Please Harder, Professor

Chapter 116

Sophie’s POV

The hospital room is too bright.

Fluorescent lights hum overhead, casting everything in a harsh, sterile glow that makes my skin look pale and my veins stand out like blue rivers beneath the surface.

The walls are white, the sheets are white, even the ceiling tiles are white, arranged in perfect rows that I've counted three times since they admitted me.

I lie motionless, afraid to shift, afraid to breathe too deeply, afraid that any movement might trigger another episode of bleeding. The monitors beside my bed beep in steady rhythm—my heartbeat, my blood pressure, and beneath it all, the rapid flutter of our daughter's pulse.

That sound is the only thing keeping me sane.

Adrian hasn't left my side. He's been here for three days now, sleeping in the uncomfortable chair beside my bed, eating whatever Bellamy brings from the cafeteria, refusing every suggestion that he go home and rest.

The haunted look in his eyes hasn't faded since we arrived—that raw, desperate fear that surfaces every time a nurse enters to check my vitals.

"You should sleep," I tell him on the second night.

"I'm fine."

"You're exhausted."

"I said I'm fine." His hand finds mine, squeezing gently. "Sleep, Sophie. I'll be here when you wake up."

He's always here. Every time I open my eyes, he's watching—not the monitors, not the door, but me. Like I might disappear if he looks away for even a moment.

On the third night, I can't hold it in anymore.

"Adrian."

He stirs in the chair, instantly alert. "What's wrong? Do you need the nurse?"

"No. I just…" My voice catches. "I need to tell you something."

He moves closer, perching on the edge of my bed, careful not to jostle the monitors. "I'm listening."

"I'm terrified."

The admission hangs in the air between us, raw and unfiltered. Adrian's expression shifts—concern deepening into something more tender.

"Of the complications?"

"Yes. No." I shake my head, frustrated with my inability to articulate the storm inside me. "It's not just that. It's not just the bleeding or the birth or whether my body can actually do this."

"Then what?"

"Everything that comes after."

The words unlock something in my chest, and suddenly I'm talking—really talking, the way I haven't let myself since this nightmare began.

"I never planned this, Adrian. Any of it. I was supposed to graduate, build a career, figure out who I was before I became responsible for another human being." My voice breaks. "I was supposed to have time."

"Sophie…"

"I'm twenty-two years old. Twenty-two. And I'm lying in a hospital bed with my education unfinished and my reputation destroyed and no idea what my future looks like anymore."

The tears start, and I can't stop them.

"I was supposed to have time to become someone worth being. Now I'm about to bring a child into chaos, and what if I'm not ready? What if I ruin the baby?"

"You won't."

"You don't know that." The words come out sharper than I intend. "My mother—God, my mother—she was so overwhelmed, so exhausted, always leaning on us because there was no one else. I was thirteen when I started raising my siblings. Thirteen."

Adrian goes still. "Your past does not determine your future, you will be a great mother."

"But what if I become her?” I swipe angrily at my tears. “What if I have this baby and I'm so lost, so broken, that she ends up carrying me the way I carried my mother? What if I steal the baby’s childhood the way mine was stolen?"

The sobs come then—ugly, gasping things I can't control. Three days of terror and uncertainty crashing through the walls I've tried so hard to maintain.

Adrian doesn't speak. He moves from the edge of the bed to beside me, careful of the monitors, careful of my belly, and pulls me against his chest. His arms wrap around me, steady and warm, and he holds me while I fall apart.

I cry until my throat is raw, until my eyes burn, until there's nothing left inside me but hollow exhaustion and the steady beat of our child’s heart on the monitor.

When I finally quiet, Adrian speaks.

"I'm terrified too."

His voice is rough, barely above a whisper. I pull back just enough to see his face—and find that his eyes are wet.

"Every day," he continues. "Every single day since you told me you were pregnant, I've been terrified. Not of the complications—though God knows those keep me up at night. But of what comes after."

"Adrian…"

"I don't know how to be a father." The confession sounds like it's being torn from him. "I told you about my past, about my own father. The only model I have for parenthood is a man who saw his family as assets to be managed, not people to be loved."

"You're not him."

"How do you know? How do you know I won't repeat every mistake he made?"

He runs a hand through his hair, the gesture uncharacteristically helpless.

"I don't know how to be soft, Sophie. I don't know how to love without controlling, without demanding, without turning everything into a power dynamic."

"You're learning."

"Am I?" He laughs, but there's no humor in it. "Sometimes I look at you—at your belly, at what we've created—and I feel nothing. No connection, no instinct. Just fear and confusion and the absolute certainty that I'm going to destroy something precious."

"That's not true."

"It is true. It's been true since the beginning." He meets my eyes, raw and exposed. "But you know what else is true?"

I shake my head, unable to speak.

"Watching you fight for this baby, watching you refuse to break, no matter what gets thrown at you, it makes me believe we might actually survive this."

His hand finds my belly, palm spread across the swell where our child grows.

"Not because I know how to be a father. Not because I have any idea what I'm doing. But because you're here. And if you can be this strong, this fierce, this determined... maybe I can learn to be something better too."

The tears start again, but these are different. Softer.

"Together," Adrian says quietly. "That's the only way I know how to do this, figuring it out as we go, making mistakes and fixing them. Being terrified but showing up anyway."

I grip his shirt, fisting the fabric like a lifeline.

"That's not a solution," I whisper.

"No. It's not a plan either." He presses his forehead to mine. "But it's what I have. It's all I have."

"I'm so scared."

"Me too."

It's not reassurance. It's not a promise that everything will be okay.

But hearing his fear echo mine—knowing I'm not alone in this overwhelming uncertainty—makes the terror feel almost bearable.

We stay like that for a long time, foreheads pressed together, hands intertwined.

Two terrified people, trying to figure out how to become a family. It's not enough. But it's a start.