Catherine doesn't say anything to him. He looks at her and sees that her eyes are filled to the brim with tears that are threatening to escape. She pulls open a drawer, and retrieves her purse. She unzips the purse and pulls out a wallet. She opens her wallet and stares at it for a moment. She carefully pulls a picture out of her wallet. She lays it on the desk and turns it to face him. She slides it across the desk. He takes the picture. He studies it. He lays it back down on the desk face up. He points to the picture with his index finger and once again asks, "Is she your daughter?"
"Her name is Layla," Catherine answers.
"Is she your daughter?" he questions again maintaining his patience.
"She's five," Catherine adds struggling to fight back her tears.
"And she's your daughter?"
"Yes," she says softly.
"So why doesn't anyone know about her?"
"It's complicated."
"How complicated can it be?"
"Head over to the crime scene we can discuss this later," she tells him.
He nods and leaves her office. She collects herself and goes to meet Greg and Riley at their crime scene. The end of the day comes far too soon. Everyone has left except Nick and Catherine. He slips into her office as she's on her phone.
"I'll be home soon. I have something to take care of, and then I'll be home. Love you, bye," she hangs up the phone.
Once again Nick sits across from her in her office with the door closed. He stares at her in anticipation. He starts with the question that has been weighing on his mind all day. "Why is all of this such a big secret?"
"I didn't intend for it to be, but there was never a right time to bring it to light."
"You could have told someone."
"I should have told someone, but I didn't. I didn't do a lot of things that I should have. I did everything so completely wrong."
"People make mistakes," he reminds her.
"It's funny how one moment can completely change your entire life. It's easy to underestimate the impact someone so small will have on your life."
"You never looked pregnant. I mean I'm a guy, but that's normally not something that goes unnoticed for nine months by anyone."
"It's not something that should go unnoticed at all but it did. I didn't even notice."
"What do you mean?"
"I didn't know. I didn't have the slightest clue. I wasn't paying as much attention as I should. I should have known long before I did, but I didn't."
"So what made you realize that you were pregnant?"
"Nothing. I wasn't sick, I felt perfectly fine. I suppose eventually I would have realized how late I was, but with this schedule things like that can go unnoticed so easily. I had a doctor's appointment. It had been scheduled for six months. It was supposed to be a routine check up, and ended up being anything but. Doctors always ask questions, but he just kept asking one question after another. I couldn't figure out what was going on. He took a blood sample and told me to come back the next day. When I got home I went through my planner and I realized how late I was, and then I thought that he must have thought that I was going through Menopause, and that's why he asked me so many questions."
"But?"
Flashback~ Friday, May 23rd 2003:
Catherine sits in the examine room waiting for the doctor to come in. Finally she hears a knock on the door, and the doctor comes into the room with her file. He watches her closely, and she begins to feel uneasy.
"What's going on?" she asks him.
"Can you lie back please?" he responds.
"Sure but I still have my clothes on," she reminds him.
"That's fine," he answers her.
"Ok," she agrees and lies back.
He says nothing to her, and she doesn't pay attention to him rolling a machine over to her. He rolls up her shirt and squirts gel on her stomach. She lifts her head and sees that he has an ultrasound machine. "What are you doing?" she asks. Before she can finish the sentence the machine is on, and the probe is smearing gel all over her stomach. She's staring at the doctor's face when she hears a noise. He freezes the image on the screen. She moves her gaze from his face to the monitor. She squints at the picture on the screen. "What's going on?" she asks him.
He points at the screen, "That's your baby," he answers her.
"Excuse me?" she raises an eyebrow.
"Miss Willows you're pregnant."
"I don't think that..."
"That's why I had your blood drawn yesterday."
"I..."
"You didn't know?" he asks her.
"No," she shakes her head in disbelief.
"You're about fourteen weeks along," he adds.
"Are you sure?"
He looks at her and sees that she's in shock. He unfreezes the image on the machine and moves his probe. A familiar noise fills the room, "I'm sure. That's your baby's heartbeat," he freezes the image on the screen again, "And that's your baby."
"Oh," is all she can manage to get out.
He grabs a tissue and wipes the gel off her stomach. "Sit tight I'll be right back," he smiles. The longest five minutes of her life follow. Finally he returns with ultrasound pictures, and a prescription.
"Thank you," she tells him not sure whether to thank him or to shoot him.
"You'll need to make an appointment to come back in a few weeks for an amniocentesis."
"Ok," she nods in agreement.
End of flashback.
"I bet that was a shock," Nick supposes.
"I went home and slept for fourteen hours after that. When I woke up I thought that it had all been a dream. I hoped that it was all a dream, but when I flipped on my light I found ultrasound pictures sitting on my night-stand."
"That's rough," he sympathizes.
"After I got over the shock I realized that I had to come up with a plan. Fourteen weeks is too late to do anything, at least for me. Not that it mattered, because I couldn't have gone through that anyway."
"How did Lindsey take it?"
"I didn't tell Lindsey until I was six months along."
"I just don't understand how you managed to hide being pregnant."
"I wasn't trying to hide it, I mean at first I was, but I didn't have to. I gained a total of twelve pounds. She weighed just over five."
"Was there something wrong with her?"
"The didn't ever figure it out if there was. She was full term, but she only weighed five pounds and three ounces."
"That's a bit on the small side isn't it?"
"Yeah, Lindsey came a week before her due date and weighed almost eight pounds."
"So after she was born and she was ok why didn't you say anything?"
"She spent two days in the NICU and..."
"How long did you take off?"
"I had three weeks off. Came back to work and then I took another three around Christmas."
"Aren't you supposed to take six weeks consecutively?"
"Yeah, but you can't request six weeks off for maternity leave when your supervisor doesn't know that you're pregnant."
"But she was ok?"
"She was fine, I wasn't, but she was perfect."
"But she's ok now?"
"She cries every time I come to work, but she's healthy."
"But you never said anything about her?"
"After she was born I didn't want to hold her, or look at her, or be near her. Thank God for Lindsey and my mother. Eventually I got over it, but I was so convinced that I'd never love her, or even like her."
"Post-pardom?"
"Yeah," she nods.
"She's five," he reminds her.
"After she was a few months old I was fine. When she was six months old I noticed that she was so quiet. Too quiet, babies are supposed to make noise, she didn't. After she was six months old she never cried, or babbled, or grunted, nothing. I was concerned so I took her to an audiologist. He said that her hearing was fine. I wasn't... I'm still not home enough. I just thought that Lindsey was talking for her, but she wasn't. She recognized colors, and people, and animals, but she wouldn't talk. She turned two and I started to get really concerned because she still didn't talk. I was off around Christmas and so I spent every minute with her. I thought that she'd start to talk, I mean she was developmentally on schedule for everything else. Then I went back to work. I got a call one day when I was eating lunch, and finally I got to hear her voice."
