Nasty business, family. But there is more than one kind of family. Review with who you think was the hero.
"So what is it?" Cole asked the doctor aggressively as she finally stepped back into the room.
"Bleeding in the second trimester," she began in a warning tone that had Cam's stomach churning, "is actually not as uncommon as you think."
"What?" Cam asked blankly.
"It is not as uncommon," the doctor reiterated. She looked at Cam. "You're how old?"
"Thirty three," she whispered, her voice cracked.
"Well you aren't quite 35 or older, but in someone of your stature and build, pregnancies are harder without the added fat cell count. And you don't look to be putting on excessive weight."
"I've gained almost eighteen pounds!" exclaimed Cam.
"Yes," said her doctor drolly, "and that puts you at 133 pounds. Your starting weight before the pregnancy was only 115."
"You only weight a hundred and fifteen pounds?" exclaimed Cole, in an insulting rather than admiring tone. Briefly forgetting her crushing worry, Cam gave him her best withering glare over her shoulder.
"I'm only five foot three. It's not that strange."
"You are very thin," the doctor frowned. "Which explains why the pregnancy might have been exacerbated. Although you've never previously had children, signs of high blood pressure run in your family. Do you smoke?"
"She doesn't!" Cole barked. Guiltily, Cam nodded a tiny bit.
"Occasionally," she admitted, not meeting Cole's gaze, "but only once in a while, in... high stress situations." The doctor nodded, taking notes.
"Had any falls recently or during your pregnancy?" Cam bit down on her lip and opted for a cautious:
"Yes." More note taking going on. Cam hung her head in shame. She knew what she had told Angela was true.
"As I can't be positive if placental abruption has occurred in your mother's family history before, I could also tell you that it is not an uncommon problem to be passed down. It isn't a genetic marker in and of itself, but since many of the symptoms are, the resultant problem is not unusual."
"Placental abruption?" Cam asked carefully.
"Usually prefaced by a sharp stomach pain followed by vaginal bleeding." Cam was already nodding.
"That happened this morning."
"Roughly 1 in 100 women have this problem."
"You said it was common!" Cole barked.
"No," corrected the obstetrician with a half irked smile, "I said it's not as uncommon as you might believe. Dr. Hart, Dr. Saroyan, your titles precede you. You have both gone to medical school, is that correct?" She waited for their mute nods. "So you know statistics better than most. I have seen and treated this many times in my practice. I have many patients. The numbers add up."
"Well how do we fix it?" Cole asked aggressively. Cam made a slashing motion with one of her hands to get him to back down.
"Well you don't," the doctor smiled gently. "It simply means that Dr. Saroyan will need to have a C-section. There is no question in my mind of trying to force the baby through torn placenta; it may drown or be affected during childbirth. That is not always the case and if you would like to try to have a natural birth, I would understand, but the risks are much higher."
"That's okay," Cam breathed, her head suddenly floating away in ecstatic relief and causing her big mouth to talk for her, "I was never really looking forward to that level of pain anyways."
There was a moment of tense laughter.
"And I recommend bed rest. I won't keep you here in the hospital because you are very lucky. The ultrasound shows the tear to be very minor. The baby is not having an abnormal heartbeat. This is a very mild case, but be advised if you don't take bed rest seriously – I'm not saying you can't walk around – you could be putting your daughter at risk."
Cam nodded soberly but a thought struck her.
"What about work?" The doctor frowned.
"I'd really prefer if you didn't."
"I promise," Cam swore fervently, "I mostly sit all day anyway. Does it matter where I do it?"
"If you have someone else drive you."
"What?" Cam gasped in outrage at the loss of her autonomy. Her control issues were being tested to their limits, and those were very short.
"Driving is highly stressful and so many things can go wrong. I will allow you to work on three stipulations."
"Name them," rumbled Cole, crossing his arms. Cam knew it was more to caution her to stop being so ornery than in defense.
"One is that if she goes to work, she must be seated all day except in cases to use the bathroom or go home. I'm sure you have wheeling chairs."
"But-" Cam tried to butt in, trying to explain how ridiculous she was going to feel.
"Two," the doctor continued steamrolling her protests. "Not only will you take the antibodies I'm prescribing for you without fail, you will eat 500 calories more per day than you usually would. Fattier substances, not lean cuisine and celery."
"I-" Cam protested.
"Three," the doctor frowned at her. "If you feel stressed at any time, you will immediately stop what you are doing and listen to one song in a dark room."
"What?" Cam screeched. "My entire job is about murder."
"This is your child's life," stressed the doctor. "Are there more important things in yours? Because if there are, you need to rearrange them right now."
"Done," Cole declared, shaking it as if sealing a deal. "I'll personally supervise."
"You don't work with me!" Cam berated him.
"I'll get Booth to watch you."
"Now you're on a first name basis?" she griped. The doctor, smiling slightly, left them alone. The silence that followed her was louder than the fourth of July.
"Cole, I-"
"I know," and his smugness made her smile. His own voice was hesitant. "And I…acted…"
"I know," she said dryly, and he laughed sheepishly. "But it's okay," she told him honestly. "I think sometimes I need to hear it."
"Damn straight doll," he winked roguishly at her, his coyote grin flitting about his lips with such avid relief, Cam realized that he was close to crying. His eyes were overbright and his hand clenched hers too tightly even still.
She sat up slowly and looked at him.
"I am so, so sorry," she said in a low voice, "that you had to do this again." He swallowed and when he spoke his Boston brogue was thick and his voice strangely high.
"Don't you ever scare me like that again Camille."
"Don't call me Camille," her mouth said absently but her eyes were warm. He choked a laugh, and managed to blink a tear away before it could fall.
"I mean it. This whole past night…you scared me. Your nightmare-" Cam shuddered, having forgotten. "Your bleeding…but mostly your voice."
"What?" Of all the things she had thought he would put on this list, her voice wasn't one of them; she felt incredibly self-conscious.
"The voice when you spoke to me on the way here…I…I was losing you. I could tell. You were somewhere else…someone else." He wiped his face, finally tearing his grip from hers. "Does that make any sense?" he mumbled into his muffled hands. He dropped them to stare at her face, devouring it as if he had been blind but granted the power of sight for a brief window of time.
"Yes," Cam said softly, remembering how her father had changed overnight with Tony's illness. He hadn't slid into it as Tony's strength had lowly eroded, but a switch had flipped, broken, never to be flipped back. His voice had been strange. She could hardly even recall what it used to sound like without the help of home videos.
"Should we go out there?" he ventured. It was Cam's turn to put a mortified hand to her face as she swung her legs over the edge of the examining table.
"Oh God…they're probably all out there…waiting. Again." She mulishly nipped at a finger as it fell away from her face, angry. She lashed about to glare at him. "This is why I told you not to call them. This is so ridiculous! They probably think – they think – God, Cole why?"
"You should be grateful they're here," he said softly, grasping her shoulder. She shrugged out from beneath it irritably. He continued. "They love you. You're their family, they told me themselves. They want to be here for you and they aren't going to be mad like you're afraid."
"I'm not afraid," she snapped.
"They'll be glad," Cole stressed, "that it was only a minor problem. I mean, not so minor. You are very lucky."
"I know," Cam said ungraciously. She had been about to childishly ask in what way she was lucky before she realized…all of them. She had incredible friends; so she wasn't the center of their focus…that was hard. But she had craftily constructed it that way. If she had been the center they wouldn't have liked her.
"You seem to think you get a minimum number of passes," Cole observed as he held the door for her.
"Hmm?" Cam asked thoughtfully. Her mind came flooding back and she frowned at him. "What?"
"That you only get so many 'false alarms' and 'serious consequences' before your friends get fed up with you, like the little boy who cried wolf." He suddenly spun her in the corridor, feet from the swinging doors. He put both his arms over her forearms like manacles, rooting her in place. She was once again desperately aware of the futility of trying to get away.
"This wasn't a false alarm," he said in his deepest, most shuddery voice. Cam swallowed hard. How did he pluck out what she most feared? It only helped to confirm that she was absolutely transparent and not a single goddamn person was paying attention. She cast her eyes to the ground.
"Angel, family is about caring for each other."
"I know that," she snapped defensively. He had no idea what she put up with from Felicia.
"No," Cole corrected sharply, enunciating his words with a shake. "Family cares about you when you're sick, when you're healthy, when you're crying, when you're laughing. They like you when you look like a million bucks and laugh at you when you spill mayonnaise down your front. Family is there when you're at your worst…when you're greasy and unshowered, wearing sweats and stained, eating a burrito and farting on the couch. That's family. And out through those double doors? Your family is waiting. So don't put so much pressure on yourself that you only get a limited number of passes to be all 'weak' as you put it. Ok?"
"I never put it that way," was her only churlish, but still faint response. She felt strange as she walked through the doors and saw all of her friends waiting. And dear God Daisy was there with Sweets, the latter looking adorably young in a polo and plaid shorts.
Angela was holding Andie expertly and Brennan – unlikely as it was – was cradling Kitty, seemingly trying to teach her an organic chemistry lesson as she demonstrated with inflated latex gloves the properties of electrons rotating about Kitty's head.
But what really snagged Cam's attention were the people everyone was not looking at.
Jared sat, arms crossed next to a weeping Felicia. Other members of the ER were glancing over, scandalized at her family's seeming unconcern with Felicia's theatrics.
"Felicia." Cam could have imagined the collective indrawn breath from her family as Felicia, sobbing, rushed into her, her arms outstretched. Cam felt nauseated with hate. She tried to rein it in. Don't make a scene, her mother's voice chided her coldly. Use your words.
Felicia was crushing her as she rocked back and forth; Cam could feel her hot tears dripping coldly down the back of her shirt as Felicia's gaping mouth hit Cam's skin over and over. Cam didn't push her away, but she didn't hug her back either. She let her hands hang limply at her sides, forcefully staring at the sky. Why was this so hard for her? She wouldn't waste a second reaming someone for hurting any of her friends, compromising her work place, or snapping a rookie cop in line. Yet when it came to herself…she was as helpless as a limp noodle, passively letting Felicia walk all over her.
But Felicia was family; family tended to abuse one another like rugs.
"I am so sorry," Felicia whimpered. Cam's hands itched to slap her. She refused to ball them into fists to avoid the temptation. Instead she stretched them out, splaying her fingers briefly before letting them fall back to her sides. She opened her mouth automatically to either apologize to Felicia or to console her. She snapped it shut. She wasn't about to ream Felicia in front of her friends – family – but she wasn't going to defend her either. Felicia's eyes widened in panic upon reading the resoluteness in Cam's hard mouth.
"Tell her," rasped Jared. He looked haggard; Cam gave him a wan smile and he gave her a tired salute. She struggled to fight tears. That was Jared's loser salute. It was a remnant of Seeley and Jared's childhood that whoever lost the game had to salute the new "commander" and run errands. It had led to a lot of competition, but Cam thrived on competition. She ached, for a moment, for those carefree days in the carefully immaculate but worn house of the Booth family and for her rookie days as a cop when she bummed cigarettes with a smile from gruff old men who couldn't resist. But she knew she was gilding the memories with aching sweetness when in reality she had often been cold in her apartment alone, and shivered as she watched someone get killed for the first time. Those were the days when she would cry in patrol cars when her partner wasn't there yet, desperate for comfort and too proud to ask.
Jared had given her the loser's salute; it was she who was the loser. Cam stiffened every muscle in her body, a tendency left over from medical school. They always said to fake it 'til you make it. That meant standing stiffly, joints locked in place when someone felt like falling over. Cam felt like that now in face of Felicia's perpetual toddlerhood.
"I spent all the money," blurted Felicia. The room was dead silent. Andie began to fuss, and Cole strode from Cam's side to retrieve her from Angela. Unfairly, in Cam's tiny back of the mind opinion, Kitty looked perfectly happy with Brennan's silent teachings about atoms.
"What?" Cam asked numbly. Her arms felt heavy at her sides. She wondered if the front of her shirt was wrinkled. Why was no one speaking? Did no one want to come to her defense? She felt deficient.
Booth noticed.
"On what?" he demanded.
"Condos," wailed Felicia.
"What?" barked Booth in her favorite soldier snap.
"This man," blubbered Felicia. She was standing alone now, hugging herself as if she would never let go; Cam recognized that pose as one she sometimes adopted. She hated that Felicia had copied that too. "This man told me he was buying rich condos and I could live in one if I wanted but I had to pay him. And sleep with him. So I did." She glared defiantly as if daring someone to question her. No one made a sound.
"And then he just disappeared. I tried calling him…I just…I just needed the money for that and for a few other things like paying off my old apartment and borrowing from friends…" her clouded face suddenly cleared. "And suddenly everyone was nice to me again. People who had been yelling at me and not speaking to me were suddenly having me over for dinner. I was suddenly responsible."
"Responsible?" laughed Michelle witheringly, arms crossed, legs spread and looking like a mythical fury.
"I'm sorry baby," whimpered Felicia.
"Shut up!" Michelle snapped, covering her ears. "Cam won't yell at you because you're her family. But you're not my family! God I hate you! How could you do this to me? To her?" Michelle gestured at Cam.
"Come on," wheedled Felicia. "It's not so bad…I'm sure there's more where that came from." She laughed a little. "I mean, come on Camille. You're dating a doctor." She waved at Cole. The temperature in the room became cool. Felicia seemed blithely unaware. As usual.
"And you went to medical school. If you had any part of a working brain you'd be something beneficial and smart that could make lots of money, like a plastic surgeon."
Cam still said nothing, but the room was becoming chillier by the second. Felicia, in retrograde, seemed to be warming to the topic that this was not only Cam's fault for being irresponsible with her career choice, but that the money wasn't important because as far as Felicia was concerned, there was more where that came from.
"And I don't know anything about your friends," Felicia waved a hand over them all, encompassing. Cam was suddenly very glad she had never been able to squeak a word in edgewise around Felicia; she didn't have any harmful ammunition to throw. "But they look all right. I mean, Dr. Brennan writes books and what not – you could get a loan from her." For the first time in Cam's living memory, Brennan didn't open her mouth to correct someone.
"And as for me, I'll get you back but honestly Camille, you are really throwing your career and talent away. I mean, look at this." She waved at Cam's stomach. "You're drinking. Smoking. Pregnant. And you're calling me irresponsible."
There was a deafening silence. It was downright below freezing. Felicia finally seemed to notice the closed off faces, and the half horrified, half fascinated looks she was receiving. She crossed her arms over herself defiantly.
"Get out," said a quiet voice, and Cam looked around, unsure of who had spoken. It was Jared.
"Get out," he repeated, looming to his feet and coming between her and Felicia. The rest of her lab watched silently, like spectators at a polite round of golf.
Felicia, in contrast to the tearful mess she had been minutes before, now stood solidly, on fire with her own special brand of self righteousness and her own delusions the entire world was wrong. It was a quality she had honed to perfection.
"You're not her brother," spat Felicia derisively at Jared. She swatted his hand away. "To think what I ever saw in you." She glared back at Cam. "You think these people are your family?" Her laugh was colder than the frosty stares she was garnering from half the room. She snidely lashed back around to face Cam, after gesturing wildly. "They aren't your family. Your family is dead. Your mother is dead. Your brother is dead. And if you insist on tattling to Daddy and making a big deal about this, your sister will be dead to you too." She crossed her arms. Cam felt like she couldn't breathe, much less speak. Felicia grinned cruelly, her smile feral, full of sharp, white teeth. "Is that what you want? You want to be alone again? You want to drive everyone away? You've been left motherless. Brotherless. Are you going to be sisterless too?" she taunted.
"She won't be," said a strong, clear voice. And Cam looked gratefully at Angela before her eyes popped wide when she realized it had been Brennan who had spoken, gracefully striding to Cam's side, baby on hip. She looked grim yet somehow dignified.
"And she's not brotherless," said another. Booth flanked her other side. Out of the corner of her eye, Cam saw Brennan tentatively extend her fingers. Booth obligingly grasped her hand.
"She's not alone," Sweets agreed.
"We're her family," argued Michelle, sticking up her chin. Felicia backed away, turning in the circle that had suddenly surrounded her, an animal seeking its way out. Cam, feeling buoyed by her friends – her family – and their support, felt only pity for Felicia. She watched her sadly, and motioned for Hodgins to step aside so she could dart away. Felicia lunged for the spot but then turned with a liquid languor that had Cam's spine tingling with dread.
"Your new brothers, huh?" smiled Felicia, her smile cruel again. Cam swallowed, wondering when it had become that way. Her sister was her sister; she loved her nonetheless for her crimes and her infuriating personality. Felicia actually strutted forward. "These white people?" She smirked at Sweets; he flushed dully but stood erect. To her credit, Daisy Wick had not murmured a sound.
"Do you want to know what happened to your real brother?" asked Felicia softly; her words were crystal clear, shattering like ice on the frozen tundra. "All those letters," she whispered, her voice venomous with jealousy and…regret? Cam's blood ran cold when she realized what Felicia meant. "All the letters he ever sent you while you were growing up. I managed to catch them all. At least I thought I did. Oh, Tony wrote me too. Just a little, a few and far between. He wasn't as candid in mine. As raw. As honest. By the time I got that one in the mail – the post office knows to direct them to me by now – I was so goddamn sick of him. Of you. Of you two in your little 'club.' You were so close, and he was so open with you. So touching. I read all of the letters," Felicia hissed quietly, icily. Her voice was louder than the babies' breathing. "Every word. Every penned regret, every goodbye and bout of self pity." Cam finally found the words to speak.
"What did you do with them?" she asked desperately. But in her heart, she already knew the sinking, burning answer.
"I burned them," Felicia smiled maliciously. "Every one. Into ash. And I gave you the last one because…well…because you deserved to know. And to feel ashamed. And to feel the way you feel. Your life is too easy Camille."
"You think my life is easy?" whispered Cam. All the sleepless nights. The rape cases. The dead bodies in the basements. The overwhelming stench. The retching and regret. The death without drains. It had been hell getting where she was. And what had Felicia been doing? Nothing. Maybe that's what hurt Felicia's bitter heart most.
"I burned them all," Felicia responded and turned around, and walked confidently out.
Brennan chose that moment to drop the baby.