Ellie spent the rest of the day drifting in and out of sleep. Abby kept trying to get her to eat and drink, but Ellie would just vomit it back up.
"God if this is morning sickness, it sucks." She says as she finished vomiting for the hundredth time and Abby just rubbed her back as Gabriel came in.
"Well, I have your results and you are definitely pregnant." He says, going over to her as he took a syringe with a clear liquid in it off the table on the far side of the room.
"What's that?" She asks, her green eyes wide with fear.
"It's medicine. I'm going to inject this into your IV and it'll help you keep food down." He explains, taking Ellie's arm and injecting the medicine into the clear tubing, "so why didn't tell us about this apparent immunity?"
"I just figured it would be safer not to say anything." She says, laying back in the bed again.
"Well, if you'll let me, I want to run more tests. I want to see if we can develop a cure."
Ellie looked up at him, "you see the problem with that is that I don't want it to kill me."
Gabriel sighed, "believe me. We're going to try everything in our power to work around that. Especially now that you're pregnant."
Ellie breathed a sigh of relief, grateful that they were going to try and make a cure without killing her. For almost seven years she carried immense guilt over her immunity, why she never had to worry about infection while other people did. She had carried so much hostility when she found out that Joel took her out of the hospital and now, she could help make a cure without dying in the process.
"Alright when do we start?"
"I want you to have strict rest over the next week. No patrols, ever, and no heavy lifting. I'll do an ultrasound and general exam to make sure you're both healthy." He says, sighing as he pulled over a chair and sat down at the foot of the bed, "I do have a question though."
"Yeah?" She asks, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow at him.
"We have only ever had one immune person and then you show up being the exact age that girl would be now. Can you explain that?" He asks, narrowing his eyes at her.
"Just a coincidence honestly. No one ever tried to see if they were immune and I got bitten and nothing happened. I'm sure there's others too."
Gabriel sighed, "alright, well Abby can I talk to you?"
Abby nodded, getting up and following the doctor out of the room, making sure to close the door behind them.
"What's up?"
"Ellie has Hyperemesis gravidarum. In simplest terms, severe morning sickness and I need you to make sure she takes it easy. She can hardly keep anything down which makes her at higher risk of miscarriage and stillbirth."
Abby sighed, rubbing the back of her neck, "well how long until it improves?"
"Hard to say. Most women see improvement at twenty weeks, but some have this condition their whole pregnancy. If she doesn't start keeping anything down, the baby could be extremely malnourished when it's born. I'm going to give her another IV for when she leaves here. It's shorter and can be concealed by her clothing. This way no one knows she's pregnant yet and she constantly gets fluids." He explains, putting his hands in his coat pockets and leaning against the wall.
"Alright. Do what you need to do."
Gabriel nodded, "alright I'll be back in the morning to check on her. If all looks good, then she should be good to head back to your room."
Abby nodded, turning and entering the room again where Ellie was sitting up again.
"Hey, how do you feel?"
Ellie shrugged, "better I guess."
"Oh good. Now I can do this." She says, slapping Ellie on the arm. It was a light slap but still had enough force for Ellie to get the message.
"Ow! What the hell was that for?"
"For going on patrol while pregnant."
Ellie gawked at her, "well I didn't…okay fine, I suspected I was because I was late, but I didn't want to sit around here and feel useless."
Abby slapped her again.
"Didn't you yell at Dina for the exact same thing?" She asks, scoffing as she took her seat at Ellie's bedside.
"That's different."
"No, it's not! Hypocrisy isn't cool, Ellie!"
Ellie sighed, hating to admit that Abby was right. She just felt useless sitting back at base when she could be helpful. Abby sighed as she looked at Ellie, who was laying on her side again.
"You know, Lev's going to be ecstatic."
Ellie chuckled weakly, "let's keep this between us for now, okay? I want to be sure everything's okay and we won't lose it or anything."
Abby nodded as she smoothed back Ellie's brown hair. This was quite possibly the craziest shit they had done since getting together.
"And just so you know, this is a one and done deal. You're not getting anymore babies out of me."
Abby just chuckled as she leaned down to kiss her.
A/N: Let me know what y'all think! Please review with any thoughts, ideas you may have, I'm all ears!