A/N: Hello, Chicago P.D. fandom! It is a pleasure to be here. I've watched Fire for a long time before P.D. but I finally got in because of Linstead! Bear in mind, I'm still very new, and I have…odd character preferences, but I am really excited about this story! This first chapter is short, but believe me, it will get longer.
Also, as a forewarning, I suck at updating, I'm trying to avoid that by writing a few chapters at a time, and hopefully that will help with posting regularly. I'm trying to bank on at least once a week.
Also, I could find no stories in ANY fandom dealing with this topic, even though babyfics are so common. And this situation is much more common than we think, thus, someone had to have this happen. Bear with me, it won't all be doom and gloom. And if you're offended, please, that was not my intention. Stick with me, it'll get better.
December 15th, 2016.
In the Now.
They had thought something was different, before.
Didn't catch it till late, of course. That would be too convenient.
But she remembers the whispers, the murmurs of nuchal translucency and short femur and ASD/VSD, smoothed over by "we can't be sure", "everything could be normal", "don't worry honey, you just focus on staying healthy, let us take care of this.
Yeah.
Like they knew. Like it was them who had to deal with this.
In the Before.
Voight gruffly congratulated them, and Erin subtly slips an ultrasound copy (early one) onto his desk.
The next time she sees it, it's when she's picking up a photo of Justin she knocked over (no center of gravity these days).
The photo is tucked behind Justin's picture, well-worn.
Voight kept in on his otherwise completely bare desk, but out of plain view. It is so much like him, Erin can hardly believe it.
Alvin and Adam, they act strange around her, like she's changed somehow.
Kim brings over juices and snacks and sits with her while she cries at a bladder dysfunction commercial, swearing up and down never to tell anyone, on threat of death.
("I'm serious. They'd never find you.")
And Jay….Jay would be cartwheeling, she suspects, if he knew how.
He squeezes her, not to tightly, and she sees tears in his eyes.
(It takes her a good two weeks to convince him that they can still have sex, but sometimes he still freaks out about it, insisting both shouldn't be in there at the same time.)
Aside from the copious vomiting, which gets painfully annoying at times, the first six months are a breeze.
She barely gains any weight until her sixth month, never gets any serious side effects, feels energetic and almost entirely average.
(Well, so she thinks. Jay tells her that the day he cleared all beer out of the apartment, he had never heard such words come from her. )
And Erin…..Erin had the Terror.
It starts the moment she sees the plus sign, and it grows every time she hears the loud fluttering of a heartbeat, or feels the small resistance of a kick.
She felt it, every minute of every day, while this actual real live human being grew inside her. While her belly stretched and her boobs got painfully uncomfortable and her body ceased to be her own.
She felt it every time someone mentioned some permutation of "not long now", because yes, not long from now, that was when the real thing started. Where she was responsible for not screwing up a real human being. For making sure they were normal enough to become a doctor or a lawyer, to make sure they grew up and got married and got a house of their own and saved the world and became president and that was all on her and she couldn't do that.
She could barely manage not to screw up her own life, and had stumbled, entirely by chance onto the most amazing guy she could have but that didn't mean she was ready for this.
And she knew, she knew the second that baby's murky eyes looked at her, they'd know too.
She was unworthy of this.
She didn't know how to do this.
In The Now.
Those eyes, they do stare at her. Erin is frozen in terror, even when the nurses take the baby away.
(For tests, they say. More don't worry, and let's not assume until we know for sure.)
Why they are doing this dance, Erin doesn't understand.
Because she does know for sure.
She knew it the second the baby was placed, screaming, covered in fluid, on her chest. The second the baby met her eyes, she knew.
She doesn't need the tests.
Doesn't need the reassurance.
Doesn't need Jay's this doesn't change anything speech.
Because it does, it changes everything, and she knows.
She can't explain how, but she damn well doesn't need to look at what they call a simian crease, or the gap between her baby's toes. Or the flattened nose bridge, or the almond eyes.
Erin Lindsay is responsible for a child's life. Erin Lindsay is a mother, and it is the After.
Erin Lindsay is responsible for raising a tiny baby girl with Down Syndrome, and nothing, nothing anyone says or does, will keep the Terror away.
A/N: …okeydokey, you like?