Reconstructing Rome
By Indygodusk
Chapter 23
"Only in Rome is it possible to understand Rome."
GOETHE
Seven lights flared against the white, casting heat like bare lightbulbs near naked skin. One burned hotter and brighter than the rest, but the difference was irrelevant. Her light consumed all. All became white—a white that swallowed her down.
Meredith opened her eyes. She must've zoned out, she realized. She was sitting on the closed toilet seat in her apartment bathroom with a cellphone clutched to her ear, staring at the elaborately framed painting above the towel rack. It was a fox hunt by some famous British painter she didn't care about. Men in bright red jackets and tall black hats sat on horses while hordes of brown and white hunting dogs teamed about their feet.
It was a stupid painting for a bathroom, but Troy did all the decorating now that they were married because she didn't care to go to the effort. Troy didn't like his taste being criticized. It hurt his feelings. Since he was her husband and she was determined to have her marriage succeed, she tried to be a good wife and keep her criticisms to a minimum, though some days it was easier to bite her tongue than others. She didn't have a lot of experience in biting her tongue.
If it had been John, she'd have openly mocked the painting until they either took it down or only kept it up as a running joke. Not that she'd ever be in such a situation with John, who'd gotten married to someone else and stopped speaking to her because his new wife was more important than his old best friend.
A-a-nd she'd promised herself that she'd stop thinking about John. Not only was it painful but it felt a little like cheating on the vows she'd made to put Troy first. She tried to keep that promise. Then again, what was one more mistake on a day like today? Feeling pitiful, she let herself wish John was here. Just for a moment.
Stupid, useless Rodney.
Just outside the locked bathroom door waited Troy, sitting impatiently at the table watching dinner go cold. How long had she been in here? She couldn't remember. He'd probably given up on his proper British restraint at this point and returned to eating his food. Sometimes his idea of manners felt more like a caricature of what a well-to-do English nobleman was supposed to be than anything like reality. She'd known several Brits fond of talking with their mouths full while devouring a pub burger and whose idea of politeness was only flipping you off instead of cursing you out, but try telling Troy that.
"Hello? Hello?" The cellphone snapped her out of her dazed rambling. "Are you still there, Dr. Mckay?"
Meredith flinched, returned to the painful present, and pressed a hand over her eyes as if hiding from the light would hide her from this unwanted truth. "Can you repeat that?" Maybe she'd misheard the first time. She'd been under a lot of stress lately. That had to be why she'd missed so many periods. Not… this.
"You're pregnant, Dr. Mckay. We ran the test a second time to confirm. You should schedule a follow-up visit with your primary physician or I can recommend a doctor. If you need to talk to a counselor, I have several we recommend," the nurse said.
"Okay." Lips feeling numb, Meredith fought the tightness in her chest. "I need to think." Dropping the phone to her lap, Meredith's fingers fumbled across the keys for the hangup button before she remembered she could just flip the phone shut to turn it off. She closed it and dropped it into her pocket. The only sound left in the room was the whirr of the bathroom fan.
The phone buzzed with a message. She fumbled it out again. Maybe it was the doctor's office calling back again saying it had all been a mistake, that they'd called the wrong woman.
Flipping open her phone, she found instead a priority email about an urgent gate mission scheduled for first thing tomorrow morning. They needed an engineer from her department to come along and fix something complicated, which narrowed the field to a double handful of qualified scientists. She'd probably send Blakestone or Hulinth. They'd been the stupidest lately and most deserved a crap assignment.
She'd call them with the bad news. Later. Right now she didn't think she could talk to anyone without crying and the last thing she needed added on to her reputation were rumors about her having emotional breakdowns on subordinates.
Standing up, she went to the sink and washed her hands. The harsh yellow light above the bathroom mirror was unforgiving. She looked like her mother. Her hands went white-knuckled around the edge of the sink, the only solid thing in her rapidly shifting world.
Although she'd been feeling off for months, she hadn't suspected pregnancy until she overheard a random conversation between two female scientists that morning in the Mountain. In a panic, she'd gone to her car and driven to the next town over. Her womb wasn't the military's business, at least, not yet. However, the blood test had just put the nail in the coffin.
The woman in the mirror looked lost and scared, the confident mask she wore shattered in one blow. "It's just as bad as you feared. The family's accidental pregnancy curse strikes again, leaving no one unscathed: Grandma, Mom, Aunt whatsername, Jeannie's call out of the blue, and now you, Rodney the useless idiot. What good are brains right now?"
Fingers trembling, she rubbed at her face and tried not to fall apart. Her panting breaths scalded her palms. What was she going to do?
A knock sounded at the door. Troy. She didn't want to see him. Things in the bedroom were okay but as soon as they moved outside of that space things had been feeling brittle. She'd thought that their being in the same field would make things easier and it had at first. But after her promotion a couple of months after the wedding and their move to the United States, things had changed.
Maybe she'd bragged a little too much. Maybe she'd picked at his insecurities when he'd failed to soothe hers. It seemed like everything she did was just slightly wrong and they were always competing instead of cooperating. She'd hoped a made family would be different from the one she'd been born into, that it would be a refuge instead of the same old battlefield. It wasn't a comparison she liked to think about, so she shoved it down. She wasn't going to fail at her marriage. Meredith was a winner. She should be grateful to have someone who wanted to be with her, to not be alone anymore. Things would be fine.
Troy impatiently knocked again. "Meredith? You've been in there a long time and I need to use the loo."
Feeling like her bones were creaking in protest, Meredith straightened up from the sink and turned to unlock the door. "Go ahead." She brushed past Troy on his way into the bathroom. There was no tingle at his touch, hadn't been for ages.
Sighing, Troy patted her on the head. "Go eat." He ducked into the bathroom. He was only three inches taller than her, so she didn't know why he always insisted on acting like she was so short. When he'd first started the habit she'd just shrugged it off, but they'd been recently married. She'd been willing to forgive a lot then, so determined to make her marriage succeed where every other relationship in her life had failed spectacularly.
Troy didn't bother shutting the bathroom door all of the way, forcing her to listen to the splash of urine as he relieved himself. It grated on her nerves. The toilet flushed and the sound of handwashing followed. Also irritating.
Pacing the living room, Meredith clutched her hands behind her back and tried to marshall her thoughts. She could be rational about this. It wasn't the end of the world. Sure it was an unexpected problem, but being a scientist was all about problem-solving. "You can do this and at least you're not alone," she told herself, trying to short-circuit the panicked flailing in her thoughts. Maybe a baby would actually improve her marriage. Wasn't that what people always said?
"What are you mumbling about?" Troy walked out, rolling down and buttoning his cuffs.
Planting her feet, Meredith sucked in a deep breath. She wiped sweaty palms down her sides and raised her chin. "I know we agreed we didn't want any, but somehow there was an accident with the birth control and now I'm pregnant."
Eyes widening, Troy's eyes darted down to her perfectly adequate except for maybe a bit too much hot-chocolate and too little cardio belly. There was no baby bump. A second later his eyes narrowed and something flashed within their depths. A crooked smile grew on his lips.
"What does that smile mean?" she demanded. "Good, bad, indigestion?"
Clearing his throat, Troy turned away to fuss with the angle of the blinds. When he turned back, he wore a cool expression. "Well, even you aren't perfect, darling." The corner of his lip twitched up again until he flattened it. "We'll just have to make do. At least that explains all of the complaining you've been doing lately about not feeling up to snuff. I've told you over and over that you've been working too much. This will give you a reason to slow down, finally start sharing all of those big projects with the rest of us, and focus on something besides yourself."
Confused and stung, Meredith crossed her arms and resumed her restless pacing, kicking his house slippers out of her way so she didn't trip. "I'm not going to slow down or give away my projects, don't be stupid, and why is your housecoat crumpled on the floor again? I always trip on it." Picking the housecoat up, she threw it into his favorite armchair.
Tutting, Troy shook his head. "Meredith, pregnancy isn't some little cold that you can ignore. Your hormones are going to surge, making you think and act irrationally. In retrospect, I can see that it's already starting. Decisions made based on hormones instead of logic can be deadly in our line of high-risk work. Not to mention that your body is going to rebel against the pace you've been setting yourself. You need to slow down."
Meredith scoffed and kept pacing the apartment from couch to chair to kitchen window and back again to keep from screaming. The walls were paper thin and she did not need the cops called for a domestic argument that got out of hand. Once was enough. The next door neighbors hated them and were just itching for an excuse to get them evicted.
"Darling, this is a good thing for you. You need to take a break before you work yourself into an early grave. A baby is just what you need. It will make you happier and help you feel less anxious and insecure."
"Why's all this about me? What about you?" Stopping behind the couch, Meredith fisted her hands in the top cushion so tightly that her fingers sent out little shocks of pain. "And why are you being so patronizing? I thought you supported my work. I'm at the top of our field!"
"As am I," he shot back.
"Below me." Glaring, she added, "And I didn't make this baby by myself."
"Of course not. I remember the process. I worked quite hard for it." The corner of his mouth lifted, even though Troy usually wasn't one for dirty jokes.
"You're being weird about this," she told him, removing her aching fingers from the couch and going over to the mail table to start pulling out the grocery and insurance flyers to chuck straight into the garbage. "I thought you didn't want to be a father? You told me that over and over when we first got together. Was that a lie?"
"Of course not," Troy said in a stilted tone. He adjusted the edge of his glasses. "But we all do what we have to do in pursuit of a greater goal. Now that you're pregnant, you'll have to stop working so much and devote time to being a mother."
Meredith's stomach twisted. "No I don't." Her head throbbed with a truly massive headache, maybe a migraine. It could be a migraine. She hadn't thrown up yet with this pregnancy, but she might tonight.
On TV, this was not how a husband reacted to learning he was pregnant. She wanted him to give her a hug and tell her everything was going to be okay, that they would make this work… together. She wanted her husband to make her feel better. Instead, Troy's words were making her feel even more alone and panicky.
Shuffling through the mail, she roughly yanked out a lawn care flyer from underneath the water bill—as if people who lived in apartments needed lawn care! The thick cardstock sliced into her index finger. "Dammit!" Sticking the papercut into her mouth, the sharp copper taste making her stomach turn even worse, she crumpled the flyer, threw it onto the floor, and kicked it, almost slipping and falling in the process.
"Oh, now that's mature," Troy rolled his eyes. "You're a mother now, not a big child. You better start changing fast." He tutted and fidgeted with his glasses again. He always did the glasses thing when he was nervous or hiding something.
"What is your problem?" She rounded on him and stomped forward. "Just say it. Are you mad at me for getting pregnant?" She poked him with her wet finger. Ow. She hoped it hurt him worse.
"Of course not, darling. Calm down."
"What then? Are you trying to hide that you wanted to get me pregnant?" she flung up her hands at the ridiculous idea, waiting for him to scoff and finally admit to whatever he was hiding.
Instead Troy jerked his head down and fiddled with the edge of his glasses again. "Of course not." He gave a fake laugh.
He'd just lied.
The ground became as unstable as a rowboat in the middle of a hurricane. She felt like she was on the cusp of drowning. "You wanted me to get pregnant." Her voice came out wobbly. She rubbed her chest and shook her head. No. She had to be wrong. "But you're the one who convinced me to switch to that new, stronger birth-control pill when I got the promotion. You even insist on picking it up for me each month because you complained that I always stay too late at work and miss the pharmacy closing. We agreed that kids are a bad idea with the type of work we do. When did that change?"
Troy took off his glasses, folding and unfolding them before putting them back on his face with a sigh. "It isn't that I changed my mind about not wanting a child, Meredith, but more that I think you would benefit from having one. I love having you as my wife, but this obsession you have with always being number one is only making the both of us unhappy."
"What?" Meredith shook her head. "I mean, yeah, we seem to be getting on each other's nerves a lot lately, but that has nothing to do with me being number one. I've always worked this many hours and I had seniority over you when you married me. I'm the one who hired you into the SGC, remember? If you're jealous of my genius, that's your problem, not mine."
Lips tightening, Troy's nostrils flared. "I am not jealous of you. I am a genius in my own right and just as accomplished. If I'd had access to Ancient technology for as long as you have, I'd be the one in charge and my theories the ones in practice. You're only senior because of luck and America's dominance over the Stargate versus Britain's."
Meredith didn't bother holding back the derisive snort and arch of her brow. If he wasn't going to be nice then neither was she. "I'm on top, Troy, because I've always been smarter and better than you are and everyone can see that." She narrowed her eyes. "And what can you do about that? Nothing, that's wha—"
"I got you pregnant, didn't I?!" Troy shouted, features twisting. "You think you're so smart but you never pay attention to what you put in your mouth unless it's about your stupid citrus allergy!"
Her hands started to shake as a horrible idea popped into her mind. "What did you do, Troy? Just what pills have I been taking all these months?"
"Clomid." Seeing her incomprehension, his eyes narrowed and everything about his expression went mean. "It's a fertility supplement that also increases the chance of having twins. Try juggling that and making sure everyone still sees you as worthy of a Nobel Prize or Field Medal."
Meredith barely swallowed back a whimper as her knees turned to water. She fell back against the wall. She really was going to vomit. The room spun like she was sinking into a whirlpool. "You got me pregnant to sabotage my career?" She shook her head back and forth, trying to process what was happening. She'd had no idea that Troy resented her that much. No idea. "You're my husband. You're supposed to love me, not betray me." It hurt to breathe.
Straightening his cuffs, Troy looked away. "You'll be better off this way. Happier. I did it for your own good as much as my own and I'm sure on our golden anniversary you'll thank me for my foresight."
Pushing away from the wall, steaming with outrage, everything in Meredith's world shifted and realigned. "You delusional dirtbag," clenching her fists, she forced her lungs to draw in air. She needed the breath to set fire to the explosive words hissing from deep inside like oxygen from a gas tank. "You stupid bastard. I hate you."
Troy flinched.
Good.
"You plotted and schemed against me for months, but in all that you were just as stupid and useless as ever, making huge and erroneous assumptions while betraying everything we had! I. Hate. You. Our marriage is over. Done!" Now they were both shouting but the neighbors could go and hang. "We aren't going to make our first anniversary, much less our fiftieth! I'm going to ruin you and your career, the career you only got from riding on my coattails. You're second-rate and everyone knows it and now you're done. We're done!" She bared her teeth at him.
"No we're not!" Anger tightening his frame, mouth a cruel slash in his face, Troy forced his voice level. "We're not done until I say we're done. You're mine, Meredith darling. You don't get to leave. You're upset about this, I understand, but that's just shock and your hormones talking. You're getting hysterical. Once you calm down and look at it logically, you'll see that I'm right. Children are a normal part of marriage. The one at fault here is you for overreacting. Everyone we know thinks I'm a saint for putting up with you. Certainly no one else wants you. You know you're useless and barmy. You need me and that baby gives me the right to be a part of your life forever, so sit down and get ahold of yourself."
Tears stung her eyes but she refused to let them fall. "I don't need you! I don't need anyone! I never want to see you again!"
Meredith grabbed her untouched dinner plate and threw it at Troy. CRASH! It hit the wall. Porcelain shattered and chicken and corn flew everywhere. Troy ducked with his arms up over his head. Undeterred, Meredith grabbed more projectiles. She missed with Troy's empty plate and her plastic cup, though Troy's cup bounced off his arm and splashed over his legs and chest. He dodged her fork but she hit him dead on with her spoon, smacking him square in the mouth and bloodying his lip.
Troy yelled in pain and stopped cowering. He grabbed the newspaper off the side table and threw it, hitting her left shoulder and sending her careening back from the table. "Stop it, you lunatic!" he shouted.
Snarling, she responded by scooping up his slippers. The first one she threw slapped against his neck, making him choke and cough. "You're a second-place loser, Troy! You don't have any right to me or my time! Nor the baby's either! Besides, haven't you heard of abortion, moron? I don't have to let any baby ruin my career. I'm a modern woman!"
"You're my wife and you'll do what you're told! If you insist on acting like a nutter I'll have you committed!"
"I'd like to see you try!" she shrieked, jumping forward and backhanding him with the other slipper. Troy's glasses went flying. He cried out and stumbled back against the couch. He whimpered and clutched his face in his hands.
Dropping the slipper, Meredith gulped and moved back until her back hit the wall. "I—I'm...are—are you alright?"
Troy lowered his hands. A thin red line appeared on his cheek and began seeping blood. He gingerly touched his face and looked down. Seeing red on his fingertips, his head snapped up and he skewered her with an angry glare. "You bitch!" Troy raised his fist and lunged at her.
Trapped against the wall with nowhere to go, Meredith dropped down, wrapping her arms around her stomach, hunching her shoulders, and slamming her eyes shut to make herself as small a target as possible.
Troy's fist just barely missed her. It sliced over the top of her head, his cufflink snagging her hair and ripping some loose just before his hand hit the wall. BANG!
Eyes tearing at the pain in her scalp, Meredith looked up fearfully. Troy loomed above her, red-faced and wild-eyed. His fist was planted in a crater on the wall inches above her head. Bits of pale drywall speckled her face and chest.
She looked at the crater and back to Troy's face. That could've been her skull. She didn't think he'd missed on purpose.
Troy followed her look and sucked in a breath. Stepping back, he moved unsteadily to the other side of the room and started to pace. "I didn't mean… that. I'm not a violent man. You're the violent one! You just make me so angry." Cutting himself off, he dropped his hand to his side and flexed his fingers with a wince. They were flecked with white.
"I hope you broke something," she told him threadily, rising to her feet and trying to hide her fear. She moved to put the couch between them, just in case. She wished she had a gun, not that she really knew how to accurately aim a gun despite the fact that she'd spent most of her adult life surrounded by soldiers. Her aim with tableware was probably better.
John would be so disappointed in her for forgetting all his lessons. Thinking about how he didn't want her around on top of everything else happening felt like being stabbed with a red hot poker, so she shoved him from her mind. She had enough pain with the current situation without adding to it.
Pushing hair off his sweaty face, Troy dropped into a crouch and began running his hands across the floor. "Look, let's calm down. Don't do anything else you'll regret." Picking up his glasses, he held them up to the light to examine them for cracks before sliding them on. They sat crooked on his face. His lips twisted with irritation. He tried bending the frame but couldn't get them to sit straight.
"I won't let you use this baby to manipulate me or make me less than I am. And the only thing I regret is marrying you and having you impregnate me, things I intend to rectify first thing in the morning."
Troy took his time dusting bits of the drywall off his arm before looking up to acknowledge her words. "I won't let you go, Meredith, and I won't sign any paperwork ending our marriage. You need to accept how things are going to change. I took you as my wife and when the baby comes, I'll take over your job so you can stay at home for a few years raising it. When you come back to work with me, things will be better. You'll be happier. Be smart and don't fight me on this."
If Meredith ground her teeth any harder she'd pull a muscle in her jaw. "You haven't even begun to see me fight."
Going to his armchair, Troy pulled on his housecoat, acting as if things were suddenly normal. He moved to the couch and sat down, leaning back to cross his legs. "Your threats are empty. You talk a big game, but inside you're still that insecure little Rodney Mckay, unwanted even by her parents and desperate to be loved, desperate to even just be liked, begging for a place to belong and someone to recognize you."
Meredith felt like she'd been knifed. He hit upon all of her worst vulnerabilities. She tightened the arms wrapped around her middle, but they offered no protection from Troy's cutting words.
Propping his chin on his hand, he arched his eyebrows at her and tutted, shaking his head. "Newsflash, little Rodney, no one likes you. No one wants you. No one but me. You belong here as my wife. To everyone else, you're a disposable tissue, something they use and throw away. Think about your family and so-called friends, even your bosses and coworkers. Can you name one person who actually wants to be around you besides me? I'll wait."
She had to swallow twice before she could speak. "You're full of shit." She had to resort to crudites because all of her witty rebuttals had leaked out of the stab wounds in her heart before they could reach the tip of her tongue.
Troy tutted again. "You have no other option but to stay here, with me. As for your threat of abortion, you'd never do it because although you put on a tough front, inside you're a bleeding heart for anyone close to you and it doesn't get closer than your own child. Just look at how you're standing. As soon as you felt threatened, you wrapped your arms protectively around your middle and haven't let go since."
Rubbing a finger over his lips, he smirked. "After a little thought, you might even find you like things better this way. I'm doing what's best for us, for our family. Accept it gracefully. I've won and you've lost, darling. Now come and sit down." He patted the spot next to him on the couch.
Her breath rasped in and out of her lungs. Painful. Grounding. Dropping her hands to her sides, Meredith walked at an even pace to the table by the front door.
Troy tracked her with his eyes. The smugness drained from his expression, replaced by tension.
Troy didn't matter. She would survive this without him. Rodney Meredith Mckay might be many of the things he'd said, but one thing she was not and never would be was a stupid, worthless, loser.
"You're right in that I could never have an abortion," pulling her shoes out from beneath the side table with her toes, she slid them onto her feet, "but there's always adoption or a live-in nanny or a hundred other options." Picking up her purse, she slung it over her shoulder. She grabbed her coat off the hook on the wall, bumping into another one of Troy's stupid British paintings—a ghostly warship being towed to retirement by a small coal-powered tug—and sending it swinging. She didn't bother straightening it. "A woman being lost without a man is an old-fashioned and obsolete idea."
Troy jumped up from his chair. Meredith tried to hide her jolt of fear when he clenched his fists. He may be bigger than her but she wasn't defenseless. If he tried to punch her again she'd hit him with her purse and go after his eyes with her nails. "Just where do you think you're going?" he demanded.
She yanked open the door and stuck a foot out to make sure he couldn't trap her inside the apartment while she got the last word. "Away from you, Troy. What is not and never has been an option is me becoming your servile little housewife. We were partners but that's over. Forever."
Straightening her shoulders, she felt her mouth twist with bitterness. "I guess you didn't know that I've been working to get the SGC to create an independent department for you exactly like the one you were denied last year. It's in the final stages of approval. I was going to take you out to your favorite restaurant to surprise you with the news, but I think I'll just cancel all of those favors I promised people and tell them to nevermind instead." She gave a hiccuping laugh at the look on his face. "I guess that's the difference between the kind of surprises we give the people we love." Her eyes stung with tears that she fought back with all of her might. She would not give him the satisfaction. She wished she'd never let herself love him.
A door down the hall opened a crack. "If you don't shut up, I'm calling the cops!"
"Go ahead!" she shouted back.
"Meredith, wait!" Troy lifted an open hand and took a step forward. "Please, let's talk about this."
"It's too late for talking. You should've thought of that before giving me those pills and trying to smash my head in with your fist." She stabbed a finger at the dent in the wall. "We're through. The only thing you've won with this stunt is my hatred because you'll never have my job or my intelligence, no matter how much you try to handicap me. You've just lost the best thing you ever had, me!"
"Meredith, come back inside," Troy raised his voice and started forward with his hands raised.
"That's Dr. Mckay to you." She moved back into the hall, door in one hand. "And this is your boss giving you a twelve-hour emergency notice of a mission. Prepare to leave first thing in the morning to somewhere very far away and very unpleasant." She slammed the door and took off running down the hall.
Troy wrenched the door open. "You can't do that! You're overreacting. Come back and let's talk more about this. Meredith!"
Meredith quickened her pace and shoved out of the exit door. "I'm your boss, I can do whatever I want!" she shouted back as she raced down the sidewalk. "And if you don't show up tomorrow morning, you're fired!
"Meredith!" He shouted, popping out of the door.
Sprinting, she jumped into her car and slammed the door, hitting the lock button mere seconds before Troy grabbed the handle. He banged on the car, trying to get inside. Half-laughing and half-crying, she shoved in the key, hit the gas, and took off with a screech, leaving Troy behind the parking lot in his flapping housecoat. She was tempted to hit reverse and run him over, but getting away felt more important right now.
Just as well since a black and white passed her seconds later and pulled into the parking lot. The neighbors must've called the cops after all. Meredith tried to laugh about her triumphant escape, but all that came out of her throat were sobs. She drove to the Mountain through a layer of tears, almost crashing four different times and earning herself a near-constant symphony of car horns. She was probably lucky that the cops never reappeared.
When she finally arrived at the front gate of Cheyenne Mountain, the baby-faced SF on duty asked if she was drunk and needed someone to take over the car and call her husband for a pickup.
"I'm not drunk, I'm getting a divorce! Now let me in!" she shrieked, not caring that the gossip would be all over the mountain by breakfast. "And if you call my soon-to-be ex-husband to come over, I'll kill him and make you wish you'd never been born!"
The SF stared at her with wide eyes before going back inside his booth and hitting the button to lift the gate. "Right, okay. Sorry."
"I'm not."
"Just make sure you go straight to the guest quarters. I don't think you should be working with volatile equipment in your current state, begging your pardon, Dr. Mckay."
Her current state. She gave a broken giggle and slowly pulled through the open gate, blinking back more tears as she carefully drove into the employee parking lot. She had a lot of work to do before she went to bed, rearranging mission schedules for the foreseeable future and switching people around to make sure Troy was kept far away. She'd probably owe a lot of irritating people favors tomorrow morning, but she didn't care right now.
Hours later she finally gave in to the compulsion to call her sister Jeannie. They'd had a big blowout two years earlier and stopped talking to each other until only a few weeks ago when Jeannie asked for a detente because she needed to talk to her big sister. Jeannie had fallen to the family curse, discovering she was accidentally pregnant even though the English professor husband had wanted to wait longer before having kids. At the time, Meredith had been quite proud of how she'd nobly put aside a turbulent history of melodrama and pettiness to commiserate with her sister's plight, though she might've mentioned once or twice or twenty times that she would never be so careless with her own uterus. It was rather embarrassing to think that she might've already been pregnant while saying that. Jeannie was sure to make a dig.
Yet no matter how much they fought over the years, her sister cared about her, just like she cared about Jeannie. Right? Meredith needed to know that someone out there honestly cared about her after Troy's lies and betrayals. She needed one person on her side.
The phone rang and rang and rang. The answering machine picked up. Meredith hung up and called again. Finally it picked up. "Whu… Rodney? Do you know what time it is?" Jeannie rasped.
"Jeannie?" Meredith's voice dried up. She didn't even know where to start. What if Troy had been right and Jeannie really didn't care about her after all? "Um." She swallowed hard and her vision swam. Maybe this phone call had been a mistake. "Nevermind."
Pressing a hand hard to her eyes to try and trap the tears, Meredith went to hang up when she heard Jeannie's voice through the phone, "What's wrong? Don't hang up." Jeannie took a moment to murmur to her husband to go back to sleep. "I'm walking out to the living room. Okay, talk to me, Neyney, I'm here."
The childish nickname for Rodney made a sob break from Meredith's mouth. Tears trickled past her palm and onto her lips. It had been more than twenty years since she'd last heard Jeannie say that name.
"You're crying. You never cry. Do I need to kill somebody? I still have great-grandmother Madison's rifle up in the attic somewhere and they'll never suspect me because we've barely talked in years," Jeannie sounded dead serious.
Meredith hiccuped. The death threat was enough to jerk her from self-pity to amusement. Wiping her face, Meredith found a half-smile twisting her lips. "I'm claiming the name Madison first," she told her sister abruptly.
"What?"
Opening up the floodgate, Meredith let it all come out. "The baby. My baby—or babies—there could be twins but I haven't had an ultrasound yet. I just found out tonight. Troy switched out my birth control for Clomid and got me pregnant so I would quit working and promote him into my position. He expects me to stay home barefoot and pregnant and let him take over all my projects and research. He doesn't want kids, but he wants to be better than me more so he's willing to put up with them as long as they keep me distracted. I guess I wasn't paying attention because I had no idea things had gotten so bad between us, not that it matters now. I'm divorcing him as soon as I can file the paperwork tomorrow morning and assigning him to a project as far away from me as possible. He says he loves me but he loves the thought of being in charge at work more, so he can sleep with his ambition and regret instead." She hiccuped.
Jeannie hissed. "That rat-bastard. I'm definitely bringing the gun now, but even Troy being a backstabbing asshole isn't enough to get me to give up the name Madison. I was her favorite granddaughter and the name is mine by right. You can have Jehosephat. I don't want that one."
Meredith snorted. "No one liked the name Jehosephat, not even Jehosephat. I'm not going to do to my kid what was done to me. That tradition ends here" She wiped her running nose and relaxed back in her chair. "We can fight about the name thing later. You don't need to come. I just—I just needed to hear your voice."
"You should come up here to visit. We can hang out and plot revenge together. I'm working on some theoretical work on subspace in my spare bedroom. You could look over my math. It'll be fun until we start to drive each other crazy." Jeannie sounded very accepting of their mutual prickliness, a sign of maturity.
"Maybe. Not now, but thanks. I have to figure out what I'm doing first. Soon, though. I think… I think I'd like that." Meredith swallowed. "I wish you had the clearance to look at my stuff. You'd love it. Anyways, are you at the congratulations stage with your own accidental pregnancy yet? Should I say congratulations? I'm still at the raging stage and bitter at succumbing to the family curse, so don't bother using platitudes with me."
Jeannie sighed through the phone. "You can say congratulations. It's not what we planned, but Caleb said he's happy anyway and I did want to have children someday. I was thinking more like in three years, but kids were in the cards. So thank you for your congratulations and I'm sorry the curse hit you too. On a positive note, my Madison and your Rodney Jr. can now be best friends and complain about us to each other."
"Or they'll be mortal enemies," Meredith said pessimistically. "But at least they'll have a lifelong companion, so that's something." Glancing at the clock through burning eyes, Meredith noticed the late hour. "And on that note I'll let you get back to sleep. Since I'm claiming the name Madison, I can only say that it's very astute of you to want to name your daughter after a genius like me, but I beg you to name her Meredith instead of Rodney Jr. unless you want her to resent you forever."
Jeannie snorted. "Don't be silly. She won't resent me because I'm going to name her Madison. Goodnight, Rodney. Come visit when you can. It's an open invitation. As is my offer of great-grandmother's rifle."
Saying goodbye, Rodney flipped her phone shut, released a steady stream of air, and went to bed. She tossed and turned for the rest of the night, but if she dreamed at all during that, she didn't remember it.
AN: I spent so long searching for the things on my grocery list at two different stores that I ended up hungry and grabbed a box of apple fritter doughnuts. I ate two already today. They were delicious, though very unneeded calories. I feel very triumphant though because I found toilet paper. Yay! It's silly the things we celebrate nowadays, but all celebrations are important. I also made two loaves of honey whole wheat bread yesterday and got my kids through most of their schoolwork for today. I hope good things are happening for you. Thank you for reading and reviewing!
