Summary: Despite his better judgment, Brock agrees to an illicit affair with the Saffron City Gym Leader. That was his first mistake. His second was falling in love with her. His third was buying her a sea breeze on her birthday. Mangashipping.
Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.
TW: Mentions of abortion
4. The Forbidden Fruit: Citrus paradisi – Jonah and the Whale
"It's nice to meet you, Ms. Le Fay," the doctor said kindly as he entered the room, shaking her hand before sitting behind his desk.
"Thank you, Doctor," Sabrina replied nervously, biting her lip. "It was good of you to fit me in on such short notice."
"How could I possibly turn down a case as interesting as yours?" he replied, offering her a warm smile. A part of her was relieved that he didn't hide his scientific curiosity; but a larger part of her was put off by his coolly clinical manner. "Tell me about your symptoms."
She nodded and explained what had been happening to her for the last month or so, matching the doctors clinical detachment. "I've lost control of my psychic abilities," she told him plainly. "At first it was little things, like I'd try to move to one place and end up somewhere else, or I'd be directing my thoughts to a particular object and end up with something else, but of late they've been acting on their own accord."
She describe these occurrences in the most vague and unemotional terms, keeping much to herself. Like how she'd been avoiding making use of her psychic abilities for fear that something untoward might happen. Even when battling she'd been reluctant to use her psychic link to Kadabra, instead relying on signals and verbal commands. Or how every time she'd used her ability to teleport in the last month there'd been about a 50-50 chance that she'd end up in another city.
The doctor nodded thoughtfully, making a few notes in his records and taking in what little she was wiling to reveal. "And aside from your psychic abilities, have you had any physical symptoms?" he asked, urging her to continue.
"Like what?" she asked curiously.
"Maybe nausea?" he suggested. "Lethargy? Emotionality? Perhaps a change in appetite?"
"I had a bit of tummy bug a few months ago, but it only lasted a couple of weeks," she admitted. "It wasn't anything serious, so I just let it go. I guess I've been eating a bit more than usual – I know I've put a bit of weight on, but I didn't think that was something to be worried about as I was eating more and lots of people have said before that I was too skinny," she added, unable to stop herself from sounding defensive.
"Lethargy?" he offered again.
Sabrina shrugged. "That's not unusual for me. I have a stressful job and I don't have the best sleeping habits."
"Emotionality?"
She gave him a dirty look. Damn male physicians and their assumptions that just because she was a girl that she was emotional. It was pure ridiculousness. Or at least it would be if it weren't sort of true. Even in this moment she could feel herself getting more worked up than she ought to about the line of questioning that she had any right to be.
Truthfully, she had been feeling more on edge lately. Her usual emotional control had been hanging by a thread, and she'd been quick to anger or sadness. She thought back to the other night and realized that her reaction could, if pushed, be classified as 'emotionality'. Her stupid date's comment that she was looking a bit weighty was in no way something that would usually affect her as such – especially given that she hadn't been particularly interested in the man to begin with and had only agreed to the date to get her mother off her back – but it had somehow sent her into tears and in desperate need for comfort from the man who had brought her here.
"A little," she shrugged disdainfully. "But I skipped my last two periods so it's probably just a build up of hormones," she told him with a tight smile. She was hoping to make him uncomfortable with her lady talk, but it didn't seem to work the same way it did on most men.
"Right of course," the doctor replied with an almost smug undertone to his voice. "Any light headedness or headaches, Ms. Le Fay."
She frowned but nodded, and the doctor smiled in the most unpleasant sort of way.
"I think I've worked out what's happening here," he said proudly, clearly pleased with his own deduction skill, "although it's not something we can cure per se."
"What is it?" she asked anxiously. The way he had implied a lack of cure immediately made her think cancer. The disease ran in her family and had been what took her grandfather not so long ago. It was not an easy way to go, and she remembered her grandfather's psychic powers flailing towards the end of the disease, although that had been attributed to the morphine at the time.
Maybe she had something worse? She was pretty sure one of her father's grandparents had suffered from Alzheimer's and that was, as far as she knew, incurable.
"I have good news for you, Ms. Le Fay," he replied, catching her anxious tone. "I do believe you're pregnant."
"What?!" she gaped at him loudly, jumping up from her seat. "I can't be pregnant!" she hissed. "I'm on the freakin' pill!"
"Like most forms of contraception, Ms. Le Fay," the doctor explained calmly, "the pill is not 100% effective. In fact, it becomes completely ineffective when consumed with some herbal supplements, and even certain foods and drinks."
"I'm not stupid," she muttered, narrowing her eyes at the smug looking quack. "I know what I can and can't eat with the thing. I'm careful about antibiotics. I don't take St. John's wart for anything. And I don't even like grapefruit."
"Perhaps you had one by accident," the doctor suggested in what she could only describe as a smug tone. Sabrina suddenly remembered why she hated doctors. "A lot of popular cocktails these days use grapefruit as an ingredient."
"And if you'd read my patient history you'd note that I said the last time I had a drink was nearly four months ago," she muttered sarcastically, glaring at the arrogant medicine man.
"That is exactly my point, Ms. Le Fay." She was getting real sick of him calling her that – pompous ass of a man. "Based on your current symptoms, I'd say that you are roughly four months pregnant. Do you recall what you were doing four months ago, Ms. Le Fay?"
Sabrina jumped to her feet and glared in his directions, hearing the question he didn't say aloud but was 100% thinking in his smug little head. She did not like the connotations of what he was saying - and not saying - mostly because she wasn't that kind of girl. She didn't do a lot of drinking. She didn't sleep with lots of guys. And she didn't go around having unprotected sex with random partners. She was a smart girl – she was not the kind of girl to find herself with an unplanned pregnancy.
She was the kind of girl who knew exactly what she was doing four months ago – and who for that matter. She had been out with Misty and Erika in celebration of the young grass gym leaders twenty-first with dinner and then clubbing.
Sabrina was even the kind of girl who could tell you exactly what she had drunk that night and it was not a lot. She had arrived early at the restaurant and had to wait for her two younger friends. A guy had hit on her at the bar and asked to buy her a drink, being spiteful she had picked from the cocktail list and chosen something called a sea breeze that she had spotted someone else drinking further down the bar – it was an incredible vibrant pink colour. The girls had then shared a bottle of wine with dinner (although Erika and Misty consumed most of it), and she had ordered another sea breeze when the got to the club, having decided that it was her new favourite drink and cocktail of choice. After that she was on water like any responsible party-goer.
She had met with Brock a couple days later and he had bought her a cocktail at the hotel bar before they headed upstairs to her room – like a gentleman he insisted on at least buying her a drink because it was her birthday and Valentines Day to boot, and she had happily agreed telling him about her new favourite cocktail.
But as responsible as Sabrina was, she now realized that she had no idea what was actually in a sea breeze.
"Does a sea breeze have grapefruit in it?" she asked despondently, dropping down to her chair in defeat.
"I do believe it does," the doctor replied, that same smug, self-satisfied smile resting easily on his face. "In fact, I believe it's almost entirely grapefruit juice."
"Of course it is," she muttered dejectedly to herself. "Well then, I'd like to schedule an appointment for termination," she said determinedly, looking sternly at the doctor.
She had hoped that would cause the smile to drop off his face, but he was unaffected. "I'm sorry, Ms. Le Fay, but we can't do that," he replied. "It's illegal to perform an abortion in either Kanto or Johto more than fifteen weeks into pregnancy. It may be more in Sinnoh or Orre, but I wouldn't be able to tell you how much."
"How do you know I'm at fifteen weeks?" she tried to argue, even though it was completely futile. "You haven't even done a pregnancy test."
"Ms. Le Fay," he began drolly but not unkindly, "we have just deduced when you got pregnant, and unless it was around early March you're outside of the window."
It wasn't mid-March. Erika's birthday was the 10th of February, and her own the 14th. By Sabrina's calculations that meant that her baby would be due in November. She was almost 18 weeks pregnant.
'My baby,' she thought to herself. She wasn't sure how that made her felt, but decided not to repeat the experience.
"You do have other options," the doctor added, trying to offer her a helpful smile.
"Like what?" she asked him, her tone cold.
"You will have to carry the baby full term, but you may put the child up for adoption," the doctor suggested. "Many couples are unable to have children, and there are various services for finding a family for a child."
"Have you forgotten the reason I came here?" she asked him almost darkly. "Adoption is not an option. A child with psychic abilities needs to be raised by psychic parents, and I will not let any child suffer through the same fate I did."
"Then I suppose you've made your decision, Ms. Le Fay," he told her cheerfully. "I'm sorry our time is up, but if you schedule an appointment with the receptionist on your way out for your first prenatal check up, we can talk about this more tomorrow. I hope you have a nice day," he told her as he ushered her out.
Sabrina just gaped as a door was shut in her face.
"Are you ok?" Brock asked as he quickly moved to meet her, concern washed across his features.
"No, I'm pregnant," she replied simply, her features tight and grimaced. He responded with a look of shock, which just annoyed her further. "Well? Aren't you going to say anything?"
He nodded slowly, and she was sure she knew what he was going to ask. 'Is it mine?' – it's the first thing on any males mind and she would reply 'of course it's freakin' yours, you dumbass'. She was not prepared for the question he did ask.
"Sabrina, will you marry me?"
~ to be continued ~
Cliffy! As anyone who has ever read anything I've ever written knows, that's my favourite way to end a chapter.
And of course, now you all know what the title alludes to. Grapefruit was originally known as the forbidden fruit and has the binomial nomenclature Citrus paradisi. If you are on any kind of medication, grapefruit are a no-no, but it also specifically reacts with some types of oral contraception potentially making them less (or in this case in-) effective. The timing would probably have to be right, but let's just call it a coincidence ok?