A/N: This is mostly doctor stuff. Not very exciting, I'm afraid. Sorry!
But major thanks to Bevfank (Livejournal) for giving me info and letting me bounce ideas.
"You're sure you don't want me to go with you?" Cal asked for the umpteenth time as he helped Gillian slip into her coat.
Today was the day of Gillian's first appointment with her doctor. Ever since she had scheduled it she had been explaining and re-explaining to Cal that she wanted to go the appointment on her own, just the first appointment. But Cal didn't seem to understand; he kept asking if she was sure, as if she was going to suddenly change her mind. She knew that he was only trying to show her that he was there for her, but she knew that already and his constant reminders were starting to get just a bit irritating. Or maybe that was the hormones…
"I'm sure." Gillian replied giving the same answer she gave every time he asked. "It's just a preliminary appointment, Cal. It'll be fine. I'll probably be back in an hour, an hour and a half tops. Besides, you have that meeting to go to."
Cal pulled a face and waved it off. "I can always delegate that to Loker and Torres; that's half of my job, telling other people to do things for me. But, seriously, if you want me to come with you it's no problem."
"We've gone over this," she reminded him, sighing, "and we agreed that I would go to the first appointment by myself and after the first appointment, after we confirm that I actually am pregnant and I talk to Alec, then you can start coming with me."
"I know, I know," they had indeed gone over this several times, "It just hard for me, luv. I feel like I'm not really doing anything, and I hate that. I hate feeling like there's nothing I can do."
"Just go to your meeting and try not to worry, okay? I'll see you in an hour or so."
"Alright. See you later, darling." He gave her a gentle peck on the corner of her mouth. "Good luck."
But hopefully, she thought as she waved goodbye and left, she wouldn't need luck.
Gillian Foster was not an impatient person; most of the time she had no problem with waiting. But as she sat in Dr. Monica Anderson's office waiting for the test results from her blood and urine samples, she found that she couldn't stop glancing at the clock and fidgeting. She was very fidgety. Though she reasoned the fidgeting wasn't entirely her fault as she had been made to change into one of those flimsy paper gowns which were awkward and uncomfortable to wear.
She couldn't have been sitting there for more than 15 minutes, but it felt like hours and looking at the clock wasn't helping. It seemed to be taunting her; omnipresent ticking daring her to look back each time she looked away. And every time she did she was dismayed to see just how little the hands seemed to have moved.
Finally, just when the second hand was starting to seem as if it were moving just as slow as the minute hand, the doctor returned.
"Hey," Dr. Anderson greeted, flashing Gillian a smile that was probably supposed to make her feel better but only succeeded in making her realize just how nervous she was, "Good news: judging by the level of HGC in the samples you gave us, I'd say that you're about 5 weeks pregnant. Congratulations."
"Oh my God," Gillian breathed. Even though she had already sort of known, it still sent incredible thrill through her to hear it confirmed by a doctor.
The doctor smiled again briefly, and then her expression turned serious. "This is great news, but I'm going to be honest with you Gillian; given your age and the difficulties you and your husband have had with conceiving in the past, I'd say that this is going to be a pretty high-risk pregnancy. You have a much greater chance of miscarrying or having complications during the pregnancy or delivery than most other women."
High risk. Gillian swallowed. Even though she had been bracing herself for them since before she had even made the appointment, the words still affected her.
"But I don't want to scare you. A lot of things can be done with medicine and technology, so I don't want you to be assuming the worst possible outcome in this, though I do want you to be prepared for it. We'll just have to wait and see how things go, okay?"
"I understand."
"Now, have you started taking pre-natal vitamins?"
"Yes." In spite of her doubts about the accuracy of the reading, she had started taking them right after she had gotten the results of the home test.
"Alright. Well, I'm sure you have questions, so…" Dr. Anderson looked at her expectantly.
"Right! Actually, I was wondering, um," Gillian paused and moistened her lips, trying her best not to seem self-conscious about her question; after all, it didn't really matter what her doctor thought about her personal life, it was none of her business, "When and how would I go about getting a paternity test done?"
There was a small pause between the question and the answer where Gillian could tell that Dr. Anderson was wondering what had happened between her and Alec, but it was gone just a quickly as it appeared.
"Well, there are a few kinds of paternity tests. There are a few post-natal tests like blood tests and cheek swabs, and then there are some pre-natal tests."
"I think I'm more interested in the pre-natal tests; I'd like to know as soon as possible." Yet another thing Gillian was afraid of: the baby being Alec's. She didn't have to be a lawyer to know that if he was biological father, assuming the baby survived, he would have rights as a parent. And she knew that – unless she somehow got him to sign away his paternal rights, which she highly doubted would ever happen – it would be difficult, to say the least, to try and work something out with him, especially with Cal in her life. (He was, after all, the jealous type; he said as much himself.) On top of that, it would be a horrible act of irony for her to be pregnant by Alec now that they were divorced after spending an entire marriage trying and failing to conceive.
"The earliest you can have a paternity test done is at about 10 weeks through Chorionic Villus Sampling, which is where we use a needle or tube to collect chorionic villi from the wall of the uterus. From that sample we can determine the DNA of the fetus and use that to determine paternity. We also use it for several other standard genetic screening tests, so we can determine the paternity then if you'd like."
"Okay, that sounds… that sounds good." Really, she wasn't entirely sure how it sounded; her mind was still reeling a little with the actual confirmation of the pregnancy and the possibilities of everything that could go wrong. Adding this information on top of it was almost an overload, but she had asked for it.
"Anyway, we'll worry about that when we come to it. For now, let's just get your next appointment in order." Dr. Anderson flipped open her appointment book, "Usually in the first trimester I meet with patients every three or four weeks, but because of your higher risks, I think I want to see you in two weeks, is that okay?"
"Sure. It sounds fine." Two weeks was good, it meant less time to spend worrying about questions that she was sure she would come up with once she left the room and cleared her head a little. That and she was sure that Cal would insist on coming to the next appointment and more or less interrogating poor Dr. Anderson.
"How does two weeks from tomorrow at around… four sound?"
"Perfect." That way she and Cal would only have to leave the office a little early, and if things continued to be as slow as they had been in the past few days, that wouldn't be a problem at all.
"Alright, so I'll see you then."
As Gillian left the office a few minutes later she reached into her bag and grabbed her cell phone, gripping it so tightly that her knuckles started to turn white. Finally, after several moments of intense internal debate, she flipped the phone open and dialed the number of the one man she had put off calling for as long as she could: Alec.