Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS or its characters…
Author's Note: I feel like I'm so close to being done, but I don't know when I'll write again, so I decided to post this now. Sorry for leaving you hanging…
Deciding that she couldn't do anything about the situation except wait, Kate turned to the pile of paperwork that had accumulated on her desk. Ever since her fellow agents had realized that she had gained spare time while being off field duty, they had begun adding various forms they wished to avoid to her own stack of incomplete paperwork. If she had known investigative work, as well as law enforcement in general, entailed so much paperwork, maybe she wouldn't have taken on the job. She would rather be shot at any day. Well, now that she was going to be a mother, going to be responsible for another human being, maybe getting shot at wasn't such a good career choice. Paperwork was safer, although only after you factored out the desire to attempt suicide with a letter opener, pen, stapler or whatever else was handy.
So Kate filled out forms until her eyes hurt, her head throbbed, her hand cramped, and her back ached. She threw the pen down on her desk and slowly managed to get herself up out of her chair onto her feet, which immediately cursed her for not owning more comfortable shoes that she could wear to work. Maybe she'd give up and wear her flip-flops tomorrow. The realization that she had to pee and had been holding it for the past half hour caused her to overcome her discomfort and walk rather swiftly albeit awkwardly towards the Ladies' Room.
Kate made a discovery in the bathroom that she really didn't want. She was bleeding. She hadn't been imagining those few tiny drops of blood in her underwear that morning. Her mind had dismissed it, had pushed it far into the recesses of her thoughts. She had had so many more pressing things to worry about. But she couldn't deny it now. She was bleeding. What could she do? Was she miscarrying?
Kate started finding it more and more difficult to breath as panic engulfed her. She couldn't handle this, not with everything else she had been going through over the past few days. She tried to tell herself to remain calm. Becoming hysterical wouldn't help her at all. She swallowed back the lump that had formed in her throat and focused on the task at hand. She needed to clear her mind to calm herself. She tried to only think about washing her hands. It worked. Her mind emptied as she stared absently engrossed upon the swirls of soap suds covering her skin. She rinsed them off, and then splashed her face with water.
She breathed deeply and let her mind approach the problem that threatened to become her breaking point. If she could only think about it logically, she could probably resolve the issue, or at least figure out a prudent course of action. When was the last time she had felt the baby move? She couldn't remember. She had to take another deep breathe and closed her eyes forcing it out slowly and her anxiety with it. There weren't a lot of options that she had to consider. She could go to the hospital. Or she could wait until her doctor's appointment, which was less than two hours away the last time she checked the clock. The wait at a hospital could easily take that long anyway. If only there was a way that she could get peace of mind that her baby was fine right then.
"Of course!" she cursed herself for not thinking of it right away. She could ask Ducky to check her out. He was a doctor, after all. Another fact surfaced in her attention, rescinding the former. She couldn't go to Ducky for immediate reassurance that everything was fine. He wasn't at headquarters that day. He was off giving advice to one of those body farms for forensic training. She continued to fight back the growing sense of panic as she tried to think about her other options.
Everyone that she'd go to for assistance was gone. Tony was stuck in the hospital, McGee and Gibbs were off hunting down that man who had put him there, and Ducky was giving advice to some of his colleagues. The only team member that she hadn't accounted for was…
"Abby!" Kate said, announcing her absent-mindedness aloud. This time she did not resist the urge to smack herself in the forehead for her stupidity. Abby would be just the person Kate should go to at a time like this. Not only would the amiable lab tech be able to give her sound advice, she was almost guaranteed to provide a reassuring word. Kate breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn't resolved the situation yet, but she now had a solid plan of action.
"Abby, could you help me with something?"
"Sure," the Goth in a white lab coat replied from in front of a computer screen. She turned to face her friend and co-worker.
"What's wrong, Kate?" she asked noticing the distraught woman's face. The look only seemed to deepen at the question she had posed; a reminder to her that everything was wrong at the moment. Abby guided Kate to her comfy swivel chair that she hardly seemed to use. "Take a seat. Tell me about it."
'I'm bleeding, Abby," Kate told her urgently. It came out lightly, as though it strained her voice to say anything at all. Abby failed to understand.
"Do you want a band-aid?" she asked Kate, slightly perplexed. It made Kate smile ironically. When she had been little, she had thought that a band-aid could make anything and everything better. She had even tried using them to mend one of her mother's vases that she had broken. If only it were that simple.
"I don't think a band-aid is going to help," Kate said fighting back tears at having to face the reality of what might be happening to her. She held onto the idea that she did not know, one way or the other, whether she was miscarrying. "I think I'm losing the baby."
Abby froze in place for a moment as she processed the information she had just been confronted with. She wondered how this could happen to Kate; so much bad in such a little time. Maybe her friend was overreacting. Looking at the sorrow in her friend's face startled her out of that hope. Kate really believed it.
"I don't know if I should go to the hospital or just wait for my doctor's appointment," Kate continued describing her dilemma as she waited for Abby to catch up with reality. "It's only a little over an hour from now."
"That may be too long, Kate," Abby said, finally snapping back into the world, determined to help her troubled friend. "Time can make a difference with these things."
"If only I knew whether the baby was still okay," Kate lamented her situation.
I know!" Abby said as she shot across the room and began opening and digging through cupboards and drawers.