Shoutout to the guest on my other story who kindly let me know that the original posting of this fic didn't work :) Hopefully this one does!
If that ever happens again then you can find my fics on both tumblr or AO3 at the username: mdevonsunflower
PART ONE:
"Here's his jacket and bag and I've packed him some snacks for the road" Amelia said to Jo as she handed her the plastic bag filled with Alex's latest craving.
Jo nodded an appreciative thank you at her co-worker. She had woken up that morning filled with worry about the competition presentation ahead and yet, after everything that had ended up happening, she still couldn't believe she had been called to come pick up her very stoned fiance.
"You look happy" Alex grinned at her.
"I had a really really good day" Jo smiled reassuringly back at him.
She wasn't just saying that to please Alex — her day had been an emotional rollercoaster — but it was also without a doubt one of the best days of her life.
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Jo walked out of the OR feeling as if a tonne of bricks had been lifted off her shoulders. Her entire body flooded with the relief of the surgery going down without any complications. Whilst it would have been over much faster if Meredith had just helped her when she'd asked, Jo didn't mind being ignored so much in the end because it meant that she could claim the victory all to herself.
All she wanted to do was go home with Alex to wrap up in a blanket on the couch but with him not expected to get off for another few hours, Jo was forced to wait it out in an empty on call room. It was probably a good thing though considering the lack of sleep she'd been getting lately - it gave her an opportunity to catch up on the much needed beauty rest.
She must have only been lying there for a few minutes when she heard the door creek open behind her revealing Meredith. "You should be really proud of yourself, Jo. Really really proud"
She was proud — so incredibly proud — but most of all she was flattered. She was flattered because she knew Meredith must have a lot of trust in her to allow her to take on such a difficult procedure. Just as she was about to thank the attending for her words of encouragement, Jo felt a sudden wave of nausea wash over her. The too familiar feeling told her everything she needed to know about what was about to happen. She had been throwing up everything she ate for the past week but had put it down to all the anxiety she'd been having about her and Meredith's research. Except now, even with the presentation put on hold, she knew if nausea didn't pass soon that she'd be making her usual dart to the toilet bowl.
"Uh-hum" Jo managed to croak out in response to Meredith. She pressed her hand to her mouth, willing her lunch to stay down, but soon lost the fight as she felt an angry burning sensation slowly creep upwards into her throat.
Pushing herself off of the bed and darting into the nearest bathroom, Jo fell to her knee before the toilet to empty her guts. Footsteps followed closely behind announcing Meredith's presence. "Jo! What's wrong?"
"What does it look like?" an unamused Jo responded as she sank herself against the back wall of the bathroom. Her eyes staring at the tiled floor in her attempts to avoid Meredith's heavy gaze.
"I just mean — like — are you okay? You're not sick, are you?" Meredith extended a hand to Jo to offer her some help standing up, in which she accepted almost immediately.
"No I'm not sick," Jo sighed. "I'm just a little anxious that's all. I've been throwing up every day this week."
"Are you sure?" Meredith eyed her, pretty unconvinced that this was, in fact, just a bug.
"Yes Meredith," Jo moaned back in annoyance as she swatted Meredith out of her way of the bathroom stall, walking towards the sink to wash her hands.
"Every day this week? That's a lot of nausea Jo! Are you sure it's not something more than anxiety?" A concerned look spread across Meredith's face as she scanned the young resident up and down multiple times over.
Jo didn't satisfy Meredith's annoying nags with a response, instead opting to shoot a death glare her way to warn her off.
Except Meredith was starting to get impatient by Jo's lack of response, prompting her to move closer to keep an eye on the younger surgeon. "Well Jo, are you going to answer me?"
"Stop making a big deal out of nothing Meredith. I am absolutely and completely fine." Jo huffed grumpily as she turned around, grabbing hold of the door handle that closed her and Meredith off from the hallway, and walked back in the direction of the on call room. Although she quickly realised she'd made a mistake when she suddenly got really dizzy and lightheaded, causing her vision to fog.
Meredith was just a couple of steps behind Jo when she noticed her slow down and grab hold of the unattended gurney in the hallway. Realising her previous approach was being effective — with a sigh — she changed her tone to sound more sympathetic and smiled at Jo warmly. "Just sit down for a moment Jo. I believe you. It's okay. We're surgeons who live on minimal sleep and nothing but coffee. So you're right, it's probably nothing more to worry about than a resident who's overworked herself and needs some sleep. That being said Jo, I care about you … a lot … and you don't look well. You sort of look like shit if I'm being completely honest." Meredith paused, earning herself a slight laugh from Jo. "Let's just sit down for a moment. Then, after I'm satisfied that you're not going to fall on your face if you try to walk, we're going to go to an empty exam room where you're going to let me draw your blood. If all is well then fine — I'll stop nagging — but until then Jo we're doing it my way."
"Whatever you say Dr Grey," Jo smiled sheepishly.
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Less than thirty minutes later, Meredith walked back into the same on call room she'd found Jo in earlier, lab results in hand.
Jo was sitting crossed legged on the bed, her left arm hooked up to an IV drip that Meredith had convinced her to get in exchange for another solo surgery. She was fiddling with her phone in her right hand, nervously waiting for a text or a call from Alex who she hadn't seen since the beginning of the shift. Her eyes flickered upwards as Meredith entered, settling on the folded piece of paper she held in her hand.
"So what's the verdict? Are you satisfied that I don't need this stupid thing?" Jo pointed towards the needle in her arm.
"I'm satisfied you're not dying" Meredith smirked "but I'd like you to stay on the drip for a bit longer please, at least until the bag is done."
"What! Why? If there's nothing weird in my results then I shouldn't need it" Jo threw her arms up in annoyance.
"I said you weren't dying Jo - I didn't say your results didn't show anything."
"Jesus Christ Meredith can you spit it out already then" Jo threw her head back in frustration.
"Well you're dehydrated, probably due to all the fluids you've lost because of the vomiting" Meredith paused slightly to try and read Jo's face but her focus was still on the phone beside her "you're also iron deficient so that's likely what's causing your dizziness."
The last part caught Jo's attention a bit more than the first and she lifted her head to look at Meredith who was wearing a beaming smile. "Are you seriously smiling right now because you were right and I was wrong?"
"There's one last thing…" Meredith walked over to the bed to sit beside Jo and hand her the lab results to read over for herself "you're also pregnant."
Not having looked at the papers in her hand yet, Jo let out an audible laugh at what she assumed was a joke from Meredith. However, her eyes quickly fell on the elevated hCG levels clearly marked on her results, confirming Merediths last bombshell. "Well, shit"
"You don't happen to have really good elastic on your wedding dress do you?" Meredith teased as she tried to lighten the nervous mood.
Jo wiped away a couple of tears that she felt fall on her cheeks before letting her hand drop to her midsection. "I can't believe I'm not going to be able to drink at my own wedding party."
Meredith moved forward suddenly to wrap her arms around Jo. "We can throw this kid a big first birthday party to make up for it, and I'll babysit so you can get wasted."
"Deal," Jo laughed anxiously - her mind still reeling from the latest revelation.
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Jo had started thinking of all the ways she could announce the pregnancy to Alex since the moment she left the on call room. Eventually having given up on any chances of him returning her texts, Jo walked to the peds floor to see if she could find him there. With no luck there, or the other hundred places she looked, she was just about to go home when she received a phone call from Amelia. Jo laughed as she heard her friend explain the situation — a very stoned Alex being babysat by Owen and Amelia — because of course that's what would happen on the same day Jo would find out she was pregnant.
On the drive over she had wondered if she'd still get the opportunity to tell him that night but, with her now standing in Owen's doorway to pick him up, she realised just how out of it he was. Jo thought it would be better off to wait if she wanted any chance of him remembering the entire conversation.
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Alex climbed into bed the moment he and Jo got home to the loft that evening. A snore erupted loudly within a couple of minutes of his head hitting the pillow, prompting Jo to leave him be and have a shower instead. What she didn't expect to see when she finished in the bathroom though was a wide awake Alex sitting up in bed surrounded by pizza boxes.
"Jo! There you are, I've been looking for you everywhere. I ordered us pizza," Alex yelled excitedly.
"I can see that Alex… I thought you were going to rest."
"I did… and then I wasn't tired anymore… and I was hungry instead. So I thought what do I love? PIZZA - I love PIZZA! So I ordered us one from every delivery place in town" Alex moved the food out of Jo's side of the bed and patted at the mattress "come sit, I got us beer too."
"I don't think beer is what you need right now Alex" Jo shook her head at him as she walked over to the bed, picking up the six packs of beer on her pillow and placing it on the floor instead.
"But why" Alex sulked
"Ah I don't know… maybe because you're already high? We don't need to add alcohol to the mix." Jo climbed into bed beside him, pulling the duvet up to wrap herself in. "Pass me a slice then."
"Here you go, just take a whole one" Alex passed Jo one of the pizza boxes. "Fine, I won't drink the beer but you should. You've had a really long day so loosen up, relax. Have a beer Jo."
Jo smirked as she went through the possible responses in her head, unsure if this was the time or place to tell him. "I can't Alex"
"Of course you can Jo" Alex leaned forward to grab the six pack from the floor beside Jo but was stopped when she put a hand to his chest.
"No Alex I really can't" Jo's hand moved to caress his stumbled cheek, leaning in to kiss him and place her forward to his "I can't because I'm pregnant."
Alex pulled away to look at her "You're … what?"
"Pregnant — knocked up, up the duff, there's a bun in my oven — take your pick. We're having a baby," Jo giggled excitedly.
"That's awesome" Alex grinned "I have a baby too — a chip baby — but I left him at Owen's to have a playdate with his new baby."
Jo groaned inwardly at Alex's clear inability to grasp what she was saying. "Yeah, okay, alright - I think it's time for bed" she brushed him off. "We can talk tomorrow."
Besides, Alex was already one step ahead of her, having crawled under the covers himself to lie down in bed before she'd even suggested sleeping. He mumbled something incoherent towards Jo before filling the loft with his loud snores once again.
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Alex had woken up the next morning feeling highly confused and disorientated, struggling to recall the events of the night before. He knew the blackout wasn't beer related because the six pack remained untouched on the floor - that and because he definitely didn't have any typical hangover symptoms. Alex figured that Jo would be his best bet at filling in the blanks but a quick scan of the loft revealed her to be missing. Assuming she had just been called into work unexpectedly and forgotten to leave a note, Alex decided to hit the shower to refresh.
Stripping his clothes off onto the bathroom floor, Alex discovered a chip stuck to the inside of his shirt. Standing under the water streams he suddenly thought about being in Merediths living room with a bag of chips strapped to his chest, in which he started laughing as he remembered calling it his baby. A baby, that was it, something happened last night with a baby - Alex just couldn't put his finger on it. Whilst he had a faint recollection of someone telling him they were having a baby before he went to sleep last night, he didn't think it was Jo, he thought for sure it wasn't Jo who had said it. So who could it have been?
"Hey Alex, are you hungry?" Jo's voice could be heard outside the bathroom door, causing him to shut the water off, so he could hear her better.
"Jo, where did you go?"
"To pick up some breakfast! We were meant to be going out for brunch, remember?" Jo's voice paused as she opened the bathroom door to come face to face with Alex "only you didn't seem brunch ready this morning so I figured we'll postpone those plans, pick up some takeaway breakfast instead and have a morning on the couch instead."
Alex reached for the towel on the rail beside Jo, smiling at her as he wrapped himself in it. "Oh thank god because I feel awful. What did you grab for breakfast?"
"I didn't know what you'd feel like so I got a mix of pancakes, bagels, egg muffins and bacon" Jo walked back towards the kitchen. "Why do you feel bad?"
"Mostly just because I ate so much pizza last night so my stomach is a bit iffy, but also because I seem to have forgotten some things... So my brain feels cloudy… you don't happen to know why I might feel that way do you?"
Jo laughed at his question but happily explained the hectic events of the day before, everything except the pregnancy of course - that she wanted to see if he could recall on his own.
"So nothing else happened last night? No big news or announcements … nothing important that we discussed?" Alex tested the waters with Jo, trying his hardest not to say the wrong thing out of the blue and freak her out - like asking her if she was pregnant for instance.
"Nope" Jo's lips popped on the p, giving Alex a reassuring smile.
However, Alex wasn't convinced by Jo's nonchalant attitude. He couldn't think of a single person other than Jo who was in the loft last night, let alone tell him they were pregnant. Now that he thinks about it, it wasn't the most far fetched scenario, she was having a lot of symptoms lately. Nausea, dizziness, fatigue — hell — even her boobs had gotten bigger. It quickly clicked in his head that she had bought egg muffins too, a food which she typically avoided. Alex realised that Jo really could be pregnant; he could actually be becoming a dad soon. Jesus Christ, that scared him — so very much — and yet, when he looked up to see Jo eating away at her breakfast happily, all that fear just disappeared.