Still don't own stuff that isn't mine. Glad we cleared that one up.

Christine's ring being noticed happens in a much earlier chapter, and so that story is without a doubt out there at this point.

TapTap

Looking back later, Christine realised how the confrontation was all but inevitable. She also kept it as her firm belief that it could have been done in a less public, extreme fashion. She was probably right on that count. Not that it was in any way her fault that it went as it did.

When any pregnancy progresses, there will be a point when it starts to show. When people can tell as much differs widely, but if you work in a place full of medical professionals, like Christine, the chance someone might be able to notice comes a tiny bit earlier, than if you don't. Usually, that is.

It turns out that the first people to notice that a woman is pregnant is not, as you might expect, the most qualified doctors. It is the motherly nurses who's been around for 35 years and has five grandchildren each. Minimum. In this specific hospital, these women started to suspect Christine might be pregnant around the time she did, the first few of them, but being motherly old women they did not reveal her secret to anyone. They gossiped about it in plenty, of course they did, but only amongst themselves. It was really rather nice of them all.

Christine was just entering month five, when another female doctor noticed, and promptly mentioned it in the breakroom. When she did, the women who had been dead sure about it for at least three months by then, merely rolled their eyes and had they only been another generation, they would have commented by, 'Duh.'

Naturally, at that point, the news spread throughout the hospital so quickly that one might wonder if medical personel shouldn't focus on more important things but gossip, but perhaps actually don't.

Christine was lucky - or unlucky - enough to have gone home at that point, but when she arrived the next morning the question was everywhere, actually prompting her to leave an announcement with the nurses at the register desk before she officially went on duty, as she had already hit her limit for how many times she could answer the question, before even starting to work.

By then, her ring had already been observed, of course, and that story had inevitably already broken. So when Christine stepped into the break room at lunch time, the room went silent, and then there went up a cheer.

"Congratulations!" seemed to be the general message people gave her as she went deeper into the room, her hands squeezed by friends many times. Christine smiled in acknowledgement, answering questions - mostly from other women - about how far along she was and if she had been suffering from morning sickness, if that had passed now and so on, before one of the motherly older nurses asked the question everyone both wanted answered and probably already knew the answer to. "I take it, it is Strange's baby?"

Christine nodded in the sudden silence, sitting down at the table. "Yes."

"Will you two be marrying, then?" A younger nurse asked, after which he nodded to the at the moment visible ring around her neck.

"Yes," Christine confirmed again, but added, "at least, we will at some point. After I have the baby, I dare say."

"What does Stephen do now, exactly?" Was the next question in the slightly less lively discussion, as everyone either settled back to eating, or settled in to eat. "We haven't seen him in a bit," one of his past scrub nurses said, quite fondly.

"He's been busy," Christine rolled her eyes even more fondly, shaking her head a bit, "running that cult of his. He'll be back to consulting before long. He has not stopped doing so over email."

"I heard as much," an older doctor nodded along. "Doctor Serendiah over in Portland mentioned how he'd been helpful in a back trauma case."

Christine nodded, only to have to focus on a new series of congratulations, as another few doctors entered the room. At the back of the group of newcomers, suddenly looking like a thundercloud as the rumour was confirmed to his ears by Christine herself, was Nick.

"It's true then," he spoke stiffly, almost without moving, making the room go silent. A few calming words were spoken to intervene, but he ignored them all.

"You know it is. I told you myself months ago, remember?" Christine's voice was calm, and she did not pretend not to understand what his rage was about. "I told you I was back with Stephen, and pregnant with his baby, and I also told you to leave me alone. I believe that was why I told you actually," there was a few gasps as colleagues realised just how far Nick had been taking his obsession, "I told you I wanted you to back off."

Nick spluttered with so much rage he couldn't really speak, but then again, what could he actually say? It would no doubt have been outrageous, but as he stepped towards Christine, too outraged to even want to talk about it, one of the hospital security officers, currently on his lunchbreak, stepped in.

The man could hardly have expected the doctor to take a swing at him, but it didn't matter. Nick never had a chance either way. As a second security officer left it to the nurses to call for more security personel and instead helped out her colleague, the rest of the room watched in grave silence.

The story of how Nick had harassed Christine, harmless as she had initially thought it, and how those hilarious photos of him drenched to the bone up on the hospital's private social media forum had come about was all over the hospital that same afternoon, and the evidence they constituted was not good for the incompetent doctor. Nor was all the witnesses, or for that matter all his cursing as the management dealt with him.

In the end, he was fired. And no one considered it that much of a loss.