A/n: This is my first attempt at Scrubs fanfiction. As they say, practice makes perfect. Feedback certainly helps too. Please review.
Unmentioned
She'd had a miscarriage before the divorce.
She and Perry had a lot of things in their past that they didn't mention, and this was one of them. At least, they didn't mention it in words. It was too hard. It made both of them too vulnerable.
But she could see it in his eyes sometimes, when he looked at Jack. In the shuddery breath he would take when his hand rested against her pregnant stomach. And that was how she knew he remembered. Their actions spoke for what they wouldn't say.
That time, that first pregnancy with Perry, she hadn't told him that she was pregnant. She'd still been working up the courage when she'd lost the baby. It had seemed as though she had forever to tell him. To explain that the antibiotic she was on must have counteracted her birth control. That their condom must have broken. That they were going to bring a baby into a world of fighting and dysfunction and hostility that was laced with a filmy layer barely recognizable as love.
They had never wanted kids. But as she had sat there in bed, pain radiating throughout her body, she couldn't help pleading with God to stop it from happening. To prevent the tragedy even as it was occurring.
There seemed to be so much blood. That she could still remember clearly.
It wouldn't stop. It just kept coming and the pain kept throbbing and her mind whirled in a foggy mantra of please, God. And as much as she had wanted to quietly call 911 and leave Perry out of it entirely, the nearest phone was in the next room with him.
She called for him tentatively, unwilling to concede weakness even in the face of an emergency. To her amazement, he came in without argument, still holding the television remote in one hand, a beer in the other. "What?" he said, obviously annoyed. But then he caught a glimpse of her pale face and the blood soaked sheets and the color drained from his face. He dropped both the remote and the beer without a second thought. He understood. Without words, without thought, he understood.
"Jordan, baby?" he said, rushing over to her. His hands gripped her shoulders, steadying her as she sat against the edge of the bed.
"I think I need to go to the hospital," she said, breathing heavily. And he simply nodded and ran into the other room. She could hear him on the phone, demanding an ambulance. She'd never heard panic like that in his voice before.
It was fifteen minutes before the ambulance arrived. She had curled into a ball on the end of the bed, trying to squeeze away the pain in her abdomen. Perry was sitting beside her, stroking her hair and back and quietly cursing the ambulance for not coming faster.
She was loaded onto a gurney and wheeled out of their house while Perry fought about where they'd take her. He wanted her at Sacred Heart. The paramedics seemed to want to go to County. She wasn't aware at the time of who won the fight. She was too busy trying to will the pain away with mere thought. Please, God... At some point on the drive to the hospital, she realized Perry wasn't in the ambulance with her and she felt inexplicably frightened.
They arrived and within seconds, Perry's face appeared above her, concern and pain etched on his features. He'd followed the ambulance, she realized dimly.
She was wheeled in and then suddenly someone was stopping Perry, pulling him away from the gurney, away from her. And for the first time, Jordan felt real fear grip her. She needed Perry there. She didn't want to admit it. She didn't want it to be true. But it was a fact she couldn't quite deny. She needed him to be with her.
She didn't get what she wanted. She was wheeled into surgery, and for several hours she was unaware of anything.
When she woke up, she was in a hospital bed, groggy and disoriented. Without warning or consciousness, she began to cry, and it was only then that she became aware of Perry sitting in the chair next to the bed. In one of those moments neither of them would mention again, he had climbed into the bed next to her and held her against him, rocking her quietly. And she didn't push him away.
She stayed in the hospital for two nights. On the morning they were going to discharge her, Perry had come into the room softly, sitting in the chair next to the bed and running a hand through his hair. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asked.
"I was going to," said Jordan. "But I didn't know..." she trailed off, feeling inadequate and small.
For several seconds, Perry simply stared at her. She knew he was debating how far to push the matter, and she tried to steel herself for a battle. But then, without warning, Perry nodded and stood up. "Let's go home," he said. They weren't going to discuss it. They never did.
And despite the fact they never mentioned it, both times she was pregnant after that she knew that both she and Perry were holding their breath.
