Fire and Dread
At first it had been thrilling. They had basked together in the initial joy and wonder of her pregnancy. William had been sweet and loving, bring her flowers, inviting her for walks, finding reasons to visit her at the morgue.
Gradually, however, the mood changed.
She knew she could not blame anyone but herself. She hated that she snapped and griped and grumbled. She felt shame after each outburst. And she regretted deeply that William seemed ill at ease around her.
Yet she continued to react in annoyance or anger or upset to even the most apparently innocent of topics.
It took a while, but the psychiatrist in her began to understand.
There was an ever-present fluttering in her stomach that persisted beyond the morning sickness, accompanied by an unease throughout her whole body. While William enthusiastically threw around topics such as the baby's names and education and even career, Julia remained frozen in a shorter timeframe. Her attention was focussed on that day, the next day, the next month, and those following. Yet she could not imagine beyond the birth.
He seemed so certain that her once impossible pregnancy signalled that he would finally have the family he so craved. She held no such convictions.
As a doctor, she knew how much peril pregnancy carried for both mother and baby. Add to that the damage that had been caused by her abortion… There was so very much that could go wrong that it weighed heavily on her mind, the scenarios running in an almost constant loop.
Would she survive the ordeal? Would she suffer from complications during the pregnancy or the birth? Would the baby be born on time? Or a premature birth, resulting in a tiny baby needing so much more support?
Or worse, so much worse that the thought brought bile to her throat and hot stinging tears to her eyes. Would she be able to protect the little one for long enough that it stood a chance of survival outside of her body? Or would they face the ultimate devastation?
How could they cope with that? How would William ever possibly forgive her?
And then added to that were the concerns about her career. How would she manage being a coroner and increasingly pregnant? Would her work suffer because she would not have the stamina to complete gruelling hours of work every day? What about the people with whom she worked, by whom she'd worked so hard to be respected; would they still acknowledge her as a professional alongside them?
And perhaps more superficially, but also taking up her energy, was the concern over her appearance. Her body would change; as a doctor she knew that all too well. But was William prepared for that? Would he still find her attractive in the weeks and months to come?
She could not consider how her work might be affected after the birth of a baby. Nor could she consider how her relationship with William would change once there was another in their family. And she could not contemplate what sort of mother she would make or how they might raise the child. All of those events were in a timeline after. Everything had to go well for those events to manifest. And she could not hope that everything would go well.
With those multitudes of worries gnawing and plaguing at her, was it any wonder she sometimes wished to forget she was pregnant? That wasn't to say she regretted her pregnancy, most definitely not! But she sometimes wished to be free of all concerns and just be Julia again. Yet it seemed that no sooner did the morning sickness abate for the day, allowing her some reprieve from its constant reminder, then William would try to draw her to discuss a matter regarding their child's future. More often than not, Julia would snap, regardless of the topic, either because William had brought her pregnancy (and accompanying worry) to the forefront of her mind, or simply because she envied her husband's untroubled happiness.
Indeed, he seemed little bothered by bringing tins of potentially contaminated meat into the morgue for her to test. Regardless of the nausea that the disgusting looking food caused, her fear ratcheted up at the prospect of adding the threat of toxins to an already fragile pregnancy. And when he remained unconcerned about her, admittedly shrill, worries, she bit back out of frustration.
It was out of defensiveness that she cruelly laughed when he suggested tobacco to calm her the following day. When he mentioned he had a gift for her, she had expected something romantic, as he had done in the first days after she had told him her news. But to give her tobacco to calm her in her 'condition', when she had only been trying to protect their child from harm….!
Yes, she was tetchy and short-tempered at the best of times, but especially when William unexpectedly sprung the topic on her.
She had just returned to their table at a restaurant when he suddenly mentioned the child's name, indicating he had been considering it for quite some time, when her mind, preoccupied by other things, had been doing nothing of the sort. She managed to engage good naturedly for a few seconds, but the façade crumbled when he suggested Wiliam for a boy. Perhaps it was the mention of the convention of naming the eldest son after the father. 'Eldest son' implied multiple children, and so much more expectation. So, to avoid giving voice to her anxieties, she lashed out. The guilt resulting from that exchange came almost immediately as William appeared hurt and soured at her apparent dislike of his name.
Only moments later, they met with President Roosevelt, and given her high emotions, it did not take much for her to become riled up at the prospect of him slaughtering a magnificent wild animal. She felt fully justified in that particular encounter (and, at least it gave her something else to focus on).
Probably the factor making it all worse was that she could not divulge her worries to William. She did not want to burden him and dampen his enthusiasm (any more than she already had, anyway). So, she merely admitted to being a burden (which he unconvincingly refuted), or quietly suggested an alternative name for the baby (inwardly choking at planning for something that still seemed so fragile and uncertain), or slinked silently up to him in their suite of an evening and curled against him, murmuring an apology into his chest.
She hoped he loved her enough to put up with her fiery outbursts, and to stay with her, no matter the dreaded outcome.
A/N: many thanks for reading. I very much doubt the writers had any of this in mind when they were creating the episodes, but I wanted to explore one reason why Julia may have been acting the way she was.