Kastle
Karen was used to being stressed, to having little sleep, a rumbly stomach, taking quick naps on the couch in her office at the Bulletin, being the last one to leave the office and the first to arrive. What she was not used to was the effect it was beginning to have on her body. She was tired – more so than usual – and no amount of sleep could fix it. She would suddenly feel ravenous and then be sick when she ate. She was sick quite a lot, actually. She knew she just needed to slow down and take it easy, but there were so many stories that needed to be told, so much corruption in the city, and she felt like she was the only one willing to take it on. Sure, Matt a.k.a. Daredevil helped clean up the streets, but it was she who exposed them in the press, who helped Brett Mahoney make the arrests. If she stopped, people would get hurt, crime would continue, and the truth would go untold.
The physical exhaustion went on for weeks, to the point where she fainted in front of her boss, Mitchell Ellison, and he sent her home for the weekend. He said if she even tried to come to the office, he'd have security remove her. So she resigned herself to a weekend of working from home. She settled on her couch, her laptop on the coffee table in front of her, papers and files surrounding her. It wasn't long before she fell fast sleep. When she awoke, it was eleven hours later, the longest sleep she could remember having since moving to New York. She felt as well-rested as she thought she'd be able to feel, and fixed herself a bowl of cereal, despite it being late-afternoon. It was all that was in her pantry. Around five minutes after eating, the sickness came back. A nauseating, urgent feeling in her stomach. She rushed to the bathroom and held her long hair over her shoulder as she vomited violently into the toilet bowl. She flushed the toilet, washed her hands and looked at herself in the mirror. She didn't understand. She'd finally slept, eaten. Why was she still sick? She opened the mirror cabinet and washed her mouth out with a mint wash, and just as she was putting it back, something else in the cabinet caught her eye. It was a box of unopened tampons.
Her mind went into overdrive. How long had they been there for? She couldn't recall the last time she had her period. And then, she remembered, it was during the time her heater broke and her apartment was freezing. She remembered being frustrated because everything had gone wrong that day: she'd stepped in a giant puddle, gotten her period, her heater had broken, and she couldn't find her favourite jacket. It was also Valentine's Day, because she had felt alone and sad. It was now April 24th, over two months later. She hadn't had a period in about ten weeks. She summed it up to her being stressed, there was no way she could be pregnant, she hadn't had sex since…
Her hand flew to her mouth, stifling a gasp as the dots connected in her mind. She hadn't had a period in ten weeks, and eight weeks ago…
It was just one time, she told herself, surely she couldn't be…?
But Karen Page wasn't an idiot. She knew once was enough. It would explain everything. The nausea, vomiting, lack of period, tiredness, cravings. It was very likely that she was pregnant. About eight weeks along, if her math was right. And only one possibility as to who the father was. Her mind raced back in a whirlwind of memories as she recalled the night in question….