A/N PLEASE READ!
I was having some problems with the progression of this fic. I accidentally left out important details and I just wasn't overall pleased with how things were developing. I changed up my outline and am in the process of rewriting the last few chapters, hence the reposting. Sorry about that.
This chapter contains a lot of the themes and details from the first version of chapter three, but I added a lot and rewrote it almost completely, so please read the new version. Chapter four will be entirely new material, and chapter five will contain a lot of the details from the old chapter four but partially rewritten, and then we'll be back on track. I'm sorry for any confusion.
I'd also like to apologize for accidentally giving out some wrong information. I know I told a few people that the father of Gil's child would be revealed in chapter six. After rearranging everything, this will actually happen in chapter eight.
I hope you enjoy this chapter and please review. :)
Matthew hadn't felt right about living with a patient. It seemed like a breach of privacy, not to mention the fact that Gil might feel awkward about living with her doctor. This was why he had scheduled her first prenatal appointment with an OBGYN friend of his and why he was sitting in a waiting room now, trying to read the book he'd brought with him, but finding it hard to focus when he was still completely flummoxed as to how the hell he had ended up in this situation to begin with.
When he'd agreed to let Gil stay with him just a little longer, he had really only meant an extra night, maybe two at the most while she figured out what to do with herself. He certainly hadn't expected for one day to turn into two, then three, then a week, and then somehow two weeks of living with Gil had passed. It was at that two-week point that Matthew had finally been forced to admit to himself that Gil wasn't going anywhere. She had been quick to inform him that she had no family aside from her grandfather and younger brother and she adamantly refused to get help from the father of the child, so she really had nowhere else to go. His moment of generosity had gotten him stuck.
Oddly enough, he found that he didn't mind all that much. Considering the circumstances that had led to her living with him, Gil was a surprisingly decent roommate. Though she often tried to argue around the rules he had set out for her, in addition to a few more that had come to him later, or complain about them, she did follow them. Her 18th birthday had come a few days after she'd barged into his home, so any worries Matthew had had about the legality of their living situation had been taken care of. After a few awkward days, the two had managed to work their schedules out and hammer out a new pattern to their daily routines. Matthew dropped Gil off at school, went to work, and returned home, where she would already be. He supposed he should have been worried about how quickly he was adjusting to having the teenager in his life, but tried not to think too much about it.
After quite some time spent in the waiting room, Matthew was jarred from his reading when he heard the receptionist call his name.
"Dr. Wang would like to see you," she informed him when his attention was caught. Matthew crossed the waiting room and walked into the hallway leading to the examination rooms where his old friend was waiting.
"Hello, Matthew," Yao greeted him tiredly.
"Hey, Yao," he replied, and then became aware that Gil was conspicuously absent. A slight amount of concern trickled through his consciousness that something was wrong with Gil or the fetus. "Is everything all right with Gil?"
"Miss Beilschmidt is fine," Yao answered and Matthew found himself nearly sighing in relief. "Aside from somewhat poor nutrition, she is very healthy. Her pregnancy seems to be progressing normally. No history of diseases in her family, though it's unfortunate she is unaware of any possible diseases on the father's side."
The last comment was accompanied by a serious look that Matthew couldn't quite decipher. He wasn't sure how exactly to respond to it and settled on, "I see."
Matthew felt an odd sense of foreboding at his friend's hesitation and shuffled uncomfortably. Yao cleared his throat awkwardly before he spoke again.
"I don't mean to pry," he began slowly, "but what exactly is your relationship with Miss Beilschmidt?"
Horror and embarrassment flooded Matthew as he processed the question and suddenly understood all too well the pointed look Yao had shot at him moments ago. Yao thought they were a couple. He thought Matthew had fathered Gil's child. There was a part of him that was hurt that one of his close friends honestly thought that he was perverse enough to take advantage of a teenager, but it was dwarfed by the shock of the implied relationship. The very idea stalled Matthew's brain, caught on the sheer impossibility of him involved romantically with Gil. The thought hadn't even once crossed his mind. It was unthinkable.
"No!" he finally managed to choke out through the shock. "No. Gil's just a friend. It's nothing like that at all."
Yao hardly looked convinced.
"You're my friend, Matthew. I would hate to see you get in any legal trouble," the older doctor said quietly. Matthew shook his head firmly, still flushed.
"Really, she's only a friend," he insisted, with as much conviction as he could muster. Yao looked as if he were going to continue, but before he could Gil exited one of the hallway doors and bounded over to them.
"I'm done," she announced.
"All right," Yao said, wiping the concern from his face and slipping back into the role of doctor. "You can schedule an appointment with the receptionist on your way out, in four weeks. Remember to eat healthy and call if you have any questions. Have a nice day."
They left the OBGYN's office, Gil chattering glibly and Matthew still caught up thinking about what Yao had said. It wasn't until Gil started poking him and yelled in his ear that he snapped out of it.
"Hey, Doc!"
"What!" Matthew shouted in surprise, jumping when he realized she was leaning close to his face and poking him sharply. "Hey, stop that!"
Annoyed with the repeated pokes in his shoulder, he didn't even register that she'd had used that god-awful nickname again. Gil merely shrugged at his outburst, but pulled away and stopped poking him.
"You looked pretty out of it," she offered as an excuse. Matthew couldn't argue with that. He'd been so distracted it was only now that he realized they were a few rows away from where he'd parked his car. Even after they were sitting in the car, he must have still looked odd, because Gil, looking almost concerned, asked him, "You okay?"
"Yeah, fine," Matthew muttered. He shook himself mentally; Yao had certainly made an unsettling comment, but it was only natural to be concerned about a friend when his circumstances looked pretty suspicious. It wasn't really anything to keep worrying about or let affect him so badly. So he pushed the incident to the back of his mind and instead asked Gil how her appointment had gone. Yao's words were completely forgotten as Gil recounted her appointment with a little too much detail.
"The whole thing took forever!" she concluded. "And now I'm craving tacos. Can we go to Chipotle?"
Only slightly unsettled by how quickly and masterfully Gil could change topics, Matthew agreed. Twenty minutes later, they were seated in the Mexican fast-food chain and Matthew cringed as, once again, Gil called him "Doc". She hadn't called him anything else for the last two weeks and Matthew was really getting tired of it. The nickname brought to mind images of Elmer Fudd, West Side Story, and dwarfs. It made him feel old and rather unattractive. He didn't think he could handle hearing it for however long Gil was staying (and he suspected it would be quite some time) so he finally spoke up about it.
"Please don't call me 'Doc'," he said to Gil, once she had paused for breath in the middle of an anecdote. "It makes me feel old."
She cocked her head to the side.
"Well, you are old, right?" she said casually and Matthew cringed. "I mean, you're, like, thirty-something, aren't you?"
"I'm twenty-eight," he ground out, both annoyed and internally dismayed. He didn't look that old, did he?
"You look older," Gil informed him. Feeling slightly insulted, Matthew decided to not respond to that statement and silence fell between them.
"Sooo," Gil finally spoke up after a few moments of silence. "If I can't call you Doc what can I call you?"
"'Matt' is fine," he declared.
"Okay, Matt," Gil said, flashing a grin at him that made it impossible to stay mad at her for long. "But why does being called Doc make you feel old?"
Matthew tried to explain his reasoning behind disliking the nickname, but the age gap between them became woefully apparent, as Gil had no idea about any of the movies and characters he was trying to talk about. Granted, all of the references he knew were still fairly ancient, even for him, but it didn't help the feeling that he was getting older. But while he could excuse Gil not knowing Looney Tunes or West Side Story (as those were popular in the 60's, long before either of them was born), he couldn't contain his disbelief that Gil had never once seen Snow White. Matthew gaped wordlessly at her before he could regain the power of speech.
"How could you have not watched Snow White? It's a Disney classic!" he exclaimed. Gil frowned and Matthew could almost see her mood drop.
"My grandpa never let Ludwig and me watch kids' movies. He said they were too 'frivolous'," she explained with a note of bitterness in her voice. That note was usually there the rare times Gil mentioned her grandfather. All of the negative bits of information Matthew had managed to glean about Gil's grandfather painted an unfortunate picture. He truly empathized with her. Her grandfather sounded like a very strict, difficult man to live with. But before he could comment on it, Gil rapidly changed the subject again and Matthew grudgingly let the topic drop.
*OBGYN is the abbreviation for Obstetrics and Gynecology.
*Elmer Fudd is the name of the rabbit hunter on Looney Tunes who's always trying to catch Bugs Bunny. Bugs Bunny's catchphrase is "What's up, doc?" It was first created in the 30's, but was most popular on TV during the 50's/60's.
*The musical West Side Story has a character of an older man, nicknamed Doc, who tries to harbor peace between the rival gangs (the equivalent of Friar Lawrence). The movie was released in 1961.
*In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, released in 1937, one of the dwarfs is named Doc.
