round to the idea after speaking to Chloe. My sister told her that the pain of the birth was worth it in the end and that there was nothing in the world which could compare to the feeling of being a mother, Chloe even told her that the risk of being pregnant with Jacob was worth it – damn had Matthew been happy when he discovered they were going to be having a son and he was even happier than Erin was giving birth because it meant that his own son would be here in a couple of weeks time.

        “Fuuuuuck,” Erin’s call reminded me that I was sitting beside her and she was giving birth to my child.

        “One. Two. Three. And push Erin,” the doctor called and the sensation of Erin’s nails buried in my hand again told me that she was pushing for the second time.

        “Well done baby. You can do it,” I encouraged her.

        “Again Erin. Push.”

        Erin looked practically defeated once she had finished pushing for the third time. She was panting and sweat was covering every part of her body, even her death grip on my hand had been loosened and she didn’t look like she could go on for very much longer.

        “I ca—I can’t,” Erin struggled to say.

        “Yes you can. One more and then we can meet our baby. Come on,” I said, standing up and kissing her on the top of her head before moving her hair which was sticking to her face.

        “One more push Erin. That’s all,” the doctor’s cheerful voice seemed to be enough as her face contorted into some weird form and then the sound of cries filled the room.

        “You did it babe. You did it,” I grinned proudly. “What is it?”

        “It’s a boy Mr Parker. You have a little boy,” the doctor replied but that happiness was short lived when the sound of machines beeping went off around the room and I looked down to see that Erin had stopped breathing.

        “Erin? Erin baby? What’s happening?”

        “Mr Parker, I am going to have to ask that you leave the room,” the doctor told me, pushing the call button at the side of the bed. It wasn’t a minute later when five different doctors and nurses rushed into the room and they were all crowding around Erin, shouting things at each other.

        “Mr Parker. I need you to wait outside,” one of the nurses said and she pushed me out of the room, closing the door behind me. The last thing I saw was a tube being shoved down Erin’s throat and then the door slammed shut.

        I could feel the tears in the corner of my eyes and my legs disappointing me once again. I couldn’t hold myself and I ended up falling down the wall opposite her room, my head immediately landing in my hands as I gave in to the sensation of crying; something I hadn’t done since I found out about the truth behind the death of Ria and my child.

        “Jason? What’s happened?” I heard a voice and I managed to just about make out Chloe through the blur of my tears.

        “Erin, I don’t know, she, Erin, just stopped breathing,” I managed to put the words together in a sentence which just about made sense. Chloe wrapped her arms around me and pulled me onto her shoulder where I just broke down. It was a little awkward since there was a huge bump between the two of us, but I didn’t care about that right now, I was more worried about my fiancé and what the fuck was happening.

        I couldn’t lose Erin. Life couldn’t be this cruel to me. It wouldn’t be fair.

        “What’s going on?” another voice asked from somewhere.

        “Erin has stopped breathing,” Chloe muttered softly to whoever it was. “Did she have the baby?”

        “Son. We have a son,” I practically whispered the words. I couldn’t bring up our son on my own if she died. I wouldn’t know what the hell I was doing.

        God, she has to live. She is my everything and I love her more than I have ever loved someone in the past. She actually means something to me and I could never imagine my life without her.

        “She’s going to be fine Jase. She’s a fighter,” Chloe tried to reassure me but even I could hear the fear in her voice as she spoke. She knew as well as I did that there was every chance Erin could die and she would never have seen our son before she was snatched from the world.

        “Where are the others?” I found myself asking. I wanted to take my mind off Erin for a moment because I didn’t want to think the worst, I didn’t want to accept that there was a chance that she was going to die.

        “Matthew is looking after Damien and Amanda. Anita is in the waiting room with Oliver and Vivienne,” Chloe replied.

        “How is Amanda?” I asked, wiping away a couple of the tears, though it was useless when I couldn’t actually stop myself from crying.

        “Oh, you know, she’s hit that stage in her life where she doesn’t want to do anything unless it’s what she wants to do. I am telling you, she’s acting worse than a moody teenager and it’s all because she’s not going to be the baby anymore,” Chloe laughed. I couldn’t help but smile to myself as I thought about Amanda as a teenager because, if she was bad now, I didn’t want to even think about what she would be like in ten years’ time. She would be worrying about boyfriends and whether she looked good and which party was the better one to be attending, even though she shouldn’t be at any of them because she was underage.

        The last time I saw Amanda had been four months’ ago now. On the day she turned six and I gave her another princess doll to add to her collection though, the last I heard, she hadn’t put the damn thing down and was now taking it to school with her. Chloe couldn’t even wash it because Amanda never went anywhere without the damn thing.

        “You prized that doll from her?” I just about managed to let out a low chuckle as I asked the question.

        “I think she is going to have to die before I get that thing off her. She never puts it down, she won’t go to school unless it’s in her bag and she refuses to sleep unless in the same bed as her,” Chloe sighed as she told me of Amanda and I realised how much I missed seeing her. She was my niece and I hadn’t bothered to see her in four months. She probably thinks I hate her or something.

        “You should come and visit soon. Amanda hasn’t stopped asking after you and when this one arrives I am more than certain that he’s going to want to spend time with his Uncle,” Chloe added with a hopeful smile.

        “Maybe in a cou—“

        “Mr Parker?” a voice said, the sound of the door slamming closed bringing my attention back to the room in front of me. The look on his face suddenly bringing the walls of my world crashing down.

        “No. Please. No. Ple—“ but I couldn’t finish my words before I was breaking down in tears again and Chloe was the one supporting me, her arms wrapped around me, no words coming out of her mouth as she silently cried to herself.

        “I am sorry Mr Parker. We did everything we could but there was an internal bleed which we were unable to stop,” the doctor spoke. The look of guilt on his face were obvious and, despite knowing they did all they could to save her, I wanted them to have done more. I needed her alive. I needed the mother of my son and my fiancé alive, we had our life planned out and this wasn’t fair.

        “There must be something. She’s a mother,” I don’t know how I managed to say those words without falling to the ground.

        “I really am sorry Mr Parker. She just lost too much blood,” the doctor said and I didn’t want to hear anything else. I didn’t want to accept that she was dead.

        She never got to see our son. She never got to walk down the aisle on our wedding day. She never even got to tell her family that we were getting married.

        It hurt like a fucking a bitch. I had never experienced pain like this, not even when I found our Ria was dead, this was heart-ripping pain and I fucking hated the messed-up god who took the life of the woman I loved. The woman who was the mother of my child.

        “When can we see her?” Chloe asked for me.

        “Someone will come and get you when she’s ready.”

        “What about his son?”

        “He is fighting fit. He weighs a very healthy seven pounds eleven ounces and has an extremely good set of lungs on him,” the doctor managed to laugh and I just about found the strength to smile. “Would you like to see him?”

        I couldn’t get the words out, all I could do was nod. I was all that little boy had now and I knew it was never going to be easy, but I wasn’t going to take it out on him. It wasn’t his fault that his mother was dead and I wasn’t about to treat him like it was.

        I followed the doctor down the corridor with Chloe never letting go of my hand, her other hand squeezing my shoulder reassuringly. The silence which passed between the two of us was awkward, but I didn’t have the words to say anything and Chloe obviously didn’t know what to say.

        We walked into a room which was full of other new born babies, a couple of them had their mother and father gushing over how cute they were and how proud they were to have something so wonderful in their life, telling each other how they were never going to love anyone as much as they did their child.

        We finally came to a stop beside one of the cots. “I will leave you with your son Mr Parker.”

        “Thank you,” Chloe replied with a polite nod of her head.

        I looked down at my son and he was the most precious thing I had ever laid my eyes on. His head covered with a blue hat, he was wearing the yellow baby grow Erin had packed for him and he was wrapped up in the white blanket Matthew had bought for him. His eyes were open slightly but enough for me to see that they were the same shade of blue as Erin’s were and peeking out from the edge of his hat were a couple of blonde tufts of hair.

        “He looks like you,” Chloe commented.

        “He has her hair and her eyes though,” I muttered as I found the courage to put my hand in the cot. His tiny hand wrapped itself around my significantly bigger finger and, regardless of the news I had just had, I couldn’t help but smile. He was so young and innocent. I immediately loved him.

        I caught the attention of the nurse in the corner of the room and she looked at me with a sympathetic smile. “Can I hold him?”

        “Of course you can Mr Parker. He’s your son,” she said before she turned back to what she was doing at her desk.

        I carefully placed my arm under his head and then used my other one to support his bum, lifting him from the cot and holding him in my arms. The smile on Chloe’s face hadn’t escaped my view and I simply gave her a quick smile back before my eyes moved back down to the child which I was cradling.

        “What are you going to call him?”

        “I don’t know. We never decided on a name,” I sighed. We had had several arguments about what we wanted it to be called depending on what we had and we had never been able to agree with each other on a name which we both loved. “I always said if we had a son then I wanted to call him Luke Matthew Parker. You know how I’ve always loved the name Luke and, well, I think you can guess where Matthew came from.”

        “Hello Luke. I’m Auntie Chloe and you’re one lucky baby to have a father like my brother,” Chloe smiled, putting a quick kiss on the top of his head. “Do you want me to tell the others?”

        “No. I’ll tell them after I’ve been to see Erin,” I sighed. The tears had stopped but the pain was still in my chest and the only thing which currently gave my world any meaning was my son, the child who hadn’t even been in the world an hour and had already lost his mother.

        “I know it’s going to be hard Jase but you can do this. I believe in you and I believe that you will be able to give this little boy everything he needs,” Chloe always knew what to say. It didn’t matter what the situation was or what had happened, she still always knew how to make me feel better.

        It was supposed to be my job to do that. I was supposed to be the one holding her together, not the other way round. I was the older sibling and I was supposed to keep the younger sibling safe, but the roles seemed to have got mixed up somewhere down the line and she was doing everything I should have been doing.

        “Mummy loves you Luke. I am going to make sure you know what an amazing person she is and how much she loves you. I promise,” I whispered before putting him back into his cot with a lingering kiss to his temple. “And daddy loves you too. Daddy will always love you.”