The Heartbreak Factor - Part Four

Chapter Eighty-Four.

I shook my head. “Where’s Josh?” 

“He’s not coming in just yet. He’s gotta find someone to babysit Joel as Chloe’s gone off somewhere,” Jaymi explained. “Doesn’t look too good with them two at the moment.” 

I felt the urge to reply with ‘I know the feeling’ but I held back on it. I didn’t want to tell them just yet. With them not knowing what I was going through - what Sammy and I were going through, it allowed me to have a break from it all. 

“What’s going on with her?” JJ asked. “She’s not been herself in ages.” 

“George, are you okay?” Jaymi paused. “You don’t look yourself. Is everything alright?”

I looked around the room in temptation to nod but I could feel everything I was holding back about to burst out all at once. “Can we go somewhere to talk? I need to tell you something and it’s probably best management don’t find out just yet.” 

“Of course,” Jaymi nodded, pulling both myself and JJ into a quiet and available room at the side of the reception waiting area. 

As soon as I closed the door behind us, JJ and Jaymi were looking at me in concern.

“George, what is it?” JJ urged after a few moments of silence as I tried to think of how to tell them. 

“Sammy lost one of the babies.”

The whole room turned into a sea of eery silences as both JJ and Jaymi’s jaws unintentionally  dropped. They both looked at me with the same sympathetic look that had been followed Sammy and I since it happened. It was the same look the doctors and nurses gave us. It was the same look Sammy’s parents gave us. It was the same look my parents gave us. It was the same look that we had seen before. 

“George. I’m so sorry,” Jaymi sighed, grabbing hold of me and pulling me in for a hug. 

Usually, I would have fought him off and laughed at him trying to hug me but I needed a hug. I needed a hug more than anything right now. Instead of resisting, I let him hug me and burrowed me head into his shoulder. 

“George, that’s awful. Are you both okay?” JJ asked, patting my back with uncertainty over how to react over it all - he wasn’t really good with dealing with bad news. 

I nodded as I looked up at them both. “I suppose we’re as okay as can be. Just coming to terms with it all now. She was so excited about it. We both were and now everything’s ruined.”

“It’s not ruined, George,” JJ sympathised. “You’ve still got Katy and the other baby to enjoy.”

“JJ’s right,” Jaymi added in agreement. “You’re going to be heartbroken obviously but things will get better with time. I promise.” 

I sighed. I didn’t see how things could get any better than they were just a week ago. 

“Where’s Sammy now?” Jaymi questioned. “You don’t have to be here. We don’t expect you to be here with this. You need to be at home with Sammy and Katy. You need to grieve.”

I shook my head. “I can’t be at home right now. Sammy’s so lost and hurt and it kills me to see her like that. I can’t do anything to make her feel any better. Katy doesn’t understand and just thinks the babies are playing hide and seek. She’s too young to understand the whole thing about the miscarriage and we don’t expect her to. I just need to get some space from Sammy. She needs space from me right now.” 

Unconvinced, Jaymi shook his head. “You need to get through it together, George. It can’t be easy doing it alone.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “She’s just closing me off and not letting me in. I just want to focus on something other than funeral plans or thinking of what I can say to Sammy that won’t make her run off in tears or look at me like she’s not even looking at me but right through me.”

JJ looked at me. I could tell both him and Jaymi were trying to work out what they could say. Jaymi was obviously better at dealing with emotions than JJ - I always went to Jaymi for advise on emotional matters. But JJ looked at me and smiled, saying the thing that I needed to hear. “Remember what Sammy always used to say to us during the X Factor live shows when we felt like we were going home?” he paused as I looked back at him. “Everything is going to be okay in the end and if it’s not okay, it’s not over.” 

A smile left my lips as I remembered back to the X Factor times - the simpler times. 

“I’m so fucked off with that bloody wife of mine,” Josh groaned as he stormed into the room, completely unaware of the situation. 

“What’s happened?” I asked.

“Josh..” Jaymi paused before looking at me. “Now isn’t really a good time.”

“No. It is,” I insisted. “What’s happened, Josh?”

“You might as well know as everyone will find out soon as it is,” he sighed, throwing himself on the sofa and sinking into the back of it as he looked at us all. “Chloe cheated on me.” 

“What? Are you sure?” I asked. “That’s really not like her.” 

“I know right,” Josh laughed. “There I was thinking I married an honest, faithful woman - not a home-wrecking whore.”

“Josh..” 

“What, Jaymi?” he groaned in response. “I know I shouldn’t refer to her as a ‘whore’ but after what she’s done to me and Joel, I think it’s the least she deserves it. I know she’s your wife’s best friend, George, but I’m just..”

“Not that, Josh,” Jaymi paused. “George has some devastating news too.”

“What is it?” he asked, springing up from the sofa and forgetting about his own troubles as he realised my eyes were all blood shot and puffy. 

“Sammy miscarried one of the twins.” 

There it was again. The look. The same look I’d had off Jaymi. The same look I’d had off JJ. The same look we’d had off the doctors and the nurses. The same look we’d had off Sammy’s parents. The same look we’d had off my parents. The look that was partly sympathy and partly pity. 

“George, I am so sorry,” he apologised, putting his hands around me and hugging me. “There I am going on about my problems and here you are going through something a hundred times as worse.”

“I don’t think you can really categorise either of the things we’re going through - they’re both heartbreaking, but we’ll get through it,” I said, smiling a half-hearted smile. 

“We will,” Josh nodded before the other two boys joined our group hug.