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"It's nice to see you again," his words were courteous but his tone was not. He sounded smarmy and ingratiating to Cam. She pouted and leveled her glare at Angela who was grinning wider than a rainbow as Dr. Hart winked outrageously. At least Cam had gotten to change. She had begged Seeley to let her go home to put on new clothes, and everyone had reluctantly agreed. In fact only Michelle, and damnably Booth, had driven her home. Michelle had decided to stay behind to catch up on work. Cam promised to call her if anything was actually wrong and telling Michelle in an undertone that the rest of the lab wouldn't be staying either. It was just a doctor's appointment, and the only person pig headed enough to hang around her mood was Booth.

She didn't have on a dress; that would have been too obvious for her weight gain. Her body felt irritatingly bloated and cumbersome and she cursed this stupid emotional screw up with all her soul. She did, however, have on a pantsuit that was very slimming. It was all black again, just like yesterday, but this time it was without the significance. She had taken a quick shower too, so her hair was blown dry and smelled clean – like cotton and orchids, just as her shampoo promised. She had not spritzed herself with her rarely worn perfume. Too much practice in the lab (it wasn't good to be around Hodgins' bug room smelling like a rose…literally) going without scent had ingrained her into feeling strange when she did put it on.

"And you're…clean," Dr. Hart pronounced the word carefully, giving her body a long once over that had Cam more furious than flustered. There was some shuffling in her entourage. "And where did the circus come from?" he continued pleasantly, blinking at the no less than six people accompanying her to the ER.

"These are my co-workers," she ground out. Dr. Hart's face brightened and he scanned before pointing an accusatory finger towards Brennan.

"You are the angel I talked to on the phone. Temperance Brennan. I recognize you from the scientific journal you write for." Brennan's face twisted a little in confusion into a half smile as an objection rose to her lips. Booth skulked up to loom behind her in the background. "Ok, ok," laughed Dr. Hart, throwing up his hands from the glare Booth shot his way, "Not an angel then."

"Hardly," said Brennan primly, which Cam actually laughed aloud at, a quick, short bark of surprise. She could tell Booth's clenched jaw was really lolling on the floor, lost in the gutter.

"And they are all…staying?" asked Dr. Hart, drawing her gently away, like peeling her carefully from a sticker sheet.

"No."

"Yes."

Cam gave a pointed glare at Booth. Dr. Hart's face suddenly narrowed as he did the same tilt at 45 degrees with his jaw. His brain was quick and he let go of Cam's jerked away elbow.

"I'm fine," she told them all with asperity. She marched away under her own power, letting Dr. Hart tag along if he so chose. He caught her before the swinging doors.

"Are you fine?" he asked under his breath, holding the doors open for her. "You are looking better than earlier…but your colleagues are very worried. Dr. Brennan said-"

"Yes, I know what she said," sighed Cam, her anger gone, leaving her depleted. "It's just the flu. Could we please, please just sit in a room for 20 minutes and let me go?" He gave her a dazzling smile. Both his bottom canine teeth were just the littlest bit crooked; it made her feel better. No one should be as ridiculously handsome as he was in a profession elbow deep in someone else's body. He should have been an actor. Or a model. Something to utilize his shallowness. Cam smirked to herself.

"Sure doll," he cheekily exclaimed. "This way. I'd love to sit and chat."

Cam, in relief, sunk into a chair. Dr. Hart tutted.

"Nope, gotta sit on the crinkly paper."

"Why?" she was just as mulish as he was, and his childish, debonair attitude was both charming and irritating.

"Well, they want to know that I examined you."

"The clothes stay on," she snapped at the same time. He looked at her, grey eyes wide with shock, before opening his mouth so wide she could see all of his teeth and laughed. He wiped a hand over his grinning mouth, smiling like…like…Cam hit on it, the ridiculously accurate animal quality he carried around: grinning and laughing like a goddamn coyote.

In response to her observations, he grinned wolfishly at her.

"That's fine darling, that's just fine. Let's just talk first before we jump the gun on our first date."

"This is not a date," she smiled placidly, adopting the tone she knew aggravated Booth beyond all reason. It was polite and rational. It was cautioning and patient, as if he were the one throwing a tantrum, instead of making her feel like throwing one. He adopted his own like tone.

"All right then, that's fine. Be a gem will ya, and tell me how it all started." He slipped a little in the Boston brogue, it seemed, out of habit.

"Tell ya all about it?" mocked Cam. She reigned in her sarcasm and continued in her usual professional tone. She called up the voice she used when talking to her interns. Save Wendell. She ignored her thoughts about him, except a brief pang of regret that he had gotten caught between Hodgins and Angela. Stupid, stupid boy. And even worse with how Brennan had so callously thrown his entire life and livelihood away. "What would you like to know?"

His voice was as disinterested as hers as he picked up a clipboard and stated:

"Let's go through the forms. You didn't get to fill them out in the ER. You can fill out the insurance and whatnot later. Name?" Cam was about to make a scathing reply but realized in all probability, he didn't even know her name. She didn't recall introducing herself more than once. Or was it even once? She cleared her throat; she realized even though she had made a point of looking at his badge, she didn't know his first name either.

"Camille Saroyan." She carefully spelled out her last name. His cheeky little grin crept up a corner of his coyote smile, his short bristled dark hair seeming to fall right into the theme. A reluctant, "what?" was torn from her lips.

"People come up with clever awful nicknames for you?"

"They just call me Cam."

"Mealy?" he suggested with a grin, "Cause there's not a lot on you." His accent slipped up again, and he seemed to recall that he was being restrictedly polite.

Cam didn't answer right away, just took a deep breath.

"Dr. Hart-"

"Call me Cole." Cam nodded.

"Why don't we just get this over with. I know what's wrong with me okay? I'm ill, but not diseased. Can we please be done?"

"I'll be quick," he winked until she caught up with his dirty mind. "But thorough," he murmured, looking at her chart. Before she could retort more than a full faced blush at his outrageously provocative comments, there was a knock on the door and Dr. Cole Hart turned, conversed softly with a nurse, took her medical record and spent a few silent minutes leaned up against a counter, reading through her history. Cam stared at the floor, feeling her ears burn. When he spoke, his voice was infinitely softer.

"Yeah, yeah…I'm sorry. Let's just get through this, like you said."

"Fine," she said calmly. She wanted to snap it out.

"Tell me about your symptoms." His sudden, detached and clinical voice crumpled her heart. He was speaking at her like he was a doctor and she was nothing more than a patient. In response, she let her gaze slide out of focus as she used to as a kid, implementing the selective blindness. With no focus, shapes were just blobs of color, moving around; she didn't have to stare at his reactions out of the corner of her eye.

"A couple days ago, I went to a clam bake and had some bad shrimp. I was retching all night. But after that, I felt some nausea, fatigue, aches and pains, headaches – general flu like symptoms."

"That's all?" Cam smiled a half little smile as she shook her head, eyes still unfocused so she didn't have to see him.

"That's all."

"Ok, well we'll draw some blood, run some tests. If it's as you say, I'll just prescribe you an antibiotic and you'll be on your way."

"Thank you."

"Can I-" he hesitated, and her gaze came sharply back into focus, staring at his fingers, stuck between the pages of her medical folder. "Can I ask about your family history?"

"Medical history?" she asked, her voice still clinical. Her face, she could feel, was not. His own polite voice dropped away; he could tell it hurt her as much as she knew hers hurt the others.

"Of course," he said. She nodded heavily.

"Sure."

"Your mother is passed."

"Yes." She refused to point out that wasn't a question.

"She died of…"

"They tell us it was an anuryesim."

"Did she fall?"

"I don't know. We think it was the stress."

"Living through the loss of one child is very-"

"Is there a point to these questions?" snapped Cam. He stopped. He looked not smug but sober, still retaining the sharp coyote instincts. His ears might as well have stood up on his head with interest. He basically said aloud that he realized he had stumbled on a touchy subject.

"No," he finally sighed. "There's not a point."

"I'm-" she bit off sorry. She wasn't sorry.

"I'll get a nurse in here for your blood work and be back in about half an hour."

"That's fine."

"I'll put a rush on the order to make sure you can get out of here."

"Thank you."

"You still up for that dinner?" his sudden change in tone had her cracking a reluctant smile.

"You don't want to be with me," she laughed lightly, making a joke out of her true pain.

"I don't know you," he said honestly.

"Don't worry about it," she shrugged it off and without thinking, waved a hand towards the wall. "Neither do they."

"That man…he's a-"

"Yes," Cam smiled to herself, knowing that they, without a single moment of eye contact or explanation in the last five minutes, already could hear beneath the current. "We were together once."

"What-"

"We were too similar."

"But you're-"

"Oh no, he's with –"

"Yes, I can see that."

"It's complicated."

"So much drama where you work," he clicked his tongue and they finally met each other's eyes, laughing.

"Just today."

"Really?" Cam laughed and nodded.

"No." Cole Hart drummed his fingers against the counter top as he turned to go before with a swift spin on the balls of his feet, he practically jumped across the room in two leggy, smooth strides. He was too far into her personal space as he put both his hands on either side of her hips, leaning his face inches from hers. Cam was sure her breath had been crushed out of her from his very presence the moment he had spun around.

"Tell me the truth." His voice was a husky timber and he smelled like a wood fire and mountainsides.

"Okay," she squeaked in surprise.

"Where were you yesterday, when you didn't go home?"

"I…I…" she felt her dark eyes flickering as his grey ones, suddenly stormy and slate, flicked over her face.

"He died yesterday."

"Yes," she whispered.

"Do they know?" She didn't answer and he shook the table on which she sat, causing her to jump. He was almost manhandling her, the cop would a suspect; she had never been thus treated in her life, but she slowly shook her head. She blinked and he was by the sink again, picking up the clipboard. She wondered if she had just imagined everything that had happened.

"I'll get the nurse in here," he said brusquely as he stalked out. Cam raised a hand to her face cautiously. Her skin was on fire.

It had been real.

It was boring as hell waiting in that room, but Cam didn't dare to slink back into the ER as shaken as she was; she knew she couldn't stand up to the onslaught of both Booth and Sweets attacking her artless façade. She'd had a stressful week. Actually, ever since everyone had left, everything had been stressful; she thought that her lab family coming back would heal everything, but the tension had hurt her.

"I have good news and bad news!" His loud voice and the door slamming open startled the hell out of her. Cam spun around, busy studying a very boring painting that they had mass reproduced in all the hospital ER rooms. She was startled at the strange expression on Dr. Hart's face.

"Oh God," she slowly sank into a chair. He had on the face when as a doctor, you told people they were dying. It was one reason Cam had left the force; she had hated being the one to knock on the door and as a woman cop, she was always the one chosen to go, regardless of her emotional nature. She had always hated doing it as a doctor as well, so she had just skipped the tough part to become a coroner. She had been used to the dead by that point. She hated the living. So going to tell Michelle about her father had been one of the hardest things she had ever done, and had stirred up a lot of ugly memories of other's people's pain blazing through the air, devouring them but still scorching her on its way by to their emotional destruction.

"No, no," Dr. Hart assured her hastily. "That's not…you don't have the flu. You're expecting."

"Expecting what?" dropped out of her mouth like gum that slipped from her tongue.

He looked seriously at her, alarm flaring into his grey eyes, bordering on gold suddenly, a strange metallic hue; was that the color of pity?

"You're pregnant." Cam looked blankly at him as he fluidly with an animal grace, dropped into a crouch in front of her. He put his big warm hands on her crossed knees and Cam was startled to realize she was ice cold.

"That's not possible," she whispered. He looked at the chart and handed it to her wordlessly. She flipped through her levels, disbelieving. "It's not possible," she told him more urgently. "I haven't…I haven't been-" And suddenly his face flared with panic.

"You haven't been with anyone? Is this rape?" For the first time he truly believed her cold shock and utter surprise. Of all the things, she had never seen this coming. She wanted to kick herself. She was a doctor.

"No," she said slowly, looking back. Her eyes scanned the chart. "I'm what," she squeaked in surprise, staring at the weeks. "Fifteen weeks? Already? I'm…" her eyes flooded. "I'm out of the first trimester?"

"You were going to get rid of the baby?" he asked seriously. "Because you can't now. The twelve week limit…you'd have to get an abortion illegally and as your doctor I-"

"I'm just…so…" Cam could hardly breathe for surprise. Her mind flicked back over her symptoms: The vivid dreams so real she could touch them. The restless insomnia. The despair and feelings of isolation, of loneliness, of being completely misunderstood. The crushing fatigue that was constantly tiring her. Her aching joints, her backaches. Her swollen feet and ankles. Her knee jerk reaction to burst into tears at the slightest of provocation. The bizarre cravings for unlikely combinations of food such as peanut butter and popcorn, or jam and chocolate. The unreserved craving for more food and bigger portions. The desperate need to glut on healing chocolate. The constant irritability. The overblown adrenal glands. The sweating, especially at night trying to sleep. The similar symptoms to depression. The ashenness. Her lank hair and sickly pallor. The dizzy spells. The nausea. And oh God, the morning sickness. She wanted to laugh hysterically. She was a doctor for Christ's sake. How could she not have diagnosed morning sickness?

"Do you have any ideas who could be the father?"

"Don't even say that," she whispered, her lips numb. But she knew. It hit her like the car crash from earlier and she could see her face was transparent as he carefully watched her reaction.

"You know?" he asked quietly. His Boston brogue made the words richer, more velvety.

"I don't know his name," she said dully. "It was one night. It was…months ago. God. Almost…four months ago."

"Perfect timing."

"I'm on the pill," she said in the same, disinterested tone. "I've been taking it all this time; I didn't miss my periods since I rarely have them anyway. There's no point when I'm not sexually active." Cam was wincing inside, flinching away from the pitiful clinical words falling from the pathetic truth of her life.

"That's okay," he said, his hand over hers. Cam drew hers away, slumping against the back of her chair. She was a pariah. She shouldn't even be touching him.

"What will I do?" she wondered aloud, completely shocked. She realized he was no longer touching her because his head was stuck outside the exam door, conversing quietly with a nurse before he came to sit on the chair beside her, neither even looking at the crinkled examining table. She stared at her hands. "I'm a coward," she nodded glumly. "If…if I had known. I would have…taken care of it."

"Just like that?" he asked quietly; she could hear the anger there. She wanted to sigh. Great. A fundamentalist.

"I have a daughter. I don't have a husband, I don't have a provider I don't have-"

"Anyone?" he guessed shrewdly. Cam closed her eyes, ignoring him. She knew her mind should be racing, but it was moving sluggishly like she was moving through a thick liquid.

"There's no question of keeping it, of course." Dr. Hart sprung to his feet.

"WHAT?" She looked at him blankly. "How can you say that?" Cam finally caught up.

"No," she hastened to reassure him. "I mean, I will obviously keep the…the…keeping it. I meant...there's just no way of getting rid of it now. I have to carry it through, regardless."

"Oh," he sank down. They were silent.

"I just don't know what to tell…"

"Who?"

"All of them…to Michelle…"

"That's your daughter," Cam nodded.

"I suppose this is good." He looked at her critically.

"What do you mean?" Cam looked at him for the first time, honestly, tears in her eyes.

"I mean my life is over."

"A baby is a new beginning. A second chance," he contradicted. She gave him a watery smile.

"Not the…" she folded her hands, upset and still bewildered, over her stomach. "I mean my career. God, what will I tell them? What will I tell Michelle? What will I tell-" she cut herself off, staring under her palms folded across her middle. How could she not have known? The dreams of Tony especially…she never remembered her dreams.

"And even…even if I gave it up for adoption," she breathed slowly, "that's not the hard part. The hard part is being pregnant when I'm…" She shook her head harshly, feeling his too intense gaze on her.

"When you're what?" he pressed. She laughed and pushed away from him in her chair, rifling through her purse.

"Well, for a woman who is three months pregnant and going on four in a week…you look very well. You haven't gained a pound," he was pandering to her vanity and she new it.

"I've gained six," she snapped, her hands shaking as she scrabbled for her lip gloss.

"You don't do that, do you angel?" his voice was musing, thoughtful. She rolled her eyes, determined not to ask what he was talking about. Her unspoken question though, seemed enough to prompt his answer. "Share."

"What? I share."

"Emotionally?" he asked shrewdly, and Cam stared at him blankly.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Camille – Cam – whichever you like-"

"Please stop," she said very softly, very simply. "Don't make this more awkward than it has to be." His grey eyes studied hers as she broke the contact so he could stare at ebony lashes instead. She studied her cuticles on swollen fingers. "I know we were…mocking each other earlier." She didn't say flirting because she knew where he was going with this. "But…I just wanted to say thank you for all you've done today Dr. Hart and I-"

"Cole."

"What?"

"I said, call me Cole." Cam stopped, confused, not needing to finish her speech or hear his, to comprehend their argument. It was unnerving how most of their conversations were predetermined and mutually understood.

"You don't want to be with me," she said, canting her own head to match his at an angle, "especially not now." He looked seriously at her, a hint of a snarl flitting about his upper lip.

"Why not?"

"Because," she laughed in surprise, but the laugh was despairing, ironic. It twisted her pretty features into something cruel, ugly. "Well –" she gestured at herself. "Because."

"You're still beautiful." She saw his face flush a little and she knew that wasn't supposed to have slipped out.

"Please make this simple," she said quietly. "Don't make this more difficult than it has to be."

"What's simpler? I'm just a boy," his coyote smile was creeping up the corners until his lips were pressed together, twinkling at her.

"If you say I'm just a girl, we'll be too far back in the 90s to come out unscathed."

"You have to talk to them. They're all waiting for you." He had done it again, with one of his lightning fast quicksilver moods. He had been teasing, enchanting, and now he was serious, a doctor again.

"I'm going." She stood quietly. He loomed up beside her and was within a breath of her lips before she could speak. She stumbled back and he caught her hand, reeling her around just as he had mere hours before, finding her shaken from the car crash. She had been breathless with rage before, and now was breathless with something more.

"Stop it," she protested, ripping her hand from his grasp. He didn't protest. He was laughing at her. He wasn't making a sound, but the smug grin on his face and his twinkling grey eyes were mocking her.

"You like it."

"What are you talking about?" She made her voice bored, uninterested as she straightened her blazer.

"You like me because I'm a scoundrel." Cam - who had been admittedly smitten, had firmly ruled she would leave it amicably and drive quietly out of his life- turned. She frowned, but her frown was a sham.

"You did not just compare yourself to Han Solo." His grin, already wolfish, went positively demonic with fiendish delight. He started forward, laughing beneath his black eyebrows.

"Oh doll, for you to even get the reference…that's the real treat."

There was a sharp knock on the door and they were immediately on opposite sides of the room, two skittish animals circling the thick tension. The nurse stuck her head in.

"A man outside has been quite insistent that we check on your condition, Miss Saroyan." Cam didn't bother to correct the appellation; she didn't need to ask who was being a brat either. Seeley.

Her grief, worry and downright fear of what they would say crushed her, freezing her to the spot. She jerked her head like a stop motion picture.

What they would say. Her father, who still thought she was pure. Her sister, who would never finish mocking her for this. Her friends. What Booth would say, especially, knowing she never for one moment lapsed in control; now here she was with the ramifications of loosening it for one moment. She hated herself – she should have known better. She didn't deserve an easy life. Somewhere out there, she had been predetermined to have one like this. She should have married Andrew. She should have raised Michelle and had more children in a traditional family. She should have looked the other way at his infidelities. Then she wouldn't be here.

"Come on angel, move it a little faster." She realized Dr. Hart – Cole – had been at her elbow for half a minute, trying to edge around as her fingers were frozen convulsively around the doorknob to the hallway towards the exit.

It was surreal; like moving in a dream. She only had taken the tiniest of steps to keep herself balanced from his push behind her before she was propelled out the double doors, staring blankly at their expectant faces, lined up in a perfect row. Some stood, some sat ramrod straight, but all waited in perfect silence.

"Well?" demanded Hodgins at last. Cam opened her mouth.

"I'm pregnant," she said simply.

Or that's what she wanted to have happened. Instead, she stood, gaping like a fish, silhouetted in the light behind her.

"I forgot my purse," she mumbled incoherently and stepped back through the doors, screening her from sight, letting them worry for a few moments longer.

Without looking around, she slammed her back against the wall and slumped to the floor, hands to her temples, pulling on fistfuls of tight hair cached in her ponytail. She pushed her knees to her face. What she needed was time. It had been what – five, ten minutes – since she had known? She needed a game plan. She never just "winged it" like Angela. She was too ordered like Booth and Brennan. She had to have a plan. She had to know; and to know, she needed to know how she felt. For God's sake, how could she tell her abstinent (she hoped) seventeen year old daughter she cavorted at bars and had sex in the bed upstairs while her daughter was at a graduation party? How could she even look her in the eye? How could she ever tell the ba—Cam crushed her eye sockets into her kneecaps, folding herself smaller, fitting the pieces together like they were made to.

God, she hated feelings. She hated looking at them or acknowledging them, because as soon as she did, a thousand others clamored for her attention. It made her weak, and it made her vulnerable. She had been there and done that, and it had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

She needed quiet, and alone, and space. Space. She wanted to laugh bitterly. She had that, in plenty. If her heart was a hotel, and all her friends were guests, well emotionally speaking, they had checked out of her life a long time ago. Especially Booth. She didn't have many other friends, and she was too proud to beg them to listen. Too stubborn. She realized pitifully, she was crying.

The hormones, she wanted to console herself, but that only made it worse. She sobbed into her knees but they were restrained, tiny hiccups. She needed to get to a bathroom, to a sanctuary to fall apart in peace before she could see them.

She never got what she wanted.

"Oh no, no angel, don't cry. Don't cry." A big, warm body slumped down next to her, arms encircling her shoulders and for one perfect second she allowed herself to melt away, to let someone else finally lift the huge burden that she had carried invisibly, silently, proudly. For one perfect blissful second, she allowed someone to hold her before she snapped that she had to hold herself. She had been dropped too many times, bruised and battered too many times, to let herself fall for this again.

She threw her head up like a startled horse and without so much as a sniffle wiped her eyes away, careful not to smear her makeup. She felt pale, and knew by the wrinkles Dr. Hart was starting to get around his eyes, she was wan, and the hand he had clenched into his own, was clammy.

"I can't do this," she whispered. "I can't tell them."

"It can't be a secret forever," he said seriously, chafing the palm of her hand between his own. His thumbs began to circle gently over the back of her skin; Cam remembered his Star Wars quote and almost smiled. She also almost smiled at the fluttering that was far deeper than the pit of her stomach that his touch curdled awake. She wanted to laugh at the irony.

"It will be as long as it can," she answered firmly and stood. He came with her, and encircled his palm around her forearm like a manacle. She was shaking; she knew it and could feel herself swaying, trembling beneath him. "I can't tell them," she repeated quietly, but it came out as a mumble.

"When did you last eat?"

"When you fed me this morning," she said with a crooked smile.

"Two crackers?" he said in disbelief. "You've had 2 crackers in the last 24 hours?"

"Longer than that," she whispered; she wasn't smiling anymore. A pair of abandoned crutches rested on a stretcher but in her mind they were planted jauntily in the grass, a message of hope and walking scored on them, and on her heart.

"What do you need?" he asked seriously, and his worry was overflowed with his Boston brogue. She couldn't even look in his eyes; she stared at the floor and shook silently, an aspen leaf on a barren mountain.

"I just need…" she groped for what she needed and found it. "The dark…the…quiet…" She felt the beginnings of a migraine stir in response to what seemed like heaven.

"Okay," he rumbled; it was more a growl than actual words. "Okay. We'll get you an empty room." He led her softly down the hall and turned down an abandoned corridor. He left her at the mouth of it to check ahead and she stumbled after him, hardly able to see the shining surface she tread. She must have been wavering like a drunk because he was back and he wasn't having any of it. She screeched a miserable little protest, more a tiny whine of sound than thrashing, when he scooped her off the linoleum as if she weighed as much as a baby. He caught a single word that made him grin wolfishly: scoundrel. Cam concentrated on staying awake as he gently laid her on the bed.

"Lie down here I'll go talk to them." Cam clenched at his jacket, content to dream in the dark.

"You can't tell them," she forced her fingers a little deeper into his jacket sleeve. "You can't tell them." He nodded soberly and stared down at her.

"Apparently neither can you."