Part 1
The campaign trail had reached Omaha before I started feeling off; being on the road was hard on the body, so at first I thought it was just fatigue catching up with me, too many late nights and not enough rest, but when we hit Denver I started feeling sick. I woke up the first morning in the Mile High city and I threw up, I felt dizzy and almost hung over. I couldn't even look at my normal breakfast of a donut and coffee, which I usually ate on the bus with the other reporters on the way to the press conference we where covering that morning.
I promised myself that I would take it easy for a few days; I called into my boss and told him that I had come down with some sort of flu bug, and apologized for my less then stellar writing.
"Gilmore, for a reporter just out of college, you have an ear and an eye that is unrivalled, I am thrilled that we snatched you up. You have a break coming in three days, do you think you can tough it out until then?"
"Sure thing, though if its alright, I think I'm going to skip the drinks portion of tonight and just head back to the hotel and get some sleep. I'll send you my story on the road first thing." I felt hot and out of sorts, everything felt tight and the food along the buffet smelled like rotten fish, I wanted to die and throw up and pass out simultaneously.
"Get it to me by noon; don't push yourself too hard, I don't want you burning out on me, who knows how long you're going to be following Obama, it could be to the White House."
I took his advice and left dinner before it even started, nothing sounded good anyway. I curled up in my bed at the hotel and channel surfed until I fell asleep.
The next morning was a repeat, I woke up, threw up, even though I didn't remember really eating anything the day before, but for some reason it always seemed like I was throwing up corn, I never eat corn, but that's what it looked like. I tried not to dwell on it, and I got on the bus, sans my normal breakfast, which even the thought of made my stomach turn. I grabbed a bottle of orange juice and drank the entire thing before I got to the airport, without giving it a second thought. I boarded the plane, and like a zombie, followed everyone else I was traveling with to our next destination, not even looking to see where we were going.
The orange juice seemed to make me feel much better, and I was more then ready for lunch when we arrived in Ohio, which was a layover point before we got where we where really going, Philadelphia, which I had finally peaked at my itinerary and panicked about.
Philadelphia was a city that I had only been to once, and that was really enough. I drove down to see an art show at Jess' work after a big fight with Logan, and it just hadn't ended well. Since then, Jess and I hadn't spoken. I had gotten a little bit of news about him from Luke, but not much, since Luke and mom had been on the outs for most of my last year at school. I knew that he was doing well for himself and working on a new book, though he had probably finished it, since my information was more then six months old. I made a note to ask about him during my next call home, I also made a note to call home, since I hadn't in a few days. First, I wanted lunch.
I sat at a restaurant in the airport and e-mailed my boss my latest on the campaign before heading for my next flight. It was only just after noon, but I was exhausted and I was starting to feel a bit off again. I had been feeling pretty funky for more then a week and I was starting to get a bit concerned. I just had to make it through one more day and then I had a five day hiatus, which I had planned to spend in Stars Hollow, but now was thinking that I was just going to hide in the hotel room in Philly, instead.
It was dark when we arrived, and I went straight to bed, not even thinking about the five am wake up call that I had set for myself, only thinking about the ten hours after that that I would need to make it through before I could take some time and die quietly.
When that time finally arrived I call mom to check in, wondering how things where going in Stars Hollow, and how the inn was running, Sookie's newest addition, a baby girl named Sami, short for Samantha, and how she was doing with Luke, who had started to move his stuff back into the Crap Shack.
The phone rang five times before anyone answered, and it was Luke. "Gilmore house."
"Hey, Luke, is my mom home?"
"Sure Rory, she's in the shower at the moment, remind me never to fix anything ever again, she's been in there for like two hours."
"What was wrong with the shower?" I ask, not really wanting to know the answer, mom has a way of breaking things just to give Luke an excuse to fix something, even though he doesn't really know that that is why they're broken.
"She broke the nozzle, it was spraying in every direction, which of course means that you don't really get enough water coming from any given direction to get any soap out of your hair, and she was complaining about it for days, and I said, why don't you just use the down stairs shower, and that started a whole long discussion about going up and down the stairs to get ready, and it was really just easer for me to fix it."
"Sounds like. Think you can poke her into talking to her daughter, I'm sure she misses me."
"Well, she has taken to putting your Yale sweatshirt on Paul Anka and calling him Rory from time to time, so yeah, I think she misses you. I'll go see if she can be torn away from the new love of her life, which by the way, two days ago was the closet door, when I fixed that."
"I think she just likes having you back at the house."
"Tell that to the three fingers I have Barbie band-aided, because I keep hurting myself when I'm fixing stuff."
I hear muffled talking in the background before mom finally got on the phone.
"Offspring!"
"Hey mom."
"You don't sound so good." She could always tell; it was a trait, like being able to smell snow before it came, that I had always wished that I had inherited.
"I've been feeling offal. I've been tired and dizzy and throwing up, nothing smells or sounds good to eat, I'm curled up in my hotel room for the next five days before we're moving on to our next location, I think I just over did it."
"How long have you been feeling bad?" She sounded super worried, mom worried, and I felt bad for making her worry about me, I was a big girl, almost twenty-three years old, I could certainly take care of myself.
"About a week, maybe a little more."
"Have you seen a doctor?"
"When have I had the time, or been anywhere long enough. I just have the flu, mom, I haven't been sleeping or eating right, and I'll be fine, lots of fluids and toast for me for the next few days, I'll be fine."
"Where are you? Are you far? I want you to go see a doctor."
"I'm in Philadelphia, and you can't come down here, you don't have time, and I know Luke doesn't; Sookie's home with Sami, so that's extra inn stuff." I really didn't need to see a doctor, I was fine, I just needed sleep and some good food and no stress.
"Doesn't Jess live in Philadelphia?"
"Jess who I don't talk to, who the last time I saw fought with me? Yes, Jess lives in Philly, and that has nothing to do with me being sick."
"I'll have Luke call him, have him take you to the doctor, you need to go see someone, if you haven't been feeling well in more then a week some things wrong, and even if it's nothing, I want to know that it's really nothing."
"He doesn't want to see me, mom, and he surely doesn't want to take time to take me to the doctor."
"Don't argue. I'll have Luke call him and I'll call you right back, you have to take care of yourself, momma isn't there to look after you."
She hung up the phone before I could protest any further, I knew that Luke was just as forceful with Jess as mom was with me, which meant that some time the next day I would get to spend a couple of very uncomfortable hours being carted around by my ex-boyfriend, one who more then didn't want to have anything to do with me.
Jess arrived at my hotel room at nine the next morning with a cup of coffee in his hand, the smell alone from the coffee had me running back to the bathroom and throwing up again. I could feel him pull my hair out of my way and rub circles along my back.
"That's not the greeting that I was hoping for, but its better then slamming the door in my face, I guess."
I put my forehead against the porcelain of the seat and breathed deeply, trying to stop my stomach from convulsing. "Make the coffee go away."
"Wow, Rory, you really have changed, you used to drink like three pots of this stuff on your own." He got up and dumped the coffee down the drain then threw the cup away in the trash can.
"I still do, just for the past week just the smell of it makes me barfy." I sat up and tried to gather myself. "You look good; Philadelphia seems to be working for you."
"Thanks, you look green, let's get you to the doctor and find out what's wrong with you before you start wasting away from lack of sustenance." He helped me off the floor of the bathroom and I followed him out of the room, grabbing my keys and purse on the way.
"So, Luke told me you where working on a new book. How's that going?" I thought I would start with a safe topic, since I had already broken the ice by throwing up in front of him.
"Good, its in the editing process, I'll get you a copy before you leave town, since you liked the last one so much that you bullied every bookstore in New Haven into carrying it."
"It couldn't have hurt your sales."
"No, but it was interesting trying to explain why the majority of my book sales where from three towns in Connecticut, a state that I no longer live in, and rarely visit. I sold over a hundred copies in Stars Hollow, and I know for a fact that there aren't that many people there who have forgotten about who I am, so that leads me to believe that you have more copies of my book then you know what to do with."
"I gave them as Christmas presents, everyone I know has read your book, or at least has a copy of it on their bookshelves."
"Wow, stalker much?"
"Hey, I have a right to be proud of you, I told you that you could make something of yourself, and now I have proof that you did, so sue me."
"So, what are you reading now?"
"Nothing, I have no time, I'm either on the road, working on my next story or at a rally taking notes for my next story, sometimes I even sleep. If I have ten minutes to myself when I'm not eating or sleeping I call mom."
"What happened to the Yale dick?"
"He asked me to marry him; I said no, he left. I think I was really just with him the last few months because I knew it would end soon, and I was going to stick it out for the duration. I didn't want any big changes before I finished college, but really, he wasn't for me, he never really grew up, and when he was starting to, he wanted me to move to California with him and be a trophy wife, and that wouldn't have been me."
"I could have told you that."
"You did tell me that, you told me to fix everything, to go back to school, make up with my mom and get rid of the guy that wasn't me, and I only half listened to you. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble this past year if I'd taken your advice. He spent most of the year in London, and that was heartbreaking for me, and then when he got back it was like we where suddenly in two different places in our lives."
"I'm sorry I yelled at you."
"Don't be, I deserved it, I was acting like a child. I was angry at him for something that happened when we where broken up and I wanted to get back at him. I used you to do it, and the funny part was, while I was kissing you, I didn't think of Logan once. And then it was all over, and suddenly my brain turned back on. I think I would have stayed mad at him too, if he hadn't had an accident and landed himself in the hospital, I think I would have walked away right there."
"I shouldn't have assumed that after three years things could just pick up and be right with us again, not after all the stunts I've pulled."
"Yeah, but you're the one that had his life together; I would have been the one messing you up at that point. God, Jess, I was such a mess when you came and visited me in Hartford, I was living at my Grandparents, serving community service for stealing a yacht, I wasn't in school, I was drinking every night. I don't even know that person."
"You stole a yacht?"
"Yep, right after Mitchum Huntsburger told me that I didn't have it, that I would never be a reporter, because I didn't have what it took. I went to Logan's sister's engagement party, grabbed Logan and we stole a yacht. I wanted to take to the sea."
"Wow, what else has the illustrious Rory Gilmore done since high school?"
"Let's see, I broke up a marriage."
"You where the other woman?" Jess looks shocked, more so then the boat.
"Yep, right after freshman year, at the opening of mom's inn I slept with Dean, after he had gotten married only a few months before. I went away to Europe that summer with my grandmother, after fighting with my mom, and I wrote him a letter, which Lindsay found, and I came home after she had thrown all his stuff out the window."
"Man, Rory, that's really out of character for you."
"You're telling me, that was only the beginning."
"There's more?"
"Then during my sophomore year I wrote a story on this group called the Life and Death Brigade."
"Sounds interesting, anything like the Skull and Bones groups?"
"A little less cloak and dagger, and more gorilla masks and champagne; I went on one of their outings and Logan, who was one of their top members, convinced me to jump off a scaffolding, which had to have been seven stories high, with an umbrella in my hand, and a pulley system keeping us from dying. Then I joined the group, after writing a story on the event and the group itself, with out using names or revealing my sources."
"Okay, that just sounds like you where finally coming out of your shell."
"It would have been if I didn't then start dating Logan, casually, at Grandma and Grandpa's vow renewal, mom, dad and Luke caught us in the bridal suite."
"Okay, that's different, what happened to all those lists you used to make?"
"I still make them."
"When, everything you have told me seems to be you diving in head first without thinking."
"Yeah, I kinda learned over the past three years that me diving is a bad thing."
I was saved from going any further into my mishaps by arriving at a building that looked a lot like a hospital. Jess lead me through a maze of corridors and hallways that I wouldn't have been able to get through on my own, and I was hopping that Jess didn't decide to abandon me, because I was pretty sure that there would be no way for me to get back through them alone.
"You're going to be seeing my doctor, I begged him to fit you in today." Jess opened a door and lead me into a waiting room, then handed me a bunch of papers attached to a clipboard and a pen. We spent the next twenty minutes in silence, while I filled out the paper work and waited for my name to be called.
Finally my name was called and Jess came with me into the cold, sterile room, while the doctor asked me questions and poked and prodded and drew blood and asked for a urine sample, which I left the room to provide. After I was back, the doctor left us alone while he went over the test.
"So, now that you've hear all the sordid things that I've done in the past four years, you mind answering a question for me?"
"Sure."
"How did you really get that black eye that you had when you went to my grandparent's house for dinner?"
"Really, you can ask me anything, and that's what you choose?"
"I'm an enigma"
"Okay, but you're not going to believe me."
"Like I believed the football story, come on Jess, pretend that at one point in my life I knew you just as well as you knew me."
"I got beaked by a swan."
"You're serious?"
"Yep."
"A swan, like a bird, those pretty things that swim around in ponds and don't bother anyone, what did you do to piss it off?"
"Apparently I walked by, because it went crazy and attacked me."
"That's nuts."
"Yep."
"And you didn't tell me this four years ago, why?"
"I was embarrassed, and I didn't think you would believe me, you where so set on thinking that I had gotten into a fight with Dean, who I was so jealous of, even though I had already won the girl, I felt like I was always competing with him for you."
"He was never your competition; I wanted you from the time you wrote in my book. I wanted you from the start because you could keep up with me, and I haven't met anyone else yet who can."
"Not even Yale boy?"
"Not even close, maybe after I've had a few beers, but even then its close."
"Is it my turn for questions?"
"Sure."
"Did you mean it when you told me 'no?'"
"No, but you have to understand I was scared, I was trying so hard to get over you, I wanted more then anything to move on and be able to feel something like I felt for you again, and you where making it so hard, because every time I thought that I was ready to move on, there you where again, telling me you loved me, and it broke my heart all over again."
"It broke mine, too."
"I know, and I'm sorry for that. I think most of the reason I slept with Dean was to try to push you out of my heart, and it didn't work. We dated for like three months once I got back, and it sucked, I wasn't happy, and I wasn't in love with him, I don't think I ever was."
"And then you moved right on to Yale boy?"
"Pretty much, I mean there was some lag time in between, and Logan and I weren't exclusive when we started dating, I was just one of the many girls he went out with, and slept with, and I thought that it would help me move on, but it didn't, in the end he didn't want to lose me, so he committed, this is of course after I showed up at a party he was at with another guy from the Life and Death Brigade, and he got super jealous."
"I can't see you being one of many, you always where special."
"Even while you where parading around town with that blonde?"
"Especially then, I was with her to make you want me more, and to try to take my mind off the fact that you didn't seem to want me."
"It just hurt me."
"I know that now, but I was young and stupid, and I wanted you to look at me with those eyes that where always looking at him."
"So, my turn?"
"Yeah, it's your turn."
"Do you think we can be friends again?"
"When did we stop being friends? I mean, I know that we haven't talked in a long time, and that we kinda let each other fall by the way side, but you have always been in my thoughts, I ask Luke about you when I call, I try to keep tabs, even though you may not see it."
"I do the same thing, though I haven't really gotten to talk to Luke much in the past year, since he and my mom where kinda on the outs."
"Yeah, but they're going strong again. Did he tell you about the lock on the back door?"
"No, what did my mom do?"
"Apparently she got a screwdriver stuck in it, because she couldn't get her key to fit, so she was trying to jam the screwdriver in the make the hole bigger."
"She really needs to stop breaking things just so Luke can fix them, I think she's scared he's going to get scared again and run."
"He wont, he's thinking about moving in permanently, turning the space above the diner back into an office."
"She needs that, she's so lonely, I mean she's got Paul Anka, but he's not really company, even when she puts him in my Yale sweatshirt."
"Your mom dresses the dog in your clothes."
"Please don't be surprise, you've met her."
"That is very true."
Finally the doctor comes back in; he has a chart in his hand, which means that it's not nothing. Only empty hands means nothing, you can go home and drink lots of fluids, it will all be fine. Carts mean that there is something wrong, when the doctor sits down and takes a deep breath before telling you what's wrong, then it's big. The doctor didn't sit down, but he definitely took a deep breath.
"Well, Ms. Gilmore, you're not sick." That was not what I was expecting at all. He took another breath, "the symptoms that you're experiencing are perfectly normal for someone in your condition."
"My condition, I thought you said I'm not sick."
"You're not, you're pregnant." I didn't even know how to react to that, I sat for a moment and just stared blankly at the doctor. He took another deep breath. "I'm assuming by the look on your face that this wasn't planned?"
I can't say anything, or feel anything; I can't even nod my head. Jess takes over for me, while I stare into nothingness. "No, it wasn't planned."
"Are you the father, Jess?"
"No, I really can't give you much information, but I'm guessing that her last boyfriend is the father. He's not really in the picture now."
"And are you going to be around to care for Ms. Gilmore during her pregnancy?"
"Her mother probably will, though I will do what I can." That brought be back to myself.
"Jess, you don't have to do anything, this isn't your responsibility."
"No, but I want to help, you're my friend, and I'm going to be there for you, now why don't you lay back and I'll talk to the doctor, if you need to chime in then go ahead, but you need to rest, you have been more then stressed lately."
I lay back on the exam table, and my head is spinning. In the background I can hear Jess talking to the doctor about regular visits, and my OB and prenatal vitamins and all kinds of things that I'm not ready to think about, Jess is taking it all in, asking questions, telling the doctor everything he can. All I can think about is telling my mother, and calling Logan, if I can reach him, telling my grandparents, figuring out what I'm going to do about a job, since I can't very well stay on the campaign trail for much longer, if at all, with all the stress it brings, because it's not good for either me or the baby. And with all the things I think about, I marvel at the fact that I've already, without really even thinking about it, decided that I am going to have this baby, and if it's a girl, it'll be another Lorelai.