A/N: Hi all! This is my first Unforgettable fanfic. It's something I've been thinking about for a long time (since the premiere of season two). It's set somewhere after season two episode two. I hope you like it and remember to R&R!
Also, my descriptions throughout the fic of NYC may not be exactly spot on as I have only visited three of four times.
Ch1
The feeling hit her again, even harder than it had the last time. She felt as though she couldn't keep it at bay any longer. Suddenly, without warning, Queens homicide detective Carrie Wells walked quickly, so as not to raise suspicion, from her usual office chair to the rosy-walled women's washroom near the squad room.
Once inside she leaned against the sickeningly pink wall and breathed a few times as deeply as she could manage. As hard as she tried, she couldn't control her urge. Carrie dragged herself to the toilet stall across the bathroom. If anyone else came in the washroom, she didn't want them finding her like this. She leaned over the gleaming white porcelain bowl of the small, surprisingly clean toilet and lost the few scraps of food she had managed to force in to her mouth this morning.
Carrie pulled down on the shiny silver handle to flush the toilet. Slowly, she slid the slightly sticky metal bolt out of its lock and gave a small shove with her shoulder to push the pale pink wooden door open. What, or rather who, she saw standing just outside the stall in question giving her a knowing look, made her stop dead in her tracks.
"Tell me everything," Jo said, arms crossed across her chest.
Still rather shell shocked, Carrie told Jo what she had told anyone who had noticed her condition, or cared to ask.
"It's a stomach flu, Jo. Nothing else. I'm fine," Carrie assured her. She took a step toward the clear soap dispenser and squirted a few drops into her hands.
"Carrie, you haven't had a fever, you've only been sick in the morning, you haven't been at home, recovering and, most importantly, you've been avoiding coffee. You're obviously pregnant. The only question is, and, really, it is the most important, who is the father?"
What followed could only be described as an uncomfortable silence. Carrie turned on the warm water tap of the silver sink and then the cold. Carrie turned off the cold metal tap, but still said nothing.
"Please tell me it's not that idiot James you've been telling me about. I mean really, he couldn't have-" the medical examiner was quickly cut off by Carrie.
"James isn't an idiot," she said. At that moment it was almost as if a momentary staring contest started between her and Jo. A half a second later both her and Jo burst out laughing.
"Okay…" Carrie admitted reluctantly. "Maybe be he was a bit of an idiot, but he was nice."
Jo took a few deep breaths to recuperate from their laughing fit.
"So… is he the father," she asked, as earnestly as she could, considering their earlier giggle fest.
"No, oh god, no," Carrie replied quickly. Though James was nice she couldn't imagine raising a family with him.
"Well then, who is it? Have you had any other boyfriends recently,"
Quickly, Carrie averted her gaze. She dried her hands on a piece of brown paper towel.
"I have to go," Carrie said as she started to make her way towards the door.
She did an awkward walk-run back to the Major Crimes division of the NYPD. When she reached a wall with a mirror, Carrie took a moment to give herself a good once over. The way her ruby hair was slightly frizzed and the formation of heavy purple bags under her eyes reminded her of a day not too long ago:
She'd been nauseous, tired and outright annoyed at everyone for days. Heck, even Jo had told her she was acting cranky!
Reluctantly, Carrie finally agreed to go to a doctor's appointment at her local hospital near her apartment in Queens.
It was a dull, grey Tuesday when she walked into the small hospital, the instant smell of rubber and something sterile threatened to overwhelm her. As quickly as she could, Carrie mad her way to the receptionist's counter at the other side of the hospital. She waited in the line that consisted of an older gentleman who was paler than a sheet, a young woman with a child who, no matter how hard she tried wouldn't stop crying, and a tall man with crutches that appeared to be too short for him and and exceedingly large plaster cast on his right leg. After checking in with the characteristically bored receptionist, whose monotone voice was the opposite of the neon green hair she sported, Carrie proceeded to waiting area C to see her usual doctor. As she sat on the hard plastic chair she couldn't seem to sit still. She tapped her in manicured nails (the smell of nail polish made her want to lose what meagre scraps of mild food she was able to consume), her feet clad in stylish yet comfortable boots mimicked the movement of her hands.
"Carrie Wells," the soft, paper thin voice of doctor McMahon said as she looked around the waiting room. Carrie picked up her leather jacket and her purse and followed the doctor to her examination room.
Doctor McMahon was an older woman who, for as long as Carrie could remember, which was quite a long time, had looked exactly the same. She had her silvery hair tied up in a ponytail, a pair of wire rimmed glasses whose size seemed disproportionate to the rest of her face and a white lab coat with an ID tag that read: DOCTOR JEANNETTE MCMAHON in bold black font. Her examination room had changed as little as the good doctor had. With it's two plastic chairs, multiple medical devices and the colourful posters proclaiming what numerous diseases affected in your body, it was as familiar as any doctor's office you might have seen on television.
Carrie settled in on the examination table, the clean off-white paper crinkling beneath her.
"So, Carrie," the older woman started her usual line of inquiry, only changing the first name she started with. "What brings you here today?"
Carrie directed her vision to a colourful poster just to the left of where her doctor sat. She couldn't bring herself to look the doctor in the eye.
"I've been feeling nauseous, tired and cranky for the past few weeks or so," Carrie answered.
Taking notes, the doctor nodded her head. She paused for a moment and looked up at Carrie.
"I'm just going to do a quick examination, then send you for some blood tests. After that you will come back so that we can discuss the results.
Carrie waited patiently as the doctor looked into her ears and throat and checked her temperature. Nothing was off.
She then proceeded to the blood clinic, and aside from a hiss when they inserted the needle, she didn't feel a thing. She then went back to her doctor's office.
After another agonisingly long wait, Carrie was called back to doctor McMahon's office. The doctor had a small smirk on her face, the kind that crinkled up her eyes at the side. In her like of work there weren't many happy endings.
Carrie sat back up on the dark green examination table.
"Well, it's not bad news," doctor McMahon said with her ever present smirk.
Carrie instantly relaxed; it was nothing life threatening.
"It is, however, quite important you listen carefully."
Carrie perked up, looking almost like a meerkat who hear an approaching predator.
"The blood work confirms my suspicions; Carrie, you are pregnant," the doctor's smirk grew a little with this last statement. She had known Carrie for the last ten years and was glad she finally had something good proclaimed by a doctor instead of the living nightmare that was Alzheimer's.
The news had been much too much of a shock. Everything had finally been going well! The last thing she needed now was change, let alone one this influential.
As she looked back, Carrie was ashamed at her reaction to the prognosis. Her breath hitched and her vision began to swim. Her first thought was of the night she and Al had spent together- surely that was when the baby was conceived. How was she to tell him that their one night stand that was supposed to have no strings attached had suddenly turned into having an arresting cable hooked onto it, refusing to let the one night stand be only that.
"No," she told her doctor, "you're wrong. I can't- I just- I can't be pregnant. It's just not possible."
With this, Carrie picked up her belongings and furiously began wiping tears from her eyes.
She snapped herself out of her reverie and continued on her way to the squad room.
When she finally got there she was greeted by photos of a woman with bright red hair who was covered in blood and deathly pale. Needless to say, this did nothing to quell her impending nausea. But it wasn't the gore that irritated her stomach, oh no. It was the gentle swell of the victim's abdomen.
It was double homicide.