Gemma Morrow nee Madock
Summary: Apparently, Gemma has an announcement to make. And it's a big one.
Ladies and gentlemen, you're gonna want to take a seat.
Gemma wakes up early one Saturday morning, tucked tightly under her husband's tight grip and woken by the sudden urge to vomit. Tossing Clay's arm and the blankets off of her, she rushes as quickly as possible to the washroom adjoining their bedroom. She barely has time to lift the toilet seat before the contents of her stomach are burning their way back up her throat - different concoctions of alcohol and bar pretzels. Sometime after she makes it into the bathroom, she feels the tendrils of her hair leave the nape of her neck and Clay's fingers tickle at the skin there. His other hand rubs soothing circles into her back, his way of telling her that he's there for her.
Gemma dry heaves for a little while after her stomach is emptied, before slumping against Clay's warm chest and trying to catch her breath. Her husband's free arm encircles her waist and he shifts them both so that his back is against the bathtub and she's resting between his legs. The sound of the toilet flushing is distant and drowned out in Gemma's ears, but she watches with half-lidded eyes as the mess of her stomach disappears. She can feel an oncoming migraine and exhaustion begins to hit her in waves - the middle of the night grog paired with the retching was beginning to wear it's effect.
"You okay?" he asks quietly, finally releasing her hair and pressing a gentle kiss to the side of her neck. She nods and hums lightly as he brushes her bangs away from her eyes - the tenderness rare and very welcome. "What was all that?"
"I don't know," Gemma admits truthfully. The vomiting was new - she hadn't been throwing up before tonight. "Wasn't the liquor - I didn't drink that much. Maybe it's me being sick to my stomach with worry over you."
She's referring to the shit with the Mayans. Clay was gone from the house more often than not, and when he did manage to find time to come back to the house, he was almost always covered in blood - it was a toss-up on whether or not it'd be his. It had been alright - nothing that she wasn't used to - until Tig and Otto rung her up early one morning and told her to meet them at St. Thomas. Clay had a slug in his left thigh and could've bled out on the operating table if they hadn't gotten him to the hospital when they did.
Heat was coming down hard on the Club, and her small little family had been facing the consequences of it.
"I'll be fine, babe. I always am," he assures, drawing her away from her thoughts. She nods her head - not in the mood to rekindle the argument they had earlier about this very topic, and tired from draining her stomach. She's tempted to fall asleep there, sitting against her husband's chest on the floor of their bathroom. But he shakes her shoulder eventually, startling her from dozing off. "Can you stand?"
"Yeah," she replies, although she's not quite sure.
"Wash your mouth out with water - you don't want that gross taste in your mouth when you wake up," Clay says, patting her thigh gently. Gemma remains pressed against his chest for a few more moments before standing and going to the sink to do as told. The water washes the acidic taste of bile from her mouth, and is cooling when she splashes it against her face. It makes her feel much better than she did originally.
Clay disappears from the bathroom for a bit while she's at the sink, but then returns with one of his shirts. She opens her mouth with confusion, but then looks down at her negligee and finds that some vomit had made it's way down the bosom of it. She wrinkles her nose with disgust and accepts the shirt from his fingers.
Once freshly changed into his shirt and back in bed, Gemma and Clay curl against each other - Gemma being the little spoon and Clay being the big one. Subconsciously, Clay laces their fingers together over her stomach and Gemma runs her thumb over the back of his hand.
"I want you to go to the doctor tomorrow," he says after a while of laying in silence. "Make sure it's not the flu or some sort of stomach virus. Could even be food poisoning."
"I'm fine," Gemma snaps. "and you worry too much. I'm fine, really, baby. And I promise, I'll take a load off tomorrow. I'll stay in and rest."
"You promise?"
"I swear it," she vows, giving his hand a light squeeze.
-x-
Of course, Gemma should never trust Clay to leave well enough alone - he was too involved, and he worried too much about her. He leaves early that morning after receiving a call about a shootout that happened by the center of the city, so she doesn't have to worry about him shadowing her for the rest of the day. But she should've known he'd send someone over to check up on her - it doesn't take long for her to be joined by company.
Gemma has her head in the toilet when Colleen and Luann arrive, purging from her stomach the last of the cold cereal and whiskey combination that had been her breakfast. They call her name a couple of times, and then realizing where she must be, make a beeline for the bedroom.
As expected, both women find her crouched over the toilet, breathing hard and trying to regain her energy. She's trembling all over by the time she flushes and hugs herself, pressing her back against the bathtub. They can't help but pity her for a moment - sitting there, tears streaming down her cheeks, trying to compose herself enough to get back up.
"How many times since he left this morning?" Colleen asks, leaning in the doorway. Gemma looks up at her, her wide hazel eyes still red with tears and shakes her head.
"Twice. I can't keep anything down. It's bullshit," she sighs, running a trembling hand through her blonde and black hair. Luann looks around the bathroom before glancing warily back at her best friend, her ice blue eyes serious and determined. "No, Lu. I know what you're thinking."
"Maybe there's something wrong-"
"Damnit, Luann, I said no!" Gemma snaps. Luann sobers up even more at the use of her entire name - she only used their entire names when she was pissed. But you know what? They were pissed too. They were pissed that she could be so callous about her health that she'd refuse treatment before going to see somebody that could help her.
"And I said you're going," Luann fires back. Colleen glances between the two of them - already sensing what's about to happen - before beginning to back away. Gemma glares hard at her best friend and stubbornly crosses her arms over her chest. A challenge. Alright then, she wanted to fight dirty - they could fight dirty. "If we have to drag you by your ankles and walk all the way to the doctors, you're going to the hospital. I don't care what you think you need."
Luann takes a step towards her, and Gemma instinctively pushes her back against the tub. As if the tub will suddenly move to accommodate her choice of distance.
"Luann Delaney if you so much as brush your fingers against me, I will rip those money-making tits off your chest," she growls. Luann rolls her eyes and lurches forward, grabbing her by her bicep and yanking her up. Gemma tries to claw at her face and Luann stealthily moves her head away, but Gemma takes the distraction to snatch away her other arm and punch her in the nose. This forces Luann to release her, and she scurries past her to the bedroom - plopping with smug satisfaction on the bed.
"Damnit, Gemma. I'm trying to help you," Luann grunts from the bathroom floor, hands clutched on around her nose - the bridge pinched between her index finger and her thumb, her head tilted back to stop the bleeding. She looks around, and is startled to find Colleen gone - nowhere to be seen.
"I know you are, darling," she says. The sudden movement made her dizzy, so she curls on her side and watches her best friend with doe-like eyes. "But you know how I feel about hospitals."
She does. Gemma watched her brother die in a hospital bed, followed by her mother. She'd watched countless SAMCRO members be carried into the emergency room - bullets lodged in some various body part, groaning and begging for morphine. Only to be carried out in body bags because there was nothing St. Thomas' shitty employees could do - they weren't advanced enough for some of the shit the boys had needed then. She was not going to a hospital. In Gemma's slightly twisted mind, hospitals weren't associated with healing. They were associated with death.
"You probably have the stomach flu or maybe even food poisoning. Not some disease. Going to get checked out won't be the end of the world," Colleen pipes up. She looks up from the other side of the bed - her eyes slightly widened. She'd ran for cover when they started fighting - of course, she would evacuate the line of fire. Gemma rolls her eyes. They were going to persist at this and so would she until they ended up at a stalemate. Either that or one of them won.
"You're right. It's not. Except for when it could be." Luann looks at her then, understanding slowly filling her blue eyes. Oh. That's why she was so afraid to go to the doctor. She was afraid they would tell her something fatal - like she had stomach cancer and three months to live or some shit like that. She was afraid that going to the doctors would lead to her own demise.
"Babe…"
"Don't," she sighs. "Just… don't. You're right. It's just a stomach flu or food poisoning. Or some shit like that. Can we leave it there?"
"If it is… something. Would you really rather not know?" Colleen asks. Gemma swallows hard. She had her there. She would rather know. She wouldn't treat it of course - Unser's dad had cancer and all he did was scream 'sick!' everywhere he went. She didn't want to be bald and frail and sick-looking. She'd just want to know. So she could tie up any loose ends and then just await things peacefully.
"Once again, you're right," she exhales. "Fine. I will go to the doctor. But we do it today and all shit is off. Before, during and after. No leaving my side, girls. I mean it - no porn shoots or whatever the fuck you do in your free time Col. If I die in there and you aren't there with me, I'm coming back to haunt you. And SAMCRO."
"You mean it?" Colleen drawls. Gemma barks out a laugh and Luann snickers quietly on the bathroom floor. "We're not leavin' you Gem. We're not married, but we're besties until death does us part."
"Yeah. Unfortunately, death might come quicker than expected."
"Stop it!"
Once at the doctor's, things go eerily solemn. No light-hearted banter, no prodding, nothing. They all make a quick stop to the emergency room - which is, unsurprisingly empty - where they explain Gemma's situation and simultaneously get Luann's nose treated.
Gemma is then lead to a small room - alone, much to her obvious dismay - where she has a series of strange tests done on her and asked quite a few questions - some of which even she doesn't know the answer to. Each test makes her more and more nervous and each question puts that little inkling of fear into her chest. By the time Luann and Colleen are allowed to wait with her on the results, she's bristling with nerves and ready to jump out of her skin.
While they wait for the doctor, Gemma sits impatiently on the awkward little bed, cringing at the uncomfortable paper beneath her ass, and quietly reads the anatomy poster on the wall. Luann files at her nails, making sure they're catlike and painstakingly sharp as she does. Colleen seems to be taken with one of the magazines on the rack, humming lightly to herself as she reads the latest Hollywood gossip.
Eventually, after what feels like eons but is really only an hour and a half, the doctor finally slips into the room. She's cute - short, blonde, wide green eyes hidden behind a pair of bifocals. Despite her being adorable, she has something stern and motherlike about her - so Luann guesses she couldn't be much older than thirty, maybe thirty-five tops. The younger blonde briefly wonders how hot of a pornstar she'd be, and the thought has her snickering quietly to herself.
"Alright, Mrs. Morrow, sorry for the long wait. I was waiting to receive the test results before I came in," the doctor says, flipping through her paperwork. "I'm Dr. Thoms, and I'll be handling your case."
"My case of what?" Gemma asks. She blindly palms around for one of her friend's hand until Luann offers hers up to her - leaning awkwardly across just to hold her friend's hand. It kills her back to stretch like that, and she considers scooting her chair closer to the bed, but then Gemma gives her a death grip and all she's thinking about is when it'll be the right time to let go.
"You didn't know? You're about six weeks in."
"What? Six weeks into what?" Gemma snaps, obviously done with the doctor beating around the bush. Doctor Thoms beams excitedly and leans against the door. All three women watch her lips as she counts to ten before exhaling deeply, her smile not once wavering. Luann would be nervous about that if she could think about anything else other than how much her hand hurts right now.
"Sorry. It's just… this is my favorite part of dealing with all clients. Mrs. Morrow, I am delighted to inform you that you're pregnant."
"Fuck," Gemma breathes, as soon as she hears the 'diagnosis'. She drops Luann's hand so that she could lean back onto her hands and looks up to the ceiling, trying desperately not curse her husband to hell for knocking her up. There were so many wrongs with this, she can't even rake her brain into finding a right.
"Holy shit," Luann and Colleen exclaim, both of their eyes widening in either excitement or shock.
"That's great, babe! You're gonna be a mommy!" Colleen continues, grinning broadly. Colleen was the only one of the three girls that looked forward to the day that her husband decided to settle down with some little tikes, and was conveniently the only one married to a man that didn't want kids yet.
"Oh," Dr. Thoms says, ignoring the bubbly woman and sending a worried glance to her patient. "I take it the baby wasn't planned, then?"
"No, no it wasn't," Gemma sighs, giving a nervous laugh. "I'm only nineteen - we live in a goddamned apartment. I can't have a kid yet. I can't."
Dr. Thoms nods in understanding and pushes her glasses up on her nose, her brows furrowing for a moment. Taking her clipboard, she sits on the small rolling stool and rolls it so that she's directly in the middle of Gemma and her friends with her body angled towards Gemma.
"There's no need to be distressed, ma'am," the young girl says. "There are plenty of options out there for you. Abortion is one, although personally I don't recommend it. With your heart condition, there is a good chance you could go into shock or have a heart attack. There's also adoption, but that would mean carrying your child to full-term - and there's a slim but very present chance that your baby won't live past birth with the heart defect and then you wouldn't be able to fulfill your promises to the adopting parents. All of these options are viable and at your disposal, but the best option is simply to go full-term with your child and raise it yourself."
Gemma sits there for a moment, processing everything she's hearing. The doctor was right - the best case scenario here was for her to go ahead with having and raising her child. That doesn't mean she would automatically go with the best case scenario - she couldn't possibly bring kids into the world that she lived in. Especially not right now - when her husband came home covered in blood every night and her biggest worry was whether or not she'd be widowed by the end of the night.
Vulnerability was liability and a baby would be a vulnerability not only to her and her husband, but the Club. There's no doubt word that the President of SAMCRO was having a kid would spread, and then she and the child would become a prime target for their enemies. People targeted weakness, and a baby was a definite weakness.
And that's only if the kid survived past birth. Her heart condition had run in the family for a long time - most women in her family had one or two children that died to it. Nathaniel had been the child that succumbed to it for her mother. And her grandmother had two twin boys that died at the same time due to the disease. It was no secret what happened to Madock women and babies. She couldn't let a kid live in the constant fear of whether or not it's condition was going to act up and it was going to die in a few days. She'd gone eighteen years of her life wondering why the hell her ancestors did it - why her mother did it. She wouldn't - no she couldn't - allow any child to wonder that as well.
"A baby," Luann breathes from beside the doctor drawing her out of her thoughts. Gemma looks to her, her eyebrow quirked slightly.
"It's not safe, Lu. I can't do that to Clay… I can't do that to myself," she admits weakly.
"It's not-" Colleen cuts herself off, warily glancing at the doctor. "Can we have a moment?"
"Of course you can," Dr. Thoms says, standing and pushing the stool back to where it was originally sitting. "I have a few other patients to tend to, so I'll be back in about thirty minutes. When I return, I'll bring your prescription for prenatal vitamins and a pamphlet for safe mothering along. I also have a few questions to ask, so I'll have to bring the paperwork for that as well. Just to let you all know, I'll be your doctor for the duration of Gemma's pregnancy."
The trio of girls simultaneously thank the doctor, and she smiles warmly at them before gathering her clipboard and slipping out of the room. Luann and Colleen wait until the door is firmly closed before they turn to glare at their best friend.
"It's not going to die, Gemma," Colleen soothes. "It'll be fine. You know we'll do everything in our power to keep them safe - not just me, and Lu, and Clay, but everyone in SAMCRO and at the Clubhouse. This kid will be their life."
"That is only if it makes it past birth. Or have you already forgotten about the hole in my heart?" she asks rhetorically. "I cannot - in good conscience - bring an infant into the world."
"Then screw your conscience and think about Clay," Luann snaps, fed up with her pessimistic attitude for the day. She'd taken as much of it as possible because she knew Gemma had a natural fear of hospitals and also because she knew what it was like to have a fluctuating hormonal imbalance. But now she's looking for Gemma to have at least some optimism. "What if he wants a child? You really going to take that away from him?"
Gemma pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, worrying the soft flesh there. The blonde had an extremely good point - both she and her husband may still be young, but that didn't mean they didn't want a family. They'd had the discussion a handful of times - once after he proposed, a few times after their wedding, and a couple more times after their friend's weddings. At first, she'd made him wait until she was sure she wouldn't be a bridesmaid again - she didn't want to look fat and swollen while all her friends looked drop dead gorgeous in the designer gowns - and now she had decided to make him wait until she was at least twenty-five. After all, she was still a teen technically. She wanted to live a little first.
But… she could see the eagerness in her husband's eyes. She could see the way he lit up around her Colleen's abundance of nieces and nephews, or the way his eyes strayed a little too long when he saw a four-wheeled pram rolling down the sidewalks. Gemma knows in her heart of hearts that he'll be overjoyed when he hears the news, and the thought that she'd even briefly considered adoption or abortion… that would crush him.
Even despite the chance their enemies would take advantage of the baby, use it as a playing chip in some sort of game… or that they might not even be parents for more than a handful of hours past birth. Clay would want to try. She knows that Clay wouldn't give up until the last breath left that poor kid's body - and maybe not even then. And now, thinking about it, she feels guilty for not even giving the child a chance.
Blinking away tears that had begun to brim in her eyelids, Gemma gives a quiet laugh before saying, "C'mon. My husband needs to know he's gonna be a different type of daddy."
