The two blue lines that appear seem to mock you, as if they know that this was the last thing that was supposed to happen. But here you are, sitting in a hotel bathroom, while your not-quite-boyfriend sits outside and waits to know whether or not he's going to be a father. This wasn't how you expected things to be, or even necessarily how you want them to be, but you made your bed (to coin a phrase) and now you must lie in it.
When you open the door he's standing there, looking worried and afraid all at once, and when you hold up the positive pregnancy test, his face becomes completely emotionless. It never occurred to you that this might happen, even though you are both doctors and should have known better. Never once did it cross your mind that the result of all that on-call room sex would be a tiny human being.
He wants to ask, you can see it in his eyes, he's dying to know what you want to do about this. You're pretty sure that he'd pay for an abortion if you wanted one, but even though you're not a practicing Catholic and haven't graced the inside of a church for years, you're still a good Catholic girl at heart and the thought of aborting your child makes your stomach churn. The guilt that you feel for even thinking it is almost enough to make you yearn for the dark recesses of a confessional. In the back of your head you hear your mother saying novenas to the Blessed Mother, asking her to save your soul from eternal damnation, and in that moment you know that you will keep this baby.
When you tell him you want to keep it he nods solemnly, but says nothing because there is nothing to say. The words that you want and need haven't been invented yet, so you sit side by side on the king-sized hotel bed, staring at a stick that is telling you your future in two blue lines.
**************
He may be a cad, but deep down he's an honorable man, so when he asks you to marry him two weeks later, you aren't completely surprised. For all of his posturing and bravado, he's a conventional man who, if he's going to be a father, wants to do it right. And for him, doing it right means that his child is born to a mother and a father who are married, live in the same house, sleep in the same bed.
You go out after work during the evenings and look at houses, settling on a blue Victorian on a cul-de-sac in a nice neighborhood. You buy furniture and pots and pans and a mid-size SUV that will fit a baby seat and stroller. He paints one of the rooms a sunny yellow, while you sit in your new glider and watch him work. Halfway through he takes off his ratty Yankees t-shirt, and the hormones combined with the sight of his naked back painting a room for your baby makes you so hot for him that you crawl on your knees to him and unbuckle his belt and ask him to fuck you right now. Dropping the paint roller with a grin, he complies and pushes you up against the one unpainted wall, and it's hot and intense and the first time he's laid a hand on you since you told him you were pregnant.
As you rest your head on his shoulder, both of you sticky with sweat and semen and paint, you have to laugh at the absurdity of the entire situation. You feel his shoulders shake and before you can say anything you are both on the floor, laughing, your bodies still joined. You think to yourself that this won't work, it can't work, but then he kisses you softly and you stop and think that maybe you'll get as close to love as two people who are as screwed up as you can ever hope to get. And for now, that's enough.
**********************
The matching gold bands sparkle on your left hands as you sit and get berated by Chief Webber, who is none to happy with his head of plastics and his top orthopedic resident. Shooting each other sidelong glances, you can't help but chuckle like two kids who have been sent to the principal's office for being caught making out in the library. You're sternly reprimanded for laughing, which only makes you laugh harder, and after a moment even the Chief is laughing at the ludicrousness of it all.
You don't want to tell anyone else but the gossip travels fast, and soon people are watching you curiously, like a circus sideshow. You don't hide your wedding band, which he had insisted had to have diamonds to make up for lack of a proper engagement ring. It's beautiful and shiny and it attracts people's eyes like a magnet, earning you envious glares from some of the nurses who had designs on the handsome Dr. Sloan. But impending fatherhood has been a catalyst of sorts for Mark, no longer does he flirt with nurses or make lewd innuendo with anyone but you. He has finally chosen to leave adolescence behind and enter adulthood, and it's a change that is becoming on him.
There are plenty of disapproving glances and lots of whispering about your impending parenthood, and for once you really don't care what other people think. You have a husband and a house and a baby on the way, but most importantly you have Mark, who holds your hair when you puke from morning sickness and goes to every grocery store in Seattle at 3am when you desperately need a bowl of Count Chocula. And yes, it's weird being married to him because he's Mark, your best friend since Addison left, and there's so much that you don't have to explain to him like why you put chocolate milk on your Cheerios or why you insist on watching those stupid bloopers shows. It's comfortable and easy between you, and you like it that way.
You find it endearing, the little things he has taken to doing, like reading the sports page to your stomach. He is determined to make your child a Yankees fan from the start, going so far as to buy two sets of baseball bats and gloves-one in pink, the other in blue. When you suggest that the kid might be a Mariners fan or, God forbid, a Mets fan, he glares at you with such disdain that you can't help but laugh until you cry.
At night, when you are weary with exhaustion, he curls up around you and puts his hand on your belly, and you sigh with contentment because for the moment, all is right with the world.
**********************
You get bigger as the seasons change, and pretty soon you're decorating a Christmas tree around the bump of your belly. Cristina mocks you from the comfort of your couch because no amount of cajoling will get her into the holiday spirit, but after a couple of glasses of eggnog she capitulates and agrees to only hang ornaments that are blue, white, or silver.
Everyone is used to you being married now, and because Mark is Derek's friend this means that you spend a lot of time with Meredith and, by extension, Cristina. They're not the people you would have necessarily chosen as friends, but after your initial reluctance you admit that it's kind of nice to have friends other than Mark. It was Meredith who bought you the first baby gift-a lovely, soft yellow chenille blanket-and you became fast friends. Nights at Joe's have been replaced by dinners at home and raucous games of Trivial Pursuit, and your house now feels like a home.
You sit and watch the others decorate the tree, your hand on your belly, and you smile. You never could have imagined a scene as domestic as this, and not once would you have imagined Mark enjoying it. But enjoying it he was, all smiles and laughing and happier than you've ever seen him. When everyone has left and it's just you and him sitting on the couch, basking in the glow of your first Christmas tree together, and he puts his arm around you and thanks you, all you can do is smile because this is what you've always wanted.
That night, when you lay sated and out of breath in the king-sized bed you share, he tells you he loves you and you smile, because you married your best friend and you know not everyone is as lucky as you are. Everything about this may have been unplanned, but it worked out better than you ever could have imagined.
**************************
Little Caroline Sloan makes her entrance into the world on Valentine's Day, and it's a fitting reminder of how much your life has changed in a year. A year ago you were divorcing George, living on Cristina's couch, lonely and in need of a friend after Addison had hightailed it to La-La Land. Your dreams lay shattered in pieces around you, and you could not even start to pick up the pieces.
A year is a long time, however, and one year later you're laying in a hospital bed, cradling this tiny human in your arms and wondering how on earth two imperfect people like Mark and yourself managed to create this tiny, perfect person. It's still too early to tell who she looks like, but she has your dark hair and you suspect that she's going to have Mark's blue-grey eyes. You're just grateful you had a girl, because a son like Mark would have been the end of you.
Mark brings you two dozen pink roses and a pair of pink sapphire earrings, and as the three of you lie in your tiny and uncomfortable hospital bed, you wonder how it was that your life has turned out better than you ever thought possible. You know from experience that life doesn't always go as planned, and you think to yourself that never could you have planned for your life to be like this, just as you wanted it.
Fatherhood brings out the best in Mark, and it makes you love him in ways you didn't know you were capable of. You love the way he sings to her when she gets colicky in the afternoons, the way he changes her little diaper so carefully as though he might break her, how he proudly shows her off to everyone everywhere you go, how he gets up at three am to give her the bottle of breast milk you pumped earlier that day so that you can rest. He is a good husband, but he is an amazing father, and you wonder how Addison could have forsaken all of this so many years ago.
As Caroline grows, you watch in amazement. She goes from being a tiny baby to a chubby toddler seemingly overnight. She has your hair and your skin color, but the rest of her is all Mark. She is independent and fearless and full of spirit, a determined little girl who has her daddy wrapped around her chubby pinky. They are smitten with each other, your husband and your daughter, and you can only sit back and watch the love story unfold.
********************
One year turns into three, then four, and soon Caroline is off to school. You and Mark walk her into her classroom and she cheerfully waves goodbye, as though this is just another day. On the way to the hospital you cry like you haven't cried in ages, because you know that this is just the first of many first steps that will ultimately lead to your little girl leaving home. Mark is more pragmatic and less emotional, but when you get to work you see that his eyes are wet and you know he feels the same way.
That spring Caroline goes to her first slumber party, and you and Mark celebrate by buying a large swingset with a slide that needs assembly and throw a party so your friends can help you put it together. You drink more than you have in awhile and that night, you and Mark are alone for the first time in years and you make love the way you did before you had a child. Until tonight, sex had been stolen moments on in-call rooms and quickies when Caroline was asleep or engrossed in Elmo; tonight it is hot and sweaty and loud and like it was before you worried about little ears attached to inquisitive little girls. When Mark reaches into the bedside table for a condom you stop him, and he smiles and slides into you and makes you come so much that in the morning you ache inside and out.
When your period comes four days later, you're almost disappointed. You and Mark haven't discussed having another kid, but you're pretty sure he's game for it if you are. You get your confirmation a week later when you find the condoms in the trash. That night Mark whispers in your ear, "Let's make another baby, Callie," and all you can do is smile because even if you don't get pregnant again, you're going to have fun trying.
When you miss your period for the month of May, you know you're pregnant again, and the test you take at work confirms it. You buy Caroline a shirt that says, 'I'm the big sister' and you don't show it to her until the morning of Mark's birthday, when you help her put it on before she goes to wake her Daddy up. She tears out of the room and as you walk downstairs to make breakfast, you hear giggling and screeching and the distinct sound of tiny feet jumping on your bed. When Mark appears a moment later, his hair still messy from sleep, he grins at you and kisses you fiercely while your daughter makes gagging sounds from her seat at the kitchen table and you think to yourself that today, your life is perfect.