Author's Note: Yes, I am alive! My muse however went on a tiny vacation and she has forgotten I have a handful of stories to wrap up. But worry no more - I'll tie her down and force her to give me stuff, I swear! Until then, please enjoy this little Rachel piece. Remember that Glee belongs to Fox and Ryan Murphy. Spoilers to the season 1 backnine episodes.
Summary: She wonders if this was how Quinn felt in those last few moments before she checked the results of her own test: the panic, the fear, the anxiety, the desperate hope. A Rachel-centric piece before fatherhood and to be a father.
motherhood: an interlude
When her cell phone timer went off and she paddled to her bathroom, her hands were shaking so badly she was afraid she was going to drop her bejeweled phone. Her heart was jumping, stomach knotting, mouth so dry she couldn't swallow. She'd have thrown up, if she had anything left in her stomach, but, since she didn't, she was forced to deal with a lump on her throat so large she thought it was going to suffocate her.
She had been lying to herself for weeks now. First when she missed her period. It had been in the midst of dealing with her laryngitis and she had been too panicked about her voice and her future and Jesse to worry about that. By the time she realized she was late, she dismissed it as a result of the stress she had gone under thanks to her disease and the situation with Jesse.
Then she began feeling sick all day. Every smell in the world would set the sickness off, leaving her tired and drained, nauseated. Jesse had come back from his spring break trip by then, and once he learned what was happening he wanted to take her to her family's physician to have her checked out. But she calmed him down, and then started talking about her search for her mother, and they both forgot about it.
But then... It had been a month since then, and her nausea hadn't gone away. Her period hadn't come. And, after everything with Quinn, Rachel couldn't help but grow worried. So, this afternoon, after watching through guarded eyes as Jesse dominated the stage with his Bohemian Rhapsody, while everyone was busy fawning over Quinn and her new baby, she sneaked out to the nearest drugstore and bought a test. She then hid it within her purse as everyone came back from the hospital, without Noah and without Quinn, talking excitedly about the little girl they all had come to love as their own.
Her secret weighed down on her as they stood on the stage, Jesse so close yet so far at the same time. Her showface was safely affixed on place, her shoulders squared as she gripped at Artie's wheelchair's handles, feeling the rubber cut into her palm. As the judges declared Vocal Adrenaline winners, she saw Jesse celebrating and, for the first time in months, she hated him. She hated that he could be happy, while she carried around the weight of her life-changing secret. She had so much to live, so many dreams, several plans...
All hanging on the package she has hidden within her purse.
Her eyes were blurred when she locked them on the white stick. She was still dressed in her costume for Regionals, the dark golden and black of her outfit glinting under the light of her bathroom. They had chosen the dresses with the empire waist to better accomodate Quinn's burgeoning belly, her comfort in the last days of her pregnancy a priority to both Kurt and Mercedes. She absently wondered if they'd do the same for her, if this test came out positive. The irony of the situation falls on her, and she wonders if this was how Quinn felt in those last moments before she checked the results of her own test: the panic, the fear, the anxiety, the desperate hope. She didn't want to be pregnant, but at the same time, she wanted to be, even if it is to keep a little part of that all-consuming love with her, a part of Jesse with her, forever, for her to love, care, cherish. For her to know that, even if it ended badly, it still resulted in something beautiful, precious.
Quinn wasn't under the same circumstances, the rational part of her brain told her severely. The baby girl her teammate had birthed earlier today were conceived out of a mistake, out of insecurity and fear and revenge. It was not the case with her – no matter how badly she and Jesse crashed and burned, she was still desperately in love with him, and, if she was pregnant with his baby, she'd proudly be a teenage mother, a statistic.
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and her fingers curled around the thin stick. Breathing deeply again, she opened her eyes and stared at the double pink line on the test. She didn't need to check the test's box to know what that meant. Positive.
She was pregnant.
The reality of everything crashed down on her and she crumbled to the floor, tears cascading down her cheeks as she saw nothing more but blurred golden and suffocating black.
Once she was adequately calm – never fully calm, never, until she had this sorted out – she picked herself up from the floor and stripped the wrinkled dress, letting it pool at her feet. She untied the hairband and drops it to the floor next to her costume, standing in front of her mirror only clad in her black bra and panties. She wanted to look down at herself, but her numbed brain wouldn't allow her – so she stepped under the shower, eyes closed as she tried to keep the new fresh batch of tears at bay. She didn't know where to go, who to run to, who to ask for help. Not when her safe haven, New Directions, was torn apart thanks to their loss at Regionals. Finn and Noah, Mike and Matt would go back to being jocks and rule the school. Quinn, now that the baby was no longer in the scene, would definitely follow Brittany and Santana back to the Cheerios. Artie and Tina had each other, same with Kurt and Mercedes.
And where did this leave her? Alone, pregnant, scared, even more of a loser with New Directions gone.
This realization crashed at her and she felt powerless for a moment. Alone in McKinley, unable of transferring to Carmel – knowing she'd be rather unwelcome at Vocal Adrenaline – where could she go? What could she do? Who would help her throughout the nine months she has ahead of her?
The tears threatened to fall again and this time she let them. She cried until the water ran cold. Once she couldn't stand the coldness against her skin, she stepped out of her shower and, too tired to go through the motions of picking an outfit, picked up her costume and, after drying her body (she tearlessly mourned the loss of her figure; secretly couldn't wait to see her stomach swollen with her child), slid it back on. She tied her hair back with a ribbon, scrubbed her eyes clean of tears and decided to go find either Noah or Quinn. Both having gone through this, they were her best bet at help.
She picked up a jacket, her phone, her keys. Vainly hoping, she checked her phone – no missed calls, no unread texts. No sign of life from the man who unknowingly threw her life into a tailspin. She bit down at her lower lip, hard, so hard it stung and she was surprised she didn't feel the coopery taste of blood in her tongue once she let go. She pressed down her speed dial button for him, pressed her phone to her ear as she hoped against all hopes that he'd pick up.
He didn't and her heart shattered a little more inside her chest.
(It was okay; she wouldn't die – not when she had another little heart beating inside of her).
(She thought of getting rid of that little heart, and she felt so physically sick she dropped everything and rushed back to her bathroom, retching the contents of her empty stomach. So – yes, abortion was off the table).
(She'd have to ask Quinn which were her criteria for choosing adoption over being a mother and going ahead with raising the baby).
With her shoulders squared, dry eyes and shaking knees, she marched out of the house, closing the door and locking it behind her. Dad and daddy were out for the weekend, as usual, and for once she was thankful her fathers would jump at every chance to make a romantic weekend off anything. They'd be all over her as soon as she walked through the door, and the thing she needed the most now was time.
Time to process everything, time to get used to everything, time to deal with everything.
(With every step she took, she could feel the decision strenghtening inside of her. She'd have his baby. She'd love his baby. She'd give up everything to keep this baby. It was her baby, his baby, their baby. A proof that, if only for one night, they had loved enough to last a lifetime).
(She'd never doubt Jesse, in his own, dark, twisted way, loved her. As much as she loved him).
She started the engine of her car and drove to the hospital.
She was a mother. She had decisions to make. Noah would help her until she could reach Jesse and tell him herself.
(He had rights and she would never deny him those).
Her hand rested gently over her golden-covered stomach and she smiled.
She was a mother.