Here's your new chapter, guys! The update times are going to be relatively sporadic this next week, since I'm on break, but they will keep coming, every other day! Hope you're continuing to enjoy the fic, I love each and every one of you reading it!

And yeah, I still own nothing. Humph.

Knock knock knock "Leonard?"

Knock knock knock "Leonard?"

Knock knock knock "Leonard?"

Leonard raised his head from his desk in irritation. "What, Sheldon?"

His friend gave him a look that suggested that he shouldn't have to explain himself. "It's lunch time."

Leonard glanced at the time on his computer and nodded. "Yeah?"

Sheldon appeared even more confused than before. "Aren't you going to go to the cafeteria?"

"Nope."

"Leonard?"

"What?"

"I'm confused."

"I'm not hungry," Leonard said. "There's your explanation."

"Are you suffering from some sort of disease?"

"If I say yes, will you leave?" He asked. "And if not, will you leave if I say it's contagious?"

Sheldon looked offended. "You know, if you don't watch your tone I'm going to start to think that you don't want me here." He straightened his posture. "I'm going to eat."

"Have a good lunch, Sheldon," Leonard said as his roommate vanished from the threshold, trying his best to sound polite. He was sure that with his Vulcan hearing Sheldon detected the experimental physicist's head thumping back down on the desk top.

"What's the matter with you?"

He raised his head again, wondering if the headache was from stress, hitting the desk, or from so many interruptions. "Hi, Leslie."

Sheldon's old nemesis entered Leonard's office, holding her coffee mug in one hand. "Kripke told me you weren't paying attention in the meeting this morning. What's wrong?"

"You haven't spoken to me for six months," Leonard said, confused as to why she cared.

"It's throwing Sheldon off," Leslie said. "And as much as we all love that, when we don't know why we can't anticipate how he's going to react and then it just stops being fun and becomes inconvenient for the entire city." She pulled the stool from beneath the window and set it in front of Leonard's desk. "So," she said, sitting down and setting her mug on one of the few places on the desktop without papers, "what's going on?"

Leonard shrugged. "Just…personal stuff."

"Ah," Leslie said. "Blondie ask you to do something a little too…demanding?" She grinned mischievously.

Leonard frowned. "What? No!" He shook his head. "It's nothing, Leslie."

She got up, bid him farewell, and left, but Leonard knew that she didn't believe his lie. He was never good at lying, and certainly not when he was this upset.

As much as Penny swore that it was her, that what had happened that awful night was not his fault, Leonard knew better. If they hadn't tried to have sex, she wouldn't have been in pain. The difference between Penny not having sex and Penny having sex was Leonard. Therefore, it was his fault. That was how science worked, with mutually inclusive and exclusive events as well as process of elimination and cause and effect. Whether or not she had ovarian cancer or any other illness, Leonard had been the one to inflict the pain upon her. He had seen her face change when it started, he had felt her body tense up, and he had heard her voice as she assured him that she was okay while struggling not to cry. And now, whether anything was wrong with her or not, and whether she'd admit it or not, Leonard knew that she was scared as Hell. And he would not ever be convinced that it wasn't all his fault, even though neither of them could have known. And even if she didn't have cancer, there was still the question of infertility – if nothing was wrong, then why wasn't it happening?

"Leonard?"

"I never was good at catching breaks," he mumbled, looking up. "Hi, Gilda."

She looked uncomfortable being there. "How…how are you?"

He shrugged. "You know. Trying to get some quiet time."

"Oh." She bit her lip. "I…I can leave you alone."

"Thank you," he said, and Gilda turned to go. "Wait."

She stopped, turned back around, and cocked her head. "Yes?"

"Come," he said, gesturing, and Gilda sat in the chair across from his desk. "You know how somehow the two of us always knew never to complicate our friendship by making it romantic?"

"You always knew that," she reminded him. "I had that one sided thing going on for quite a while there."

Leonard smiled. "True. But…do you think that it's possible for people to really know something…without really knowing it?"

"Are you asking if a gut feeling you may have about you and or Penny is right? If there's a way to know?" She cocked her head. "Because I"m not sure how to answer that. If you're going back to the conversation we had about us just knowing we weren't supposed to be involved, I think we were about as sure as we could have been at that time, and hindsight shows we were right. But I couldn't say if it was a coincidence or not. I'd like to think it was not. But...I really don't know what you're asking."

He sighed. "I really don't know what I'm asking. I'm just so messed up right now." He put his head in his hands. "But this isn't something that I can work out on a board."

"Well, what are you feeling?" Gilda asked, pushing the stool Leslie had sat on a bit away from her so she could prop her feet up.

"I'm feeling that what I'm worried about is the worst possible scenario and we just don't know it yet. But we both tend to assume the worst…excuse me," he said as his phone rang. "Dr. Hofstadter."

"Leonard," came the familiar voice, "the hospital called."

"Oh yeah?" Leonard said. "What did they say?"

"Well," Penny said. "Good news and bad news. My blood levels don't indicate advanced ovarian cancer."

"What?" Leonard repeated, not quite able to believe it. Gilda rose, nodding to Leonard and easing out of the office; he was glad that she recognized that he needed to take this call alone. "Really?"

"Mmm hmm. So at the very least, I won't be dead by Sunday. Though the blood test also showed that I'm not pregnant, so that doesn't explain the symptoms. And it's not saying I don't have cancer…it's just saying that if I do have it I'll have a fighting chance."

"A fighting chance would be all you need," Leonard told her. "We're used to beating the odds, aren't we?"

"You mean with the whole 'beauty and the geek' thing that Raj and Howard keep teasing us about?"

"Hold up," Leonard said jokingly. "I wouldn't quite call you a geek yet. But you're getting there."

Bernadette smiled when she heard the click that showed that Howard had picked up the phone. "Hey, you," he said warmly.

"Hey," she said, feeling slightly shy, as she did each time she heard his voice over the phone. "How are you?"

"Tired."

"Oh." She giggled. "Time difference, huh?"

"Just a little," he said, smiling. "How about you, Berni?"

"I'm okay," she said, tucking her legs underneath her. "I am."

"Is someone not?" Howard asked, sounding concerned.

"Well…" Bernadette hesitated. "Penny and Leonard have a bit of a health concern."

"Oh no," Howard said. "Did she hurt him?"

"What?" Bernadette asked. "No! It's…" she almost said the other way around, but knew how sensitive Leonard was about that incident, and Penny didn't even blame him anyway. "It's Penny. I don't know if I should be telling you this!" she said, her voice getting shrill at the end of her sentence as she tried to stop herself from starting to cry.

"Bernadette!" Howard almost shouted through the phone, "what's wrong? Tell me."

"Penny's afraid she might have cancer," Bernadette said. "They don't know. They'll find out tomorrow, they have a test…" she trailed off, not ending her sentence with a tone that suggested so, but she had nothing more to add.

Howard was silent for a long moment, perhaps wondering if she had finished. "Oh wow."

"I know," Bernadette said, nodding even though she knew that he couldn't see her. "They're really scared. I think later I'm going to take Penny out to keep her mind off of things."

"That's probably a good idea," Howard said. "Gosh, this is…damn it!"

"What?"

"Why does this have to happen when Raj and I are here? If she's really sick…we'll come home to be with her, but it'll take a while to be able to get a flight home…"

"Don't worry about it now," Bernadette said. "They don't know yet. And I don't know if you're supposed to know."

"They haven't told us," Howard said. "But I bet it's so we don't worry. Look, I'm buying a plane ticket home in a week. If we need to, we'll use it. If we don't, then I'm out a few hundred bucks. I'll live without the money. But if Penny's sick we'll have a way home."

"I don't think Penny would want you to give up your space opportunity for her," Bernadette said quietly.

"No, but I'd want to," Howard said. "And Raj would too. Leonard's dating her but it doesn't mean we don't love her, too…though in a different way, of course. We're coming home if she's sick; you better keep me updated on that."

Bernadette's eyes welled up. "I wish you could come home anyway."

"I know, Berni," he said. "I miss you. I love you a lot."

"I love you a lot, too," she said. She glanced at the clock. "I have a dentist appointment. I'll call you tomorrow, okay?"

"Sounds good, sweetie," he said warmly. Bernadette hung up the phone and sniffed. She didn't have a dentist appointment, or any appointment at all. She just didn't want Howard to hear her cry as hard as she was about to. She couldn't deal with her husband being hours away; about to do something dangerous, and deal with the idea that one of her best friends could be terminally ill at the same time. It was enough to make her almost want to throw herself into that vat of flesh eating bacteria and relish the pain.

I promise we'll find out what (if anything) is wrong with Penny soon – I've had this written for more than a year and I do have it going somewhere. As I can't write a chapter for each day of their lives this entire time they're trying, I am pacing what I do write slowly on purpose to help readers get a sense of the frustration and redundancy that Leonard and Penny are going through. But things are moving places, I promise!