DESPITE THE PRESSURE he was under, Dave drove calmly, if not a little too fast, to the hospital. After throwing together a bag of things for Reagan, he'd ushered her into his car and buckled her in himself. He'd done a good job of trying to disguise the fact that his hands had been shaking as he'd clasped the seatbelt into place.

Reagan sat in the passenger seat with her hands set apart, one gripping the car door and the other bent into a claw against the center console. She was breathing in and out through her nose and working on keeping her jaw locked, just so she wouldn't cry out in either pain or fear. Pain, because what she had finally deduced was that her contractions were getting worse, and fear because she knew that what was happening had arrived early by a good two months.

"I don't understand," Dave blurted, breaking the unspoken 'no talking' rule that had been established for the ride. Reagan had been too busy hiding her anguish to speak. "You're too early. Way too early."

"I know," she said bluntly. She was too scared to say anything else. Saying anymore would have solidified the experience as being real, two months earlier than anticipated. She was plagued with the fear that she had not prepared enough for the moment awaiting her, but even worse, she wondered with an icy cold dread if her baby was going to be okay.

By the time Dave swung his car into the hospital parking lot, Reagan had worked her mind into a steady haze that dulled her senses and pinpointed her focus heavily on the center of her body, right where the slope of her belly distended outwards. Between Dave leading her into the hospital, being ushered into a room rapidly via a wheelchair and having a backless gown thrown over her body, Reagan hardly registered any of it, her vision swirling as she was nudged and dragged from one to place to another. She did not even feel the prick of an IV needle being inserted into her hand. In a way, the administering of the needle quietly confirmed the severity of what was happening. Reagan had not watched it pierce into her vein.

The physical pain of her contractions, however, occupied her mind entirely. It felt like an animal instinct taking over her body every time they struck, causing her to wrench her eyes shut and bite back every moan of agony. They were coming faster and harder, ravaging her in the worst pain she'd ever known. It was no wonder that it was all she could concentrate on. The pain had soaked up every bit of the spotlight. Everything and everyone around her had melted into the background.

The nurse in her room was asking questions, though Reagan had a difficult time understanding them. The nurse's voice was warped, hollowed around the edges so that she sounded much farther than directly at the foot of the hospital bed Reagan laid in. Reagan was acutely aware that she was panting, drudging over each fresh onslaught of pain.

"Reagan?" Dave asked, sounding as nervous as a small child. He'd been doing his best to answer some of the questions that the nurse was drilling, but his concern was with his wife, who appeared to have slipped into a catatonic and maddened state.

"Yes?" Reagan asked, barely lifting her eyes from their laser focus on the nubby bedsheets beneath her legs. She gripped her bedrails hard enough that her knuckles turned white.

"Have you experienced any bleeding within the last eight hours?" the nurse reiterated. She didn't seem as perturbed by Reagan's behavior as Dave was. Her questions were straight-forward and brisk, not a single one punctured with worry.

"No," Reagan replied. "I haven't seen any blood."

The nurse gave no remarks and launched into her next task, which was pulling Reagan's gown aside and adjusting velcro straps around her belly, explaining their necessity in order to monitor Gracie's heart. Reagan allowed the nurse to operate over her freely and side-eyed Dave, who stood by watching with anxious eyes. She could practically read his mind. He wanted answers that were not being given — the test only fueled his tension, as it would undoubtedly tell him and Reagan both whether or not their baby was alright.

Wordlessly, the nurse observed the monitor by Reagan's bed, intently examining the sharp, jagged black line on the screen.

"Is she okay?" Dave asked brusquely, unable to stay silent. One arm was tucked around his chest, the other propped upon it with his fist curled at his mouth.

"She's just fine," the nurse responded, though the monotone of her voice bid no obvious reassurance. She didn't look away from the monitor as she spoke.

Reagan suddenly gasped loudly, resisting the urge to lurch upright out of the bed. She laid her hand beneath her belly, away from the monitoring straps and groaned through her locked jaw. Dave made a move forward but hesitated, watching Reagan stiffen under the pain of another contraction. Without either of them noticing, another nurse had joined the room.

"Heart rate looks good," the first nurse called. "We'll check her dilation. See how far along she is."

"How many weeks?" the second nurse asked.

"Twenty-nine."

Hearing the verbal reminder of how much Gracie was still to develop within the womb set Reagan further on edge, even amidst the residual pain from her contraction. She closed her eyes and held her hand out limply, thankful when Dave took it and squeezed tight as her dilation was checked by the second nurse.

"Six centimeters," the nurse at Reagan's feet announced, peering her head over Reagan's knees.

With her attention properly grabbed, Reagan's eyes widened in horror and she felt herself lean forward with hurried difficulty.

"Six?" she cried. "Six centimeters?"

She recalled all the reading Kate had done for her sake within the stretch of those last seven months. Kate had become her resident fact checker for all things pregnancy and birth and Reagan remembered with distinct clarity that Kate had told her, somewhere in the first three month range of her pregnancy, that a woman who was at least four centimeters dilated was in the active stages of labor.

"Six," the nurse confirmed, unsnapping her blue latex gloves from around her wrists.

"I'm barely seven months pregnant," Reagan argued, though that detail no longer seemed to matter.

"Your doctor will be in shortly," the nurse said back. It was clearly the only answer she could offer.

Dave knelt down closer to Reagan's bedside, taking her hand firmly into both of his. He was doing his best to be strong, Reagan could tell — there was an intermingled mix of determination and despair in his eyes.

"It's going to be okay," he said. "She's going to be okay, Reags."

"Dave," Reagan said. Her voice was a ragged whisper as it left her lips. "I can't. Not now. She's not ready. I'm not ready."

"You might have to be ready," Dave said lamely. He knew it was a shitty thing to say, but fear had overcome him just as much as it had her.

Reagan had never felt younger than she did then, lying in the hospital bed enduring the throes of contractions with Dave at her side. She considered herself to be stupid for thinking she was old enough to handle anything all those years, right down to the moment she'd accepted that Dave had gotten her pregnant. Shamelessly, she still wanted their baby and she knew that Dave did too, but she'd never perhaps get over the lie that she'd been absolutely ready for it all.

Twenty long minutes passed in which Dave and Reagan stayed silent, grasping hands and opting not to speculate any further about what lied ahead. With every new contraction, Dave moved closer to Reagan, creasing his eyebrows worriedly and apologizing under his breath as she moaned. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Reagan was wishing that he wouldn't apologize. She loved him too much to see him shoulder the blame for her pain, though it was undeniable that he'd technically played a major role in causing it.

Reagan's doctor entered the room with the same two nurses trailing behind him. He was an older man with salt and pepper hair and a smile that brought out the wrinkles next to his eyes, reminding Reagan strongly of Richard. It had made her trust him from the start, even when she'd been suspicious of his maleness. Most importantly, he had not judged her for her youth despite his own age, treating her kindly and with respect despite her being twenty-two and pregnant with a husband away on a worldwide band tour.

"Hello, hello," he said cheerfully, Reagan's chart tucked under his arm. She nearly scowled at him, resenting his chipper tone. Her patience was beginning to dwindle dangerously.

"Well," he began, flipping back a piece of paper on the clipboard that he carried. "It looks like you're having a baby tonight."

"She's not ready," Reagan said automatically. The nurse closest to her doctor cocked a single eyebrow, perhaps wondering how in the world Reagan planned to dictate her own labor.

"Seven months is early," her doctor admitted.

"She's not even seven months," Dave interrupted, sounding tired of being out of the loop. Neither he nor Reagan had quite yet wrapped their heads around the earliness of Gracie's arrival and similarly to Reagan, his composure was floundering under the pressure.

"I know," Reagan's doctor said understandably. "She hasn't reached her full term, but complications can impede that." He looked to Reagan, setting her chart aside and placing one hand on the foot rail of her bed. "I'm going to take a look myself, but it seems that your cervix is unable to carry the weight of the pregnancy. We call it a 'cervical insufficiency.'"

Reagan's face fell and the weight of accusation fell upon her like a million bricks.

"What's wrong with my cervix?" she asked, her throat growing drying.

"It's nothing crucial," the doctor explained. "Your cervix is meant to gradually soften as your pregnancy develops. In the case of an incompetent cervix, the cervical tissues soften too much and open before the baby's full term is complete. That's what's happened here today. It's nothing that you did wrong. It's rare, but it does happen."

Reagan avoided her doctor's eyes, blinking rapidly as her guilt crept up on her and blame covered her like a sheet. It was her fault — in some convoluted way — that Gracie had come early. She would be premature and at risk, all because of Reagan's own bodily function failure. It wasn't something that Reagan would have ordinarily took to heart, but the involvement of her baby's life made her sick with remorse. She was already questioning what she could have done different to have prevent it all, to have kept Gracie safe. The cigarettes she'd once smoked and the alcohol she had drank, all before her pregnancy, suddenly seemed like a death sentence.

Reading the horrified expression on Reagan's face, her doctor pressed on, seating himself on a rolling chair at the foot of her bed.

"She will be born prematurely," he stated. "But that doesn't mean that she will be in danger. There is always the risk of health conditions, but I can assure you that she will be cared for. Plenty of premature babies grow up as healthily and normally as any other full term infant."

Pain struck again and Reagan groaned, arching her back slightly against the bed. She was mad that she had not grown accustomed to it by then. Her body had betrayed her already — the least it could do for her would be to adapt the knife-like feeling penetrating her lower abdomen and tearing at her hips.

"Something for the pain," she spat through gritted teeth.

"We'll make a call for anesthesia," the doctor replied, lifting his mask over his mouth and pulling on a pair of gloves.

As she caught her breath, Reagan turned her head towards Dave, whose face had turned white. His mouth was tightened into a straight line, though his energy and strength were directed into the hand that held Reagan's, clutched around her fingers.

"Dave," she breathed faintly, her lungs deflating in and out under the constraints of her agony.

"Yeah?" he whispered. His lips barely moved though he wrung his hand more tautly into hers.

"I think," she panted, stammering over her words. "I think we're having a baby tonight."

He was speechless even as he understood that Reagan was right. Their ordinary day had morphed into something much more monumental and though they'd had months to prepare, the shock still managed to settle in like a brewing storm cloud.

"Call your mom," Reagan insisted, recalling Ginny's May-bound flight that had been planned in advance for Reagan's original due date. "Tell her what's happening. If she can rearrange her flight . . . tell her to come sooner."

Dave nodded, hanging on to every instruction. "I will."

"And Kate," Reagan added. "Call her too. She'll want to be here."

"And your parents?"

Reagan hesitated. "No. You don't have to call them. Kate will do that."

"Anyone else?" he asked quietly. Their hands remained intertwined and Reagan feared that when he let go, she would absolutely lose the thin, waning grip that she had on herself.

"Maybe Chris," she said, her voice drifting. "But that can wait. Just call anyone important, okay? Anyone who absolutely needs to know."

"Okay," Dave said, continuing with a short, jerky nod of his head. "I'll call them now."

He straightened himself upright, but not before he kissed Reagan's hand firmly, giving it one last squeeze before he laid it back with a caring tenderness at her side. They locked eyes and through her labor pain, she felt a gut-wrenching urge to comfort him. His terror was palpable. He was about to be a father, but stacked upon that revelation was the fear that their baby was in harm's way.

"Hurry back," she pleaded.

"I'll be quick."

He dashed out the door, spinning on his heels so that he turned away from her and he could shield the rippling change of emotion across his face. Reagan never drew her eyes away from his retreating back, clenching her hands at her side and counting down the seconds until he returned.

A/N:
it's been awhile! i'm so sorry for the time it has taken for me to update. i have been going through some massive trauma that has sent my mental health into a tailspin, but writing has always been therapeutic for me and i sincerely hope that by continuing OOTR, i will feel at peace. thank you to my beautiful girl kurtsroyalty- for being my biggest source of comfort and strength.
i love you all.