Lori Loud slammed her way through the front door. The force of the door flying open driving the inside door knob into the wall. Sniffling, the teenager hastily pulled the door free from the drywall and slammed it closed. She dropped her backpack, untied her ruined light jacket from around her waist and left them in the foyer and raced up the stairs to the bathroom.

She had managed to stop crying on her manic drive home, pushing the pain streaking up her lower back and abdomen to the back of her mind as much as she could. She knew she should've just stayed home from school.

The girl pulled off her shoes and then her pants. She gulped as she surveyed the damage, knowing that her whole class had seen. Blood stained the crotch of her blue jeans and ran down the inside of the thighs. Even now, she could still feel more blood flowing. Lori threw the jeans into the corner and sat down on the floor, letting the pain and feelings of fear and humiliation wash over her.

Lori pulled her knees to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. Burying her face between her knees and her chest, she began sobbing.

A few hours later…

"Lori!"

Rita Loud stomped through the unlocked front door to her house, ten of her eleven children grumpily filing through the door behind her. She knew her eldest was home, the family van, lovingly nicknamed 'Vanzilla' by the kids, was sitting in the driveway.

"Lori, you were supposed to pick your siblings up from school and daycare!" Rita shouted again, angry. "I had to hire a shuttle to bring us all home and had to leave work early! You better have a good explanation, young lady!"

Her anger quickly turned to alarm when she spotted the hole in the wall caused by the door knob.

"What the…?" she asked, puzzled.

"Mom, look!"

Rita turned her attention to Luan. The alarmed looking fourteen-year-old was holding Lori's favorite jacket out to her. There was a fist sized blood stain on the back of the tan coat.

"Lori!" Rita called out again, this time in alarm.

"Mom, Lori won't let me in the bathroom!" Lana called down the stairs. "But, it's OK, I'll just go out in the backyard!"

Rita hurried upstairs to the house's only bathroom.

"Lori, are you alright?" Rita asked gently, knocking on the door.

The woman tried to open the door, but it was locked and Lori remained silent. She tried to remember where she had left the key as she asked again,

"Are you OK? You are scaring me, Lori. Please, unlock the door."

Rita strained to hear something, anything from the other side of the door. A few sniffles was the only response she received. Rita motioned for Luan, who had followed her mother to the second floor, to come over to the door.

"Get the spare house key ring," she whispered to her daughter. "I believe it is in the junk drawer in the kitchen."

Luan nodded and hurried to do her mother's bidding. Rita returned to pleading with her eldest.

"Lori, I saw the blood on your coat. Are you hurt?"

"Nuh-no…" Lori sniffled from the bathroom.

It sounded to Rita that she was close to the door, possibly sitting on the toilet.

"Are-are you sick?" Rita asked.

Thinking of a sickness that would cause her daughter to bleed made Rita sick to her stomach.

"I don't know."

"Well, I can help you figure it out, but you need to unlock the door."

"You'll be mad at me," Lori cried.

Rita turned from the door at the sound of jingling. Luan hurried towards her with the spare key ring which held all the spare keys to the van and the various locks within the house.

"I'm not going to be mad at you, Lori," Rita said, finding the right key for the door. "I am worried though."

The woman turned and shooed Luan and the other kids who had followed her upstairs away before she opened the bathroom door. She was sure that Lori didn't need or want an audience. She slowly opened the door and stuck her head in.

"Lori?" she said, gently.

The seventeen-year-old was sitting on the toilet, naked except for the towel wrapped around her body. Her hair was damp from a recent shower and her eyes were red and puffy from crying. As Rita closed the door behind her, she noticed a pair of bloody jeans in a corner of the bathroom. She pulled the dirties hamper to where she could sit in front of her daughter.

"Lori, please talk to me," she motioned towards the jeans in the corner, "Did you start your period in class?"

"I don't think so…I was supposed to have it about three weeks ago, but it never came…"

Lori looked up at her mother with a forlorn look on her face. Rita appeared too shocked to speak for the moment, so Lori continued.

"I didn't feel very well this morning, just thought it was indigestion or something. I decided to go to school anyway. I started having really, really bad cramps and then my back started to ache during first period. Then…then I started hemorrhaging out from…you know…Then I came home and eventually took a shower because I had blood everywhere…It just kept coming out."

"It sounds like you had a miscarriage, dear," Rita said quietly.

Rita grabbed her daughter's hand as Lori began crying again.

"I know, I'm not stupid…I guessed that I was probably pregnant when I was over a week late, but I was too scared to go to you or even take a pregnancy test…Are-are m-mad at me?"

Rita thought for a moment.

"No, I'm not mad, not right now anyway," she finally said, standing. "Let's get you dressed. You need to go to the emergency room and get checked out. You are still bleeding, yes?"

"A little, it's not as bad as it was earlier."

"Luan, come to the bathroom please," Rita called through the cracked open door.

Lori remained seated on the toilet watching her mother. A few seconds went by and Rita spoke again.

"Get a bra, black underwear, Lori's black sweatpants and a t-shirt for Lori and bring them here for me please," Rita said.

Lori heard Luan agreeing to do so before her mother shut the door. Rita rifled through the bathroom shelves and found some sanitary napkins. She grabbed several and turned back to her daughter.

"So, I'm assuming it was Bobby."

"Yah, the last time I went to visit him."

"Was it your first time or…?" Rita trailed off, realizing that she was entering territory that she never really had wanted to explore with any of her children.

Lori remained silent for a few moments.

"No," she finally muttered, looking at the floor.

Rita took a deep breath to calm herself. Now was not the time to yell or lecture Lori about responsible behavior. That could wait until she knew Lori was alright. There was a knock on the door. Rita opened the door and accepted the clothes from Luan. She set them down on the hamper along with the sanitary napkins.

"You get dressed. I'll be waiting just outside the door. Come out when you are done."

Rita only had to wait a few minutes before Lori emerged. She hustled her daughter out of the house and into the van. They remained silent on the way to the hospital and barely spoke once they arrived. Lori was physically examined by a doctor once they were shown to a room, they did a blood draw and an ultrasound was performed.

The doctor confirmed the miscarriage and stated that everything looked like it would progress on its own just fine. He prescribed over the counter pain medication for pain management and a pharmacy medication that would help with the process and told Lori to follow up with a gynecologist the next day.

The whole ordeal only took about two hours. In that time, Rita had called Lynn Sr. with an update. He hadn't said much about the miscarriage. Rita said that they could talk about everything some other time. She just wanted him to know what was going on and that Lori was going to be fine.

Neither mother nor daughter spoke as they left the ER and pulled out of the parking lot, headed towards home.

"We-we used protection each time," Lori said suddenly, looking out the passenger window, the opposite direction from where her mother was. "Something must have gone wrong with what we used."

"OK."

"I just-I just don't want you to think I am stupid or totally irresponsible. I didn't mean for this to happen."

Rita sighed.

"I know you aren't stupid, Lori."

"I know you're mad at me...I know you are glad..."

"Glad? What do you mean by that, Lori?"

"Glad that I miscarried, glad that the baby died."

Before Rita could think of anything to say, Lori spoke again.

"I am…a little, tiny bit."

Rita felt her eyes tear up and her throat tighten. She gulped and took several calming breaths before she was able to speak.

"Lori, it wouldn't be a good thing for you to have a baby now, you are far too young to have that responsibility, but I am not glad that you had a miscarriage. It's one of those things that is hard to put into words, dear. The feeling I have for this is something without a proper definition. I don't want you to be pregnant now, but I don't want you to lose a pregnancy either."

"It's OK, that I feel sad too? Glad and sad..."

"Yes, it is. It's a hard thing for any woman to go through, especially if they had really wanted that child…"

Rita couldn't stop herself. She started crying.

"Mom, are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine," Rita sniffed. "I've never told any of you kids, but I had a miscarriage before I had you. I was about eleven weeks along. I really wanted that baby. When the baby didn't come, all that was left was a hole in my heart filled with pain that was supposed to be a space filled with love."

Lori put her hand on Rita's shoulder.

"I'm sorry, mom."

"Most of the time, there's nothing you can do to prevent a miscarriage when they happen early on. Most of the time, it's no one's fault, there's something wrong with the chromosomes or the embryo didn't implant well or something like that. The body has its natural processes that can't be controlled or sometimes completely explained."

Lori nodded and looked back out the side window. They were only a few blocks from their house.

"Should I tell Bobby?"

Rita didn't immediately respond.

"That's up to you, dear, how you want to handle this."

"I think he should know."

Rita pulled into the driveway and shut off the vehicle. She patted her daughter's hand.

"I'll be here if you need encouragement," she said.

The pair exited the vehicle. Lori walked around to join her mother on the driver's side of the vehicle. The teen held the paper bag with her bottle of pills in both hands in front of her, a bit like a shield.

"Um, so…I'm sure I'm going to be receiving some sort of punishment for this," Lori said.

"Well, not tonight," Rita said. "Your father and I will discuss this with you. I am not happy that you are…having relations with Bobby or anyone else."

"Mom, there's only ever been Bobby. Oh, and please don't be mad at him. He didn't pressure me into anything I didn't want to do. It was my idea."

Rita glanced sharply at her daughter.

"Well, I will say this, you will not be seeing him without direct parental supervision. You are lucky I like the boy. There will also be no solo trips anywhere for a long, long time."

Lori nodded.

"I know I've broken your trust. I am sorry for that."

Rita hugged her.

"You have, but I'm not worried about that right now. We can worry about that after you've recovered."

That night, approximately 10:00 p.m.

Rita was tired. It had been a tiring and trying day. Lynn Sr. hadn't said much to anyone and had a scowl on his face all through dinner. Rita knew that he was upset at Lori, but didn't want to make things worse by making a scene, so he'd just kept his mouth shut. Lori had gone to bed immediately after dinner.

After she had left, there had been a lot of whispering amongst her siblings. Her sisters in their teens, even the dimwitted Leni, understood what had happened and discussed the social ramifications of what Lori had done and expressed their sympathy for her. The younger group, Lincoln and younger, discussed their confusion and frustration that no one was explaining to them what was going on with Lori. Rita didn't have the energy to have the birds and the bees discussion with them that evening, so she had left them to their confusion for the time being.

Rita had finally grabbed her towel and headed upstairs for a shower. All of her kids were tucked in their beds and Lynn Sr. had retired early as well. As she passed Lori and Leni's room, she saw a dim light filtering through the partially open door and heard soft voices and sniffling from within. She pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped inside.

The room was being lit only by the small bedside lamp between Lori and Leni's beds. Lori was sitting up in her bed, the lower half of her body covered by blankets. Her face was red from crying and she held her phone in her lap. Leni sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing Lori's back, a worried look on her face.

"Is everything alright?" Rita asked, approaching the two girls.

"She told Bobby about what happened," Leni explained for her sister. "He was crying."

Rita had Leni move over to her own bed and she sat down where Leni had been. She put an arm around her daughter's shoulders.

"Bobby was so sad when I told him," Lori said. "I've never seen him like that before."

"It's a difficult thing to hear and to come to terms with."

"He wanted to come here, to make sure I was alright. He felt guilty that he wasn't here to support me."

"Well, Bobby is a sweet boy," Rita said. "But, it would be best for him to stay away for a while."

"Then he started crying and kept apologizing to me," Lori said. "I kept telling him it wasn't his fault. He just kept crying."

Rita hugged her.

"He'll be alright."

"I'm really sad for him. He was scared that his family would find out. He didn't think they'd be as accepting of what happened as you were. I know you are unhappy with me, but I knew that you wouldn't throw me out or anything."

"Would Bobby's family do that?" Rita asked, alarmed.

"I don't think so and I tried to assure him of that, but he's convinced they will," Lori said, sadly. "He's not going to tell them. He's going to handle it on his own, without support."

"Well, we'll have to respect their wishes then. His family didn't strike me as the type to kick anyone out of the house for anything, but you can't always tell."

"I don't think they are that type, but he knows them better than me…It was really hard to see him like that. It was like I could see his soul be crushed through his eyes."

Rita squeezed her daughter again.

"I'm sure it was tough thing to watch," she said. "Based on my experience, it might be an even harder thing to accept for the father at times, than it is for the mother. That feeling of helplessness…"

Rita remained silent after she trailed off. Lori finally spoke up after a couple minutes.

"How angry is dad?"

"Oh, he's pretty angry," Rita said. "But, he'll calm down. Just give him some time. He loves you, he will get over it eventually."

"I'm glad you are my mom," Lori said, hugging Rita. "I don't think all kids have mothers as caring and accepting as you. I'm really sad for them, if they had a problem like me and had no one to turn to."

Rita hugged her back.

"You can come to me with any problem you have, no matter what it is. I'll always be here for you and all your siblings, and so will your father."

Rita held Lori until she fell asleep soon afterwards. Only then did she switch off the light and get ready for bed herself. Lynn Sr. was already asleep when she got to bed. Curling around him, she pushed the events of the day from her mind. Instead, she focused on how warm and cuddly her husband was and finally fell asleep herself.