Closer and Closer
"Uh oh. Death ray," Charlie observed, catching Will squint. "Let's move over here."
Taking his drink, he moved to a table away from the floor-to-ceiling windows of the AWM executive dining room. Will followed a moment later, and a waiter hurried over to see what was the problem.
"Everything's fine, but you gotta warn people about that reflection off the HBO building across the street," Charlie said as the waiter, murmuring apologies, swooped in with a new table set-up and glasses of ice water. "The infrared was broiling us alive, not to mention extracting all the antioxidents from my bourbon."
Will made a faint smile of amusement and lifted his glass of water. "Still on the wagon."
"That stuff will make you a free radical magnet, Will. Anyway—where were we?"
"You wanted News Night to poke a stick in the GOP's eye."
"All I'm saying is, why not take a stand for god's sake? Quit pitting red against blue talking heads in gladiatorial combat every night and just take a stand for the American people."
"Why would I want to rock that boat? I've got the second highest-rated newscast on cable."
"I don't give a shit."
"I know that, Charlie. That's why I have to." Will cast a furtive glance around to the other diners and dropped his voice to the level of discretion. "Think of it as me looking out for your interests with Reese Lansing and the 44th floor."
"Don't you worry about Reese Lansing. I have a secret weapon to bend him to my will."
"The hacking thing?" Will shrugged. "Well, I was in that meeting too, and Reese didn't look too bent."
Charlie used a finger to stir the ice through his bourbon. "You ever think about kids?"
Will pulled back at the non sequitur. "Adopting? Abducting? I don't know what you're talking about here."
"Relationship. Getting married. The usual thing."
"Oh. The usual thing," Will snorted. "Well, first of all, I'm on the threshold of fifty and so I'm now closer to the end than to beginning—"
Charlie snorted. "AWM has you insured for $15 million so I think they think you're worth the risk. Anyway, you don't look to me like you're going to die soon—"
"—And, besides, there's this problem of finding the right brood mare, so to speak." Will stopped under Charlie's supercilious gaze. "No, no, no, no. This isn't going to turn into another lecture about forgiveness, is it?"
"The two of you could really help each other, you know, especially now."
"Mac is—I don't know what's in her head. I don't know what she's trying to prove right now." Will wormed back in his seat, sighing with exasperation. "Come on, Charlie. Not every story has a happy ending."
"Well, sometimes happiness is just a choice you have to make."
"And if you're implying that Mac needs me to—look, obviously, she gets along fine on her own. She's an adult, she's survived three years in a goddam war zone on her own, so I don't think she needs me."
"Actually, I was thinking that you needed her." With that, Charlie signaled to the waiter for another drink.
oooo
"Am I going to lose the baby?"
After she'd recovered enough to ask a question, that was the only one that seemed to matter. Her voice betrayed her anxiety.
"I need you to stay calm, MacKenzie. I know we spoke about gestational hypertension last time. As I told you then, it isn't an uncommon development, particularly given your age and that this is your first pregnancy. But your blood pressure readings and now the results of the kidney-function and blood-clotting tests—" The doctor allowed his words to trail off and sighed. "I'm pretty sure we're looking at PE now. Preeclampsia."
"I've read about it, I think."
"We probably had a generic discussion about that, early on, but there have been a lot of tests and a lot of conversations, so don't fault yourself if you don't remember it. Anyway, now that we know what we're dealing with—"
"Will I lose the baby?"
"Short answer, no. Not necessarily," he hedged after a second. "If the condition isn't treated, preeclampsia can lead to eclampsia, which is a much more serious complication and which could possibly—" he lifted his eyebrows to convey how hypothetical he considered the conjecture, "endanger both of you."
He reached for the chart on the desk.
"You're still taking the calcium supplement? Good. Stay with that and add a low-dose aspirin daily. PE isn't always responsive to behavioral factors, but I think that in your case, perhaps you would benefit from prescriptive bed rest—"
"You mean, stop working and—" Mac was all for precautions, but this wasn't one she'd imagined. She had planned to work until two weeks before her due date.
"We should take every precaution, don't you think?"
"You're talking literal bed rest—like, resting in bed? All day? Every day?"
He shrugged. "A lot of my patients find they can telecommute effectively and—"
"Telecommute? It sounds like house arrest to me."
"Nevertheless," the doctor smiled, indulgently, "for your own well-being and for that of this baby, you are going to have to make some changes—another of which is that we may have to consider a Caesarian. It would allow us to better control the outcome, but it is a surgical procedure and carries the attendant risks of surgery."
He leaned back in his chair and put the tips of his fingers together. "MacKenzie, I don't want to seem to pry into private matters, but perhaps you should ask yourself what this—experience—means to you. A baby isn't a goalpost, and you aren't going to be home free in just a couple of months. This event will change your life for the remainder of your life."
She closed her eyes, absorbing the import of his words.
"In the meantime, keep in mind what I mentioned about the bedrest, and I'll see you next week."
oooo
For nearly eight months she had treated her situation as something to be accommodated. Dietary concessions that excluded foods and drinks possibly harmful to a baby. The compromise of a new wardrobe, as she no longer fit the pencil skirts and the silk blouses and Louboutins. Even movement had become a daily negotiation, as her gait became a waddle and the simple act of standing required firm support. And, now, erasing the division between work and rest, so that rest subsumed work—definitely the inverse of her usual pattern.
A baby isn't a goalpost.
She was adventurous and intellectual and she had the Peabody awards to prove it. And now she was reduced to incubator for a child.
The trouble was, sometimes Mac herself didn't know how to regard this… event. There was some hype that suggested it should be the culminating experience of her life, as a woman. But it seemed daunting as a partner-less woman, and even more so as a career woman. How could she maintain any kind of professional schedule if she had to nurse and care for an infant?
So… was this goodbye to her career?
oooo
"The official NTC account is that he died from a gunshot wound to the head," Gary flipped a page on his legal pad, "but there's some cell phone video—I've seen it, it's kind of gruesome—that suggests Gaddafi might have been tortured to death by the militia. Meanwhile, there are competing purges taking place between the factions and 66 bodies of loyalists were just discovered at Mahari."
"B block and just the facts. We'll let CNN and Fox handle the gruesome."
"Roger that."
Orders given, Gary Cooper and the other newspups trudged out, leaving only Will and Mac in the conference room.
"Will," she said, stopping him as he rose. "If you have a moment?"
"Yeah?"
"I've, uh—I've cleared this with Charlie, but you should know—I'm going to be taking some time off. Jim will be here for News Night throughout, and most of the time I'll only be a phone call away. Anyway, Don is close at hand, and—"
"How long are we talking about?"
She looked pained at having to respond to that one. "Six—perhaps up to ten weeks—"
"Ten weeks? Because—?"
"Because?" she echoed back, indignation and anger creeping into her voice.
Perhaps the consequence of having once confessed too much was now to admit too little.
"Because my, um, my circumstances have changed. I'm going to have a baby, Will—perhaps you've noticed something different about me lately?" She gestured to her swollen abdomen. "Actually, I had hoped that you would eventually say something—"
"What the hell am I supposed to say, Mac?" he repeated, with an unmistakably injured tone. "Frankly, I was waiting for you—especially since I figured there's a fifty percent chance that I might be—"
"One hundred."
That left him totally nonplussed. Following a long pause, he finally managed, "I thought that guy Wade—"
"Don't be daft. Wade wanted on the show, not in my bed." She dropped her head a bit. "He had—well, let's say he had creative rationale for a chaste relationship."
"I—I didn't know."
"Not something that would have come up in casual office conversation."
"Mac—I'm not sorry. I mean, that he wasn't—" His words trailed off as he realized the other half of the equation. Wade was a bounder, and obviously possessed dubious judgment if he passed up MacKenzie in any way—but if Wade wasn't in fatherhood contention, then—
"So, it's one hundred percent, Will. You can do a DNA test later if you want to confirm it, for whatever purpose. My life is upside down now. The doctor is putting me on bedrest for the remaining time."
He straightened. "Some problem?"
"—No problem, just the omnipotence of medicine. He can order it, ergo, he does."
"Oh." Will ran a hand through his hair, feeling that he hadn't been prepared for quite this much revelation at an ordinary rundown meeting. "But you're fine, right?"
"Betrayed by heredity and my blood pressure—but, other than that, perfect."
"You sound—just a little bit angry." He reconsidered the accusation. "I mean, I totally get that you've been doing this on your own and that—"
"You don't have to lecture me about recklessness and consequences."
"Not going to. But at the time, I thought that you—well, that you had taken the precautions, you know, and I—" He stopped, beginning to be aware of the inadequacy of his argument.
"Look Will, you were the one who said nothing would change between us. Nothing has, not really. I'm simply notifying a colleague of an adjustment to my professional status. I am not portraying myself as some tragic Tolstoy heroine."
"Well, I'm relieved to hear that, as there are entirely too many trains available in Manhattan." He waited a moment and made a feeble smile. "'S a joke, Mac." At her continued silence, he began again, in frustration. "We're in this together, aren't we? You just told me that I—you just confirmed that I'm the—"
She waited for him to decide his words, but after ten seconds, when no intelligible sounds emerged, she threw in the towel.
"I made a mistake. My mistake, our child. I should have told you something sooner, but I was concerned about the—ramifications—of doing so. Anyway, it's important that you know that I'm not trying to guilt you into anything."
He gnawed at his lip. "Look, that night last February—it wasn't offhand, it wasn't thoughtless—I mean, I didn't give it a lot of thought beforehand—"
Or after, either.
"—But I was honest with you. I told you that it wouldn't change things between us."
"Except that it has," she finished for him, then shook her head sadly. "Your honesty is noted and applauded. For what it's worth, I don't regret it." Then, sotto voce, "It certainly didn't change how I feel."
How do you feel?
That was the question in his mind. That was the question that had been uppermost in his mind since Valentine's Day—particularly, every day since May 1st, when he'd bared heart and soul in an ill-considered, weed-clouded phone call.
How much was he willing to confess?
The sorrow in her eyes made him risk another admission.
"I can't go back to hating you, Mac—well, seeming to hate you. Because I don't—I've never—"
"Please don't—you don't have to say anything to make me feel better, Will. We're good for now. I just wanted you to know that I won't be in the office for a bit, that's all." She made a weak smile and began gathering her papers. "You're on in fifteen. You'd better get busy."
"Yeah."
But as he was almost out of the conference room, he suddenly pivoted and turned back.
"Er… do you know yet—I mean, has the doctor said what it—?"
"It's a girl, Will."
oooo
A girl.
Not that it particularly mattered. Mac wasn't insisting on his participation in this event and he certainly hadn't promised anything. So, the gender of a child that hadn't even been born yet was very much an abstraction.
But—a girl.
The knowledge alone made it real, gave him pause.
Valentine's night had had real consequences. It wasn't just two people brought together by loneliness—well, it may have started that way, but it certainly wasn't finishing that way.
He should have said something more to Mac.
Perhaps an apology. As he reflected, and contrary to what he'd implied earlier, he had been more of a seducer on Valentine's Day and not so much a lover, even the casual kind. He had exploited the good feeling between the two of them to his own ends. Not just the sex, but the missing of MacKenzie, the phantom ache that had never healed.
Unlike what he had maintained until even a little while ago, Will had never hated Mac.
Quite the opposite.
You have all my love. If you still want it.
He wasn't sure she did any longer.
He had known he still loved her at the office New Year's Eve celebration, when he loathed that she was with that opportunistic worm Wade.
Obviously, he still loved her in February, because that had been when collegiality and nostalgia coalesced into friendliness, however fateful and precarious.
And then there came March and April, with persistent pressure of pent-up feelings, swelling until they finally came spilling out in May in a voice mail that she denied ever receiving.
And because he had assumed her silence meant the worst, that her feelings had waned, he also convinced himself that he wasn't the one to blame for her… present situation.
But now, given the truth—and it was undoubtedly the truth, because MacKenzie was, if nothing else, always dangerously honest—what could he do to make things a bit easier for her?
oooo
"I like my clutter," Mac protested on the phone several days later.
"No one's taking it away from you," he batted back. "I just thought that maybe someone should be around to, I dunno, bring you groceries and do laundry. Make sure you have plenty of highlighters and the morning newspapers. Maybe even make you soup and a sandwich now and then."
"Seriously, Will, a housekeeper? It really isn't necessary. I appreciate the thought, but I can get by—"
"You're supposed to be resting—doctor's orders, remember? Staying off your feet and horizontal is pretty key to the rest part."
"Still, this seems overboard."
"Humor me, Mac. Deep pockets and all, you know?"
There was a protracted pause over the phone before she made the slightest huff of laughter. "Deep pockets. Okay."
"So. How're things going among the leisure class?"
"Well. I've discovered that daytime television is totally moronic, irrespective of five hundred cable channels from which to choose. Also, that ACN should move Jane Barrow to mornings, which would make a perfect marriage of insipid to tasteless.
With a laugh, Will moved back to his terrace, his drink in one hand and a plate with a sandwich in the other, the cell phone tucked under his jaw. "And you're feeling all right?"
"Slight headache all day, but otherwise as well as can be expected."
"Well, enjoy the time off and get back here before the November sweeps."
He wanted her back on the show. Some niggling part of her mind always believed that he would use any absence as opportunity to bilge her from the show.
She took a long time to come back after that curve ball.
"So, I'm coming back." She left just the tiniest lilt of uncertainty at the end of the sentence to distinguish it from a declarative statement. From foregone conclusion to—well, needing a bit of reassurance.
Which he provided. "Yeah. You're coming back."
You have all my love. If you still want it.
oooo
One night later, Sloan interrupted Will as he was gathering his papers after the broadcast.
"Ride to the hospital, bro?"
"Hosp—?"
"Mac. Her doctor's inducing labor."
His eyes widened. "When did this happen?"
"I guess the doctor got a little worried with some of the symptoms she's been having. Vision problems, shortness of breath—"
"But I just talked to her last night. She said she had a headache—she didn't mention anything more."
"Maybe she was putting on a brave front, or maybe things just reached a tipping point today. Anyway, she's at the hospital now, and if you want—"
"Give me three minutes to get my street clothes on," Will growled, loosening his tie and flinging it onto someone's desk.
Thirty minutes later, Will sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair watching a late night TV personality on a soundless monitor. Sloan had gone immediately to MacKenzie's room, a precedence that he welcomed, for giving him a few minutes to consider what came next.
Mac had put her health, possibly her life, on the line to have this baby. His baby.
He couldn't be indifferent now. He had to be supportive. He owed it to Mac—plus, he owed it to this new being.
Sloan was suddenly there beside him.
"This is a good moment. Why don't you go on back there?"
"Um, yeah." He still wasn't sure what he was supposed to do. Was he supposed to be fatherly or husbandly—neither of which he had ever been before, so neither role felt particularly familiar—or was he supposed to simply be a supportive colleague?
oooo
She looked small in the room, where several medical workers attended to their functions without consulting her. MacKenzie looked adrift but brightened at the sight of him.
"You didn't have to come," she murmured, belying her pleased look at seeing him there.
"Showing up seems like the least I could do." He looked sympathetic. "Are you comfortable?"
"As comfortable as can be, with a wide-eyed doctor and a Pitocin drip."
"Why's your doctor—"
She made a dismissive shrug. "He's the excitable sort. Doesn't like my blood pressure, doesn't like my symptoms, wants to get this baby out of me as soon as he can."
Will nodded. "Well, if the baby is determined to be born, it would seem that the least you could do is simply get out of the way."
"Doing my best."
Then, ignoring her open surprise, he pushed a lock of her hair back behind her ear.
"So—have you given any thought to names?"
"Some. I like the old-fashioned ones: Emma, Amelia. I liked Mia quite a lot but Mia McHale may be too alliterative—"
"So sayeth MacKenzie Morgan McHale."
She made a commiserative half-laugh, conceding his point. "Well, there's Charlotte, a family name that I rather like."
He made a definitive nod, then let several beats pass.
"How about my name?"
There was an awkward silence while she considered the feminine equivalent of William. Willemina? No way she would ever saddle a kid with that moniker. Then another potential meaning dawned upon her.
"What are you saying, Will?"
"McAvoy. How about that? How about for the three of us?"