Written for the Lost Comment Fic Battle at lostsquee. Prompt: "Will it ease your suffering?" Cassidy/Christian.
There is nothing comforting about a waiting room. She hates the cheery posters and the out-of-date magazines, and more than that she hates the smell. She's about to get up and leave when her name is called and she heaves her pregnant self out of her chair and into the doctor's office.
As she walks out after her appointment, she notices the pay phone by the door. Someone's using it, but that shouldn't stop her. She should call from this phone, from this hospital, in a state she hopes never to return to, and be done with it. She should make the call, walk away, and move on with her daughter.
She can't do it, and the defeat she feels lands her back in a chair, just staring at the phone.
"That your husband?" she hears from her right, and she turns to find a gray haired doctor standing by her chair.
"Nope." she answers, hoping he'll go away.
He doesn't, just taking the seat next to her like her belongs there. "Then why are you staring a hole through him?"
She ignores him, continuing to stare at the phone, to weigh her options, to think about Kate and her mother, to think about her baby (Clementine, she's already decided).
"Can I offer some advice?" the doctor asks, and she nods, almost imperceptibly, because she could use all the help she can get.
"Make the call."
That gets her attention. "You don't even know what it's about."
"I know that anything's better than sitting here staring at a pay phone and letting it consume you. Don't you just want to think about something else? Don't you want to have a real life?"
"How do you know I don't? You know nothing about me."
"I know suffering when I see it. I know because we all look the same." She looks at him then, really looks at him, and she sees herself, her struggle, reflected back at her in his eyes, and she thinks that he's right, that they are the same.
He puts a hand on her shoulder then, and his voice softens. "This call, if you make it, will it ease your suffering?"
She doesn't answer, and she doesn't have to, but she is about to say something, to touch him, anything to keep their connection, but the man at the phone hangs up, and with that click the spell is broken and they are just two strangers again.
He notices to, and removes his hand. "You make that call" he tells her, and pulls fifty cents from his pockets and presses it into her hand. "No excuses."
He stands then, and she does too, and offers the hand that doesn't have money in it. "Thank you" she reads from his jacket, "Dr. Shepard."
"Christian." he says, and kisses the hand she offers.
"I wish…" she says, and he knows the answer to this too.
"You have time," he tells her. "You'll be a better parent to your daughter than I ever was to mine."
She kisses his cheek then, and realizes that in another time, another place, she might have gotten a drink with him and taken him to her bed, but here, in her condition, this chaste kiss is all she can offer. He turns and walks back, past the receptionist, into the belly of the hospital, and she walks to the pay phone, picks it up, puts his coins in, and dials.