Crown Of Thorns
Chapter One: Discovery
The clinic is busy, even for this early in the morning. Young women are clustered together in the waiting room, holding tickets that show when they'll get to be seen by a doctor. Some of them have people with them – some even have little children already tugging at their trouser legs, or playing noisily with the toys from their pushchairs, throwing them across the room and causing their parents to have to fetch them irritably. Me, I'm sat here with Sam, trying to keep my heart from smashing its way out of my chest. My left hand is clasped in Sam's right, and we both are watching the clock anxiously, as if we're counting down the hours to our own executions. In a way, I suppose we are – if Mum finds out about the mishap we had with the condom, she'll probably wring Sam's neck, and mine too. And if Sam's mother finds out, she'll probably call him a sinner for sleeping with me outside of marriage and tell him she never wants to see him again.
No. This is the best way for everybody. It's just fixing a mistake we made last night, that's all.
Keep telling yourself that, I think. You might start believing it some time.
Sam's hand tightens around mine, and he ends his staring match with the clock to say "Not long now, Bec," in a strained, hoarse voice, before he directs my attention to the ticket counter and then to the scrap of pink paper I'm holding in my white-knuckled hand.
"No," I say, distractedly. "I suppose not." Sam sees my discomfort, and looks down at his feet for a moment or so before speaking again.
"Look, Bec, I –"
"Please, Sam," I say, frustration and anger at my own stupidity bleeding through into my voice, "don't keep doing this to yourself. It's not your fault. Can we just get this over and done with and get out of here, please?"
Sam nods, closing his eyes for a moment or so, and then glancing at the ceiling briefly. "Yeah," he says his voice almost a whisper. "Yeah, okay."
The number on the electronic sign above our heads clicks round to my number. "Number twenty-three?" says the nurse at the desk, looking hopefully at the people milling around her. I put my hand up, and she beckons me over to where she is sitting. It's not easy, picking my way through an assault course of toys, children and pushchairs, but I manage it eventually, with Sam only a few moments behind me. The nurse points me down a corridor to my right, saying "Dr Milbury will see you now. Go down the hall, take the first left, and then it's the first door on your right, okay?"
"Thank you," I say, throwing my crumpled ticket into the overflowing waste-paper bin that sits forlornly at the front of the reception desk, before taking the required directions and then ending up in front of a simple, featureless door that has "Dr Milbury" painted onto it in basic black lettering. I knock gently on the door, and a voice comes from beyond it inviting me inside. Taking hold of the door-handle and pushing the door open, I see that the office inside is full of files piled one on top of another, stuffed full of notes and papers. Behind the desk is sat Dr Milbury, and when he sees Sam and me come in, he pushes himself to his feet and walks over to greet us both with firm handshakes. He has a very tall, slender frame, and his black hair is swept neatly back over his scalp, with not even one strand out of place. His blue eyes are piercingly bright, and they make me feel uncomfortable for a second or two, as their intensity takes me by surprise a little. His mind also feels a little weird, slipping in and out of my telepathy like an eel – but then again, it's probably nothing to be worried about. Plenty of mutants and even baseline humans have strange brainwaves, after all, so this in itself isn't really something to get concerned about. Mum would probably tell me the same thing, so I try and relax a little, breathing deeply and evenly until I'm as calm as I can possibly be.
"Now then," Dr Milbury says, smiling in a friendly sort of way. "How can I help you two young people?"
"We… I need some of those morning-after pills," I say, softly, gripping Sam's hand tightly as I relate the events of the previous evening. "We were having sex for the first time last night and the… the condom tore."
"Ah. I can see how that might be perceived as a slight set-back," Dr Milbury says, nodding in understanding – his face telling me more than his strange mental patterns ever could. "Well, are you sure you need them? Have you been taking the pill at all?"
"No," I reply, honestly. "I really didn't think I'd need it if we were using a condom."
"I see," Dr Milbury says, steepling his fingers in thought for a moment or two. Then he looks at Sam, pointing one forefinger at him questioningly. "And you, son – I'm guessing you haven't had the… snip, would you call it?" To accentuate his point he mimes a pair of cutting scissors with the first and middle fingers of his left hand, and then looks at Sam with an inquisitive expression on his sallow features.
"No sir, I have not," Sam says, his Southern manners kicking in automatically despite – or maybe because of – the situation. I can sense the rigid discipline his family life had built into him returning to hang around his shoulders like a cloak, and it feels as if Sam is actually glad for that right now. I know I would be, that's for sure.
"I see," Dr Milbury says again, before he nods and takes out a small slip of paper from his desk. He pulls out the pen from his top pocket and writes something down on it briefly. "Well, there are definitely some tablets that the young lady can take to avoid pregnancy. You two did very well to get here so quickly – so often I have to deal with the after-effects of kids sleeping together too young and not using protection. It's just a shame that you had to pick a defective batch, that's all." He sighs. "Well, you won't have to worry any longer – those pills I've prescribed for you ought to be enough to help take this weight off your minds completely." He smiles reassuringly, and then rises up from behind his desk to hand me the prescription form that he has just finished filling out. "Just take this to the front desk – they'll know what to do with it." I exhale almost audibly with relief, and before I can say anything, Dr Milbury laughs. "Well, I think that says it all, don't you?" The tension in the room evaporates almost instantly, as both Sam and I feel a great sense of relief flooding through our thoughts. Turning to face Sam, I instinctively reach out to him for a hug, and when he returns it, I feel so safe, so secure, that nothing could possibly hurt me at this moment.
"Looks like we didn't screw up after all," Sam whispers softly in my ear, his voice quavering just a little.
"I guess not," I say, my eyes shut tightly as I press Sam close to me. "Thanks for being here, Sam."
"Not a problem," he replies. "You want to go get those pills, or what?"
"Sure. Why not?" I say, feeling the paper form crumple as I grip it tightly in my fist. "Can't be a bad thing, right?"
Dr Milbury stands up and opens the door for us, giving us a reassuring smile as we walk down the corridor to the dispensary, past all the chaos in the waiting room and the tired-looking staff who are trying to work around every out-of-control child. Stepping up to the dispensary window, I pass the scrunched-up paper through to the nurse behind it, and then pay for the medicine (fortunately, Dad's health insurance covers me pretty completely, so I don't have to pay for the consultation – which I'm glad about. Although it'll be pretty awkward to explain why I had to come here today when he gets his premium through). When I get the tablets from the nurse, wrapped up as they are in a plain white paper bag with the hospital emblem on the side, I turn quickly and make my way out of the door as quickly as I can. Ignoring the directions, I break open the plastic cap of the bottle and put one of the tablets under my tongue as soon as I can.
Sam glances at me curiously as I do so, and I shrug. "Just to be safe," I tell him, after I've swallowed the small tablet. "The sooner I can forget about this, the better."
"I guess so," Sam says uncertainly, before he exhales deeply and then puts his arm around me, his face cracking into a cheerful smile (as cheerful as he can manage right now, anyway). "Well, that probably wasn't the kinda thing you wanted to deal with after last night, right?"
"Not really, no," I reply, honestly. "But at least we know to check our condoms before we use them now, don't we?" Sam bursts out laughing at that – more out of relief than anything else, I guess.
"Yeah, I guess we'll have to," he says, rubbing my shoulder with his hand and kissing my temple. "You want to go home now, or what?"
"Yes," I agree firmly. "Definitely. I don't want to see this place again for a long time…"
*
About a month and half later, I'm once again woken by the sudden and violent urge to be sick. Pushing my bedcovers off myself quickly, I stumble out of my room into the nearest bathroom and empty the contents of my stomach into the toilet bowl, after grabbing a robe to preserve my modesty. Scrabbling for the metal and bone handle, I flush the mess away, the toilet complying with a noisy, grumpy gurgle. Third time this week, I think, sourly, as I wipe my chin with a piece of toilet paper and spit into the hand-basin, after gargling with some mouthwash to take away the bitter taste of bile sticking to the back of my throat. Either I'm sick, or –
I stop myself before I come to the end of that sentence, not wanting to think of the alternative. The tablets I took ought to have stopped that… shouldn't they?
"One way to find out, I guess," I say sourly, before walking as quickly as I can back to my room and getting dressed in a simple black t-shirt and jeans. Pulling on some trainers, I tie my hair back into a long ponytail, tucking my braid behind my ear as I do so, and then make my way to the nearest lift down to the med-lab. Pushing open the clear glass door, I step carefully into the room, hoping that Hank isn't in the middle of some life-changing experiment even at this early hour. Fortunately, I can see him hunched over a work bench at the other end of the lab, two test tubes in a rack sitting to his left, and a Bunsen burner flickering gently to his right. "Hank?" I say, cautiously, hoping not to startle him too much. "Can I talk to you?"
Hank turns from his experiment and smiles widely. "Good morning, Rebecca!" he exclaims, a joyous expression crossing his face for a moment or two. "What can I do for you at such an early hour?"
"I… I just threw up for the third time this week," I tell him, a nervous edge coming into my voice. As Hank approaches me, sudden concern obvious in his face and in his thoughts, I hold up a hand to make him stay where he is for a moment or two. "I don't feel sick now, Hank. I feel fine… except for the mornings." I wipe my hands down over my face, suddenly feeling very afraid and alone. "Do you think I could be pregnant?"
"Let's not put the cart before the horse, Rebecca," Hank says, trying valiantly to reassure me by taking one of my hands in his big blue paw of a left hand and squeezing hard. "You could be suffering from any one of a million things, not just pregnancy. Come with me and we'll sort this out as soon as we can, all right?" He leads me to a long red-leather-covered chair, which is surrounded by machinery that hums quietly. "Sit here, and we can let the computer put your mind to rest." Then, he retreats to a control panel a little way along the bank of machines and taps in a few instructions with his clawed forefingers. From above my head a small, mobile arm extends out of the medical equipment and starts to scan me, from head to toe, with a soft red light. It hurts my eyes a bit when it catches my line of sight, but that's enough for me to look away – I don't feel much like playing "Hard Stares" with it today. Hank nods with interest as the machine transmits its information to the paper print-out in front of him, putting one hand thoughtfully to his chin as he does so – until the machine reaches my stomach. Hank stops then, and moves his hand to his brows, his eyes closing tightly. "Oh dear," he says. "It seems your earlier assessment of the situation was in actual fact entirely correct – apparently, you are almost one and a half months pregnant."
I shake my head in disbelief. "No," I say, almost frantically. "No, that can't be."
"I'm sorry, but the read-out is correct – see for yourself." Hank hands me the neatly torn piece of computer paper so that I can read its text, before he leaves me to sit still for a moment or two, while he drags the chair he'd been using a moment or two ago over to where I'm sitting. He sets it down back-rest first, so that he can rest his arms on the top while he talks to me. "Would you like to tell me something, Rebecca?"
Everything seems to crumple around me then, like a house of cards. It feels as if I've been trapped in one of Mum's puzzle boxes, and can't get out. "Oh, God, Hank…" I begin, trying not to let my emotions get the better of me. "I thought we'd managed to make sure this wouldn't happen…" I bury my head in my hands as I feel angry, frustrated tears beginning to spill out of my eyes. "This shouldn't be happening to me!" I say through an involuntary sob. Hank stands then, puts one of his hands on my shoulders and uses the other to lift my head up so he can look me directly in the eye.
"What's happening to you, Rebecca?" he asks me gently, his blue eyes holding my gaze effortlessly. "What did you want to fix?"
"When Sam and I… when we had sex for the first time… the condom, it split," I say, wiping at my eyes with the back of my right hand. "We went to the doctor's in Westchester to get some morning-after pills, and I took them for a whole week afterwards. I thought that was the end of it, Hank!"
"Hmm," Hank says thoughtfully, rubbing his chin with one hand. "What was the name of the doctor you spoke to? Maybe I can straighten this out for you."
"Dr… Dr Milbury," I say, racking my brains to come up with exactly the right name. Hank nods, then walks over to the telephone on the edge of his desk and taps in the phone number for Westchester's local surgery.
"I should have this sorted out for you pretty quickly," he says, before somebody obviously picks up on the other end of the line. "Yes, hello – good morning, madam. This is Dr Henry McCoy – yes, the Dr Henry McCoy, of the Avengers. Yes, I'll send an autograph to you as soon as I can. I have a patient here who is very distressed and upset, who says she went to your surgery about a month and a half ago to get morning-after pills after a slight sexual mishap. However, they seem not to have worked, and she is now pregnant. Could I speak to the doctor who gave her the medication? My patient informs me that his name was Dr Milbury." Hank's face seems to get drained of colour then – or would have done if it weren't covered in fur. "Yes, I see. I'm sorry to have bothered you. Thank you anyway." He puts the phone down listlessly and then looks at me. His eyes tell me more than anything he could say, but he opens his mouth to speak anyway. "I'm so sorry, Rebecca –" he begins, his voice sounding fractured and about a quarter of its usual strength.
"What?" I say, quickly. "Why are you sorry?"
"They said they've never had a Dr Milbury working there – not today, not last month, not ever."
Oh no… not him. Not now. "But… we saw him. He gave us medicine. He said I'd be all right." I get up off my seat then, anger flaring in my chest like fire. "He said I'd be all right!"
Hank takes a deep breath and walks closer to me, so that he can take hold of my hand and clutch it tightly in his paws. "Rebecca… if this 'Dr Milbury' was who I suspect it actually was, then you of all people should know that lying and subterfuge like this are his trademarks. He has obviously kept an eye on you, despite everything he's said and done to suggest otherwise, and this was too good an opportunity for him to pass up. You are one of his greatest achievements, Rebecca, and he would do anything to preserve your bloodline." He lets go of my hand and then rubs his eyes tiredly. "Quite aside from him, however, you and Sam have a choice to make now, about whether or not you wish to keep this child."
I sigh. "We don't have much of a choice, do we? Even if we give it up, Sinister will still find it."
Hank shakes his head. "That's… not what I meant. What I meant was whether or not you would consider an abor –"
"No," I say firmly, cutting Hank off mid-word. "Never. Whatever I thought before, this is my baby, Hank: mine and Sam's. Not his. I won't let him scare me into anything like that – I'm not his experiment any more! I'm a human being, damn it!" I almost round on Hank then, my hands raised as if to strike him.
"I know you are; you've proved that to me and the rest of this house a dozen times over," Hank says hastily, holding his own hands up to try and fend me off. "But are you ready to make the sacrifices a child would ask of you?" He points at me with one clawed finger, as if he is lecturing me for stealing a cookie from the biscuit tin. "And there will be sacrifices – just ask your mother. She'll tell you the exact same thing I am right now. You and Sam have to be one hundred percent sure you can handle a child, or to bring it into the world at this point would be cruel – for all three of you."
"I'm not going to have this baby cut out of me just because I don't want to be inconvenienced, Hank!" I snap, fury flooding into my voice. "I saw too much of that when I was with Sinister. He treated life like it was nothing." I pause, shaking my head resolutely. "I don't want to be like him. Not now, not ever."
"That's a very admirable sentiment, Rebecca," Hank replies calmly, "but please don't let that same sentiment cloud your judgement. Promise me you'll think about this?" He smiles at me hopefully, trying to defuse the situation.
I sigh. "All right, Hank. I'll think about it." Pausing, a wry smile suddenly crosses my lips for a second or two. "It's funny, you know… just after Sam and I had had sex, I was pretty sure I didn't want this to happen at all – but now that it has, I don't want it to stop. Does that make me crazy?"
Hank half-smiles in reply. "No, Rebecca… it just makes you human. You are allowed to change your mind now and again, you know."
"I guess so." I run my hands through my hair and then look towards the door. "I think I have a date with somebody important. I'll see you later, Hank."
"I look forward to it," Hank says, as I leave the med-lab, the doors hissing quietly shut behind me.
*
When I find Sam, he's having a bowl of dry Captain Crunch in the kitchen, and washing it down with orange juice. I've long since given up on asking him why he likes it this way, since even he can't explain why it appeals to him so much. When he sees me, he swallows quickly and then says "Hi, Bec. Sleep well?" before he gets up off his stool and kisses me hello gently.
"Not really," I say, with more honesty than I maybe should have. "Sam, I'm pregnant."
Sam almost bites through his lip at that (and really, I'm not surprised. Subtlety was never my strong point). "You're pregnant? I thought we'd been careful?"
"Remember our first time together?" I say, my chin dipped slightly towards my chest and my eyebrows raised a little. "When the condom tore? Hank and I traced it back to then."
"But… how?" Sam persists. "I thought we got those pills for you to take so this wouldn't happen?"
"We did that, yeah," I say, frustration rising in my guts as I say the words, "but the doctor we got them from was probably Sinister in disguise, so you can guess how effective they were. He's still watching me, even if it looks like he isn't. The bottom line is… we're having a baby, Sam. You and me. Unless… you'd rather I got rid of it?"
Sam shakes his head firmly. "No. No, I ain't gonna ask you to do that. It ain't right to end a life before it's had a chance to even begin." He smiles lopsidedly. "Besides, Paigey'll want the chance to play auntie, an' who could say no to that?"
"I wish I had your confidence, Sam," I say. "I know I want to have this baby, but I'm frightened of what's going to happen when I do."
Sam gathers me close to him and hugs me tightly. "You don't need to be afraid, Bec. We'll do this together, all right? Like you said – you and me, kid, all the way."
"All right," I say, after a brief pause. "Now all we have to do is tell Mum and Dad."
Well, here goes nothing…