Safe With You

She's A Medical Mystery Baby

~ Alyssa ~

Dinner’s gone cold, the wine untouched, and the laughter hasn’t stopped for nearly half an hour.

Hope is fast asleep in her bassinet beside me, a tiny bundle of peace in a room full of chaos and disbelief.

Everyone’s still trying to process it — how I somehow managed to carry a baby for nearly seven months without knowing.

Triston’s shaking his head like he’s watching a soap opera unfold.

Savannah keeps tearing up every time she looks at Hope.

And Markus looks far too proud for a man who once called me “the most confusing patient of his career.”

“I still can’t believe it,” Winston says between laughs. “You fainted, threw up, fell asleep in your coffee, and still didn’t realise you were pregnant?”

“Oh, come on,” I protest, arms crossed. “I wasn’t that bad.”

“You fainted at your desk twice,” Markus reminds me.

“Three times,” Elle corrects, giggling. “Once mid-sentence.”

I groan. “You’re all dramatic.”

Greyson chuckles beside me, kissing my temple. “Says the woman who declared she was dying of exhaustion every other day.”

“Well, I was exhausted!” I shoot back. “And sick. And fainting. And Markus kept calling me his ‘medical mystery’ while I was half-dead on his examination table.”

Markus leans back in his chair, smug. “To be fair, you were my medical mystery. Months of nausea, dizziness, fainting spells, fatigue, cravings, and zero explanations. Even on your first scan at your first follow up, she wasnt there at all. She hid well”

“And five negative pregnancy tests!” I add pointedly. “Count them. Five. I practically kept Clearblue in business.”

The room bursts into laughter.

Triston wipes a tear from his eye. “How does someone fail five tests?”

“I didn’t fail them!” I protest. “They failed me! Don’t blame me, blame science!”

Markus lifts his glass, grinning. “Science accepts no responsibility.”

Elle’s laughing so hard she can barely breathe. “I still remember you saying, ‘I’m fine, it’s just stress,’ and then passing out at your fitting table!”

“I was stressed,” I insist.

“Stressed, pale, and living on Lucozade and chocolate fingers,” Greyson adds with a smirk.

I jab him in the ribs. “Don’t forget the water! I was hydrated.”

Triston chuckles. “Yeah, hydrated and pregnant. Hell of a combo.”

Markus leans forward, grinning. “Alright, let me tell it properly before someone turns this into a conspiracy theory.”

~ Markus ~

“I get a call from Greyson one morning,” I begin, resting my elbows on the table. “He says Alyssa’s been sick for four days, hasn’t eaten a proper meal, and is living off Lucozade, sports drinks, and chocolate biscuits.”

“She was dramatic,” Greyson mutters.

“She was dying,” Markus corrects, mock-serious. “Or so she said. So, I tell him to bring her in. Four days of this nonsense is enough.”

“Excuse me,” Alyssa interjects, “I wasn’t nonsense!”

“You fainted in the waiting room,” Markus fires back.

Savannah gasps, hand to her chest. “Oh, sweetheart!”

Alyssa groans. “I slipped off the chair. It doesn’t count.”

Markus ignores her and continues. “So I run bloods. All normal. Vitamins fine. Iron fine. No infection. No clue. I’m scratching my head thinking, ‘What in God’s name am I missing?’”

Triston grins. “Spoiler: a baby.”

“Exactly,” Markus says, laughing. “So, after she throws up all over my floor, I tell her I’ll do a quick scan to rule out anything internal — stomach lining, gallbladder, whatever. Just to be safe. And, honestly? Just praying for a miracle. She's a difficult patient.”

Alyssa gasps. “Rude!”

“Honest,” Markus replies. “Anyway, I grab the scanner, start the ultrasound, and—boom. Movement.”

Elle sits forward, wide-eyed. “Movement? Like, you saw her move?”

“Oh yeah,” Markus says, smirking. “I thought I was seeing things. Then I zoomed in and nearly dropped the wand. A whole baby. Head, hands, everything. And moving like it owned the place.”

Greyson starts laughing. “You should’ve seen him. He just froze.”

“I did!” Markus admits. “I stood there, completely silent, trying to figure out if I’d somehow switched scans midstream.”

Triston leans back, howling. “And Alyssa?”

Markus grins. “She sat up, looked at the monitor, and panicked.

The room erupts.

“I had every reason to panic okay!” Alyssa protests, cheeks pink. “It was shock! One second, you’re scanning my stomach, and the next, there’s a fully formed baby on the screen! Of course I panicked!”

Greyson’s tone softens "baby, you was more than panicked, you was terrified I'd walk away"

“I panicked!” Alyssa says, throwing up her hands. She looks sad now " Any sane person would panic finding out they're pregnant, our relationship was still pretty fresh." She sighs, leaning into Greyson’s embrace.

Savannah wipes tears from her cheeks. “Oh, darling…he loves you, he'd never walk away from you and Quinn. I'm sure Poppy would've given him hell if he did" Greyson nods at her statement.

“And then,” Markus continues, “I tell her the gestational estimate — twenty-seven weeks.”

The table falls silent for all of three seconds before everyone shouts at once.

“TWENTY-SEVEN?!”

“HOW?!”

“You skipped two trimesters!”

Charlie’s doubled over, laughing. “You had a third-trimester surprise!”

“I told you,” Alyssa says, glaring around the room, “science failed me!”

“Five negative tests,” Markus confirms. “I nearly wrote to the manufacturer myself.”

Elle claps her hands. “And now she’s here. Little Hope. The best surprise of all.”

~ Greyson ~

By the time everyone calms down, Hope stirs — a soft little sigh and a flutter of fingers that instantly melts the entire room.

Savannah sniffles. “She’s perfect.”

“She is,” Alyssa says softly, brushing a fingertip along Hope’s cheek. “Even if she did take her sweet time announcing herself.”

Markus chuckles. “Worth the wait, though.”

Greyson wraps an arm around Alyssa’s shoulders, drawing her close. “Every second.”

Triston shakes his head in disbelief, though he’s smiling. “You know what’s wild? I remember calling you one night, telling you to see a doctor because you sounded exhausted. You told me it was ‘just stress.’ Turns out it was gestation stress.”

Everyone laughs again.

Alyssa rolls her eyes but she’s smiling now — soft, tired, content. “I’m never living this down, am I?”

“Nope,” Winston grins. “We’ll be telling this story at her eighteenth birthday.”

Elle nods. “And her wedding.”

“And every family gathering until the end of time,” Markus adds, smirking.

Greyson squeezes her hand gently. “You’ll survive. You always do.”

She leans her head on his shoulder, the faintest smile curving her lips. “Yeah. But this time, I’m actually happy doing it.”

Greyson looks down at their daughter, then back at Alyssa. “You and me both.”

~ Alyssa ~

Later that night, after the chaos has died down and everyone’s gone home, I sit quietly on the sofa — Hope sleeping on my chest, the faint sound of Greyson cleaning up in the kitchen drifting through the house.

The weight of her tiny body, the rhythm of her breathing — it’s grounding in a way nothing else ever has been.

Six months of confusion.

Five false tests.

Three fainting spells.

One ultrasound.

And the biggest surprise of our lives.

I press a soft kiss to her head, whispering, “You were worth every second of not knowing.”

Greyson appears in the doorway, smiling as he leans against the frame. “You talking to her or yourself?”

“Both,” I murmur, smiling back.

He crosses the room, sits beside me, and wraps an arm around us both.

And for the first time in what feels like forever