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A/N: Goodness, this is such a piece of crap. I'm sorry. I'm sure at least one of you naturally kindhearted people will say, "No, no, it's good. Keep writing." You're wrong; my writing's just bad lately. I'm running on empty, I think. Does that make any sense?
I really want to simply pull the fic but I'm not going to. The last time I almost pulled a story, everyone rallied and said don't, then some people said I threatened to pull so everyone would tell me I'm a good writer and have to keep writing (although I appreciate the encouragement the people who didn't tell me I was manipulative gave me). Did that make any sense? Sheesh, even my author's note is crap.
I gotta be honest with you kids—my heart isn't in this story. My only advice is that you stop reading it and don't review and then I can take the hint and take this story away and put it into my personal archives of "Well, dang, jen, why'd you start this?" Maybe I wasn't meant to write a story without action. This is so not one of my usual stories. Any of you still reading, could you drop an email and tell me where I'm going with this A/N?
most humbly (and a little lost)—your author
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My Blessed Mistake: Is Uteri the Plural of Uterus?
Catherine and Sara stood under a very still corpse. He hung from a basement rafter by a length of rope. One of the police officers approached.
"Kinda makes you want to grab a leg and start swinging him, huh?"
Cath turned slowly, her disgust evident. "Feel free to wait outside."
"I was only kidding!" He hadn't been. "Look, his name's David Hammer, 34, and he's an accountant over at the Mirage. Neighbor said she heard some arguing between him and his fiancé about eight this morning."
"That her over there?"
"Rachel Carson. She's a teacher at Madison elementary school. Discovered him an hour ago."
Sara began taking more pictures while Catherine spoke to the teacher. The young woman looked a mess, obviously shocked at her boyfriend's death. She stood in a corner, trembling and watching the investigators do their jobs.
"Ms. Carson, I'm Catherine Willows. Can you tell me what happened?"
"Happened? Happened. I don't know. I mean, I stopped by here this morning on my way to work and we had a little disagreement. When I came back this evening to check on him, he wasn't here. I mean, he wasn't upstairs. So I waited. Then I thought I'd look around, to see if he hadn't heard me come in. That's when I found him."
"So, you don't live here?"
She veiled her eyes a little. "No. Dave and I were…waiting…to be together until after we got married. Ms. Willows, somebody must have killed him! Dave would never commit suicide. We had everything going for us. Who would do this?"
Cath made a small, sympathetic sound and continued to ask questions. At least, she thought, he's so far got more sleep than I did.
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"Well?"
"Well what?"
Greg rolled his eyes. He sat down at the break room table across from Sara. "Well, you have your first prenatal appointment today. In, I believe, twenty minutes. What are you still doing here?"
"If I needed a mother, I'd have let you know."
"Sara, have you ever had a big disappointment in life?" She pursed her lips, as if to say, "You're looking at it." "Okay, lemme give you an example: When I was in eighth grade, I was desperate to join the soccer team. I exercised, jogged every day, practiced with my soccer ball, and then it came time to try out. I bombed. Bombed!" He paused, suddenly sidetracked. "Which is ironic, really, since the one time I auditioned for a school play, a science experiment in my backpack blew up and the school had to be evacuated so, as you can imagine, I didn't get a part. Not that it matters; obviously I chose science over theater. Wait—where was I going with this? Soccer. Anyway, I sucked at it and they wouldn't let me join the team."
Her eyes narrowed. "Are you, in any way, trying to compare a failed soccer tryout with an unexpected pregnancy?"
Hmm, it had come out a little like that, hadn't it? "No. My point is that there was nothing I could do. I couldn't have worked any harder, so I had to find other stuff that made me happy. You can't do anything about being pregnant. It's a fact. So reconcile yourself to it and take some joy knowing that it will only suck if you let it. At least, when your morning sickness dies down. And before the last couple months, when you'll be begging God to make it come early. Wow, I'm so not helping, am I?"
Eckley suddenly stuck his head through the door. The nightshift was over and mostly gone, but he wanted Greg to stay after and help out. "Sanders, you want to add a couple extra hours to your paycheck? Let's get a move on!"
"You're staying behind?"
"I dunno. He always wants me to. You'd think they didn't have their own techs."
An uncomfortable quiet fell while Sara closed her eyes. She couldn't go. She couldn't do this. She couldn't—did she smell oranges?
"Do you want me to come?" he asked softly, cutting into Sara's erratic thoughts. It was a peculiar question. They'd been hanging out for almost a month now, but the first prenatal exam is a bit…intrusive. Granted, he could leave the room, but would his presence bring her any comfort? He wanted to. Unfortunately, Sara was notorious for not accepting help.
"I guess…I guess that might be useful. You know what to expect, and I like to be well prepared. But if you can't, it's no big deal. It's not like I need you there; I can handle myself just fine."
He smiled at her. "I'm sure you can. But it would be nice to say no to Eckley for once. C'mon, let's blow this delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol stand."
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She looked composed. Or, rather, she looked composed. Sara and Greg waited in the exam room, she flipping through the pages of a random magazine, he drawing pictures on the little chalkboard set up for kids. Sara looked up.
"What is that?"
"What do you mean? It's a turkey."
"Greg…your turkey has four legs."
He looked puzzled. "I thought turkeys have four legs." His consternation grew. It wasn't that he wanted to be silly; he honestly didn't know. Turkeys don't exactly run wild on the streets of New York. When he was in second grade, the teacher asked him where milk cam from. He told her the grocery store. Fortunately, the doctor entered before his brain melted.
"Ah, Ms. Sidle. Happy to see you again." Then he noticed Greg. "Is this…?"
"No!" they both assured him simultaneously, then looked at each other. Sara continued, "This is my friend, Greg Sanders. He's very knowledgeable about all this."
Greg shook the doctor's hand and everyone settled in. "Well, Ms. Sidle, I see you haven't gained a single pound. At five-foot-five, 109 pounds is underweight. While you won't gain your most during the first trimester, do you understand that a low maternal weight can mean problems for the fetus?"
"Of course I understand that; do you understand what nausea is?"
Times like these always made Dr. Miller question his choice of fields. He could have been an urologist. "Just do your best. Now, as for your blood pressure, let's keep an eye on it. It's already a little high and that can mean preeclampsia."
Sara looked over at Greg. "It's high blood pressure in the mother during pregnancy which doesn't respond to typical remedies and often requires bed rest," he explained, sounding almost textbook. "Since your blood pressure already verges on high, it's like a warning—a predisposition."
"Very good, Mr. Sanders. He's a lucky friend to have. Now, shall we start the physical exam? We need to check your neck, thyroid and parathyroid, breasts, abdomen, arms, legs, heart, lungs, and eyes. You won't need to remove any clothing for those, but the pap and pelvic and rectal exams—"
"Rectal?"
He nodded casually. "Yes, pelvic and rectal exams are standard procedure to check for the position of the uterus and any abnormalities of the pelvis, as well as an ultrasound to date the pregnancy. Then we'll get a couple of blood samples, a TB test, and some urine. Of course, feel free to ask questions as we go along." He pulled out his stethoscope. "Ready?"
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Oddly enough, it was during the ultrasound that Sara took time to think about Grissom. It was either think about him or think about her bladder. Ugh, she drank 32 ounces of water in about ten minutes and had to hold it until the stupid technician finished moving his stupid wand around her stupid stomach. Being a woman sucks.
Grissom. Oh, she didn't know what to think about him. She knew it was wrong and irrational to be angry at him for not knowing about the pregnancy. How could he know? Despite Greg's gentle reprimands that she should inform him, it was just too much to bear. They'd already discussed how poorly any relationship would work out. He'd made himself quite clear. And now they were supposed to work out parenthood together? Not a chance.
What Sara didn't know (there was, in fact, a lot of not knowing going around; a dangerous symptom of bad communication), was that Grissom would not have been angry or run away or blamed her or resented her or yelled at her or sulked or fired her or any other scenario she thought up. Sure, there'd have been a lot of surprise, maybe even shock. Gil Grissom had never planned on being a parent. But plans change. His would. Have. Would have. His would have. She didn't give that a chance, though.
Which explained why, while the mother of his child suffered through bladder-control exercises, an uninformed Grissom stood at Lady Heather's doorstep.