My name is Sloane Claire Etherington and I'm 20 years old. I've recently started university and I'm majoring in Music, I'd like to one day compose scores for movies. In one of my core, non-major-related classes, I meet a guy, Alfred "Alfie" Xavier Barclay, and he's 21 years old. Alfie lives in his own apartment only a few blocks away from our campus. He's majoring in Psychology and wants to be a clinical psychologist. The two of us hit it off almost immediately, and that weekend, we go on our first date - A picnic in a park on the campus' quad. It was lovely, Alfie set up the whole basket with the checkered table cloth, a bottle of sparking apple cider, a fruit salad, fun finger sandwiches and some more. It was really lovely. We date for the remainder of university, two years, then we move in together into Alfie's apartment.
It's been a year since I graduated university, and I'm now 23 years old and Alfie is 24 years old. We've now both got jobs in the fields we majored in. I'm working as an Assistant Film Scorer while Alfie works as a Youth Psychologist.
As we're beginning to get financially stable, Alfie and I begin talking about getting married. One evening, Alfie takes me back to where our first date was, on one knee, and he proposes. Excited and not expecting a proposal at all, I say yes, but smile and admit that I also have news to share with him--I'm pregnant!
We decide to quickly plan a small, intimate wedding, skipping a honeymoon afterward, with just close friends and family, so that we can get married before the baby comes along and chaos ensues. We ended up going with a light green and brown theme for the wedding.
Just a month after the wedding, Alfie and I welcome our beautiful baby girl - Alice Ethan Barclay into the world. She's darling and precious with ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes and Alfie and I could not be more in love with her if we tried.
Two years later, Alfie and I are enjoying our nice little family with Alice, who is now two years old, when I feel nauseous. Thinking it's just the flu, I don't decide to go to see a doctor until I start feeling extremely nauseous for more than a few days. At the doctor's office, they have you take a pregnancy test, and as I'd begun to suspect, I found out that I was pregnant with our second child.
Ironically, Alfie had had a doctor's appointment to check his blood pressure among other routine things, so when the two of us met up at the house we'd bought shortly after Alice was born that evening, we both had stories to share. I tell Alfie that I'm pregnant, and he's overjoyed. Even Alice starts clapping, sensing the excitement. Then Alfie gets a pained look on his face and tells me his own news: he has lung cancer from all the secondhand smoke he took in as a child, both of his parents smoked, but he never did.
I spend the next few days crying, but Alfie promises he'll fight with all his might. It's a rough few months with lots of doctor's appointments, I cry often and clutch Alice close to me. I leave angry voice mails to his parents and spend hours on the phone with my mother, sobbing. Talking about how I'm not sure what I'll do if I lose Alfie, he's my other half, the light of my life.
Just two weeks after Alice's third birthday, Alfie and I welcomed our second daughter, Emily Alfreda-Xena Barclay into the world and she is just as perfect as Alice was when she was born.
The Barclay Family
DW: Sloane Claire Barclay (nee Etherington) [27] [Assistant Film Scorer]
DH: Alfred "Alfie" Xavier Barclay [28] [Youth Psychologist]
DD1: Alice Ethan Barclay [3]
DD2: Emily Alfreda-Xena Barclay [0]
Sloane and Alfie Barclay; with Alice & Emily