The next few weeks, Owen and I learned something important—the less my clothes fit, the faster time flew. As he promised I would, I got settled in Seattle to the point where some days, I'd forget I ever left. My transition into the staff wasn't entirely seamless though—I could feel people's eyes on me in the halls, searching me up and down, focusing in on the bump that was just barely noticeable under my scrubs, and then traveling down to my left hand. I knew what they were doing. They were, without a doubt, looking for a ring. But I didn't have the time or the patience to explain that my life had always been a little unorthodox, if not completely insane. Since Henry, this was the closest thing to normal that I had ever been a part of.
When Owen wasn't around, I stayed as close as I could to Arizona, but my greatest fear was never something I had to worry about. Amelia Shepherd, though she took some time to get used to the idea of me being around permanently, had warmed up to me. We weren't friends, exactly. But that would come in time. We were friendly. Her smiles in the halls were genuine, and not once did I dread seeing her at work. She was one of the first to find out about the baby and although her initial "congratulations!" seemed forced, she was happy that Owen was happy, and trusted me enough to let me see some of her clinical trial. On an especially bad day when the staring hit its peak and Owen and Arizona weren't around, she pulled me into her office and told me about her superhero pose. I was embarrassed the first time, but it was nice to have someone looking at me like I wasn't a complete outsider.
Outside of work, Owen and I were in an adjustment phase. We were roommates who occasionally went on dates, then we were roommates who changed their Facebook statuses to 'in a relationship,' and then we were roommates buying their first house together.
We were fully aware that we were doing every part of our relationship backwards, but it took us no time at all to fall in love with the house. The back porch was covered, so I would be able to sit outside and watch storms come in—the one strange habit of mine that Owen never understood. The living room ceiling was absurdly high—the one part of it that I wasn't sure about—but Owen told me it was to fit an absurdly high Christmas tree, and I didn't say another word about it. The room adjacent to ours was painted sea-foam green and I was drawn to it immediately—it was the one and only shade of green that didn't remind me of our army uniforms, and I could so easily visualize a crib in the corner, and one of those cheesy "dream big, little one" signs on the wall. It was a color for the future, keeping us from living in the past.
"What do you think?" Owen asked, coming up behind me and putting his hands on my shoulders.
"I think…it looks like home," I said, leaning back to rest my head on his chest.
The next few weeks flew by in a blur of packing and shopping and paperwork, with one more doctor's appointment the night before we officially moved.
"This is it," Arizona said with a smile, getting the monitor ready. "Week fourteen. Ready to start making announcements? For the people who don't see you every day, I mean. Megan, Nathan, and your mom, right?"
Owen nodded and squeezed my shoulder, but I could feel my face fall.
He kissed the side of my head gently.
"Hey. We're ready, right?" he whispered.
"I…yeah, of course we are," I said, forcing a smile.
The cold, hard truth was that I was nowhere near ready. I was, putting it nicely, spooked. At forty-two, I wasn't old. Not even a little bit. My age was not causing the baby any harm. But as Owen knew perfectly well, I was a doctor's worst nightmare as a patient, and had a tendency to spend shocking amounts of time preparing for disaster. I had lost enough patients in my career that I was haunted by extreme circumstances. I had stood by and watched as people lived through them, and then, just when I had finally started to believe that medical miracles were possible, that I didn't need to be skeptical of every little thing that crossed my path, I lost my husband to the same kind of extreme circumstance. I lived through it myself and could do nothing but watch as I turned into a horror-show of a person. I was a shell of who I had been, from the moment I learned exactly how fast loved ones could be lost. And this tiny person inside me was no exception. One wrong move, and I could lose everything. So I prepared. I quit caffeine cold-turkey and muscled through the pounding headaches that came with it. I stopped wearing my sky-high heels, out of fear that I'd roll an ankle and fall flat on my face if I took one wrong step. I did everything short of wrapping my entire torso in bubble wrap, and Owen either hadn't noticed or had decided not to say anything. If I had to guess, he had just decided to stay quiet. After all these years, he knew better than to question some of the things I did. This was more than likely one of those situations.
"Everything looks great. Let's see that baby," Arizona said, snapping me out of the clouds that my head had gotten completely lost in. She moved the wand around my abdomen, and I felt the tears start to sting my eyes as the tiny human appeared on the monitor. Its heartbeat had only gotten stronger, and in the past week, I had started to feel like maybe, just maybe, it was starting to move around. This feeling was confirmed the longer I stared at the screen—my tiny human stretched out one little leg and I grabbed Owen's arm as I felt the flutter.
"Did you feel that?" he asked, completely unable to take his eyes off of the screen, even for a second. My throat was too tight to speak, so I just nodded and leaned against him, for once in my life not caring that my tears were already soaking into his shirt. He pressed his lips into my hair and I completely unraveled in his arms.
"I'll give you two a minute, okay?" Arizona asked, pausing the monitor and leaving the room.
The door closed behind her, but we didn't move. I closed my fingers around the fabric of Owen's shirt and he leaned over to sit next to me and wrap his arms around my shoulders. His right arm was trapped from how hard I was holding onto him, but his left was slowly rubbing my back, up and down, almost hypnotically.
"This," he said, as we got into his car to go home, "might be the longest since I met you that you've gone without talking."
"We're parents," I said softly, buckling my seatbelt and resting one hand where I could feel it if the baby started fluttering again.
"You're just figuring this out?"
"I didn't think this would ever be something I'd get to experience. I lost Henry and then I moved to Germany and I thought that was it. My 'baby' was my work. I gave up on being a mom years ago. Even when I found out I was pregnant, I didn't think that's what was happening to me. I thought I had food poisoning or something. I didn't think I would ever…" my voice trailed off.
"You thought being a widow was your own endgame?" Owen finished for me, and I nodded in agreement.
"I kicked you out and you went home and I thought that was it. That I had burned every bridge I had ever built and that I would have to start over again."
"What made you think being pregnant was a possibility?"
"I was late. I'm never late. Even my body runs on a military clock."
Without taking his eyes off of the road, Owen reached over and put his hand on top of mine.
"I thought I lost you, too," he said softly. "And it's been long enough that I'm not sure how to function without you around. For what it's worth, I'm glad you came home. Baby or no baby, I would have welcomed you back with open arms."
"Would you have wanted a relationship if you hadn't already knocked me up?"
My heart started to pound—this was the last answer I needed, and the one I was most afraid to hear.
"Of course."
"Promise?"
"Promise. We just would have gone in order if you hadn't been pregnant. I want a big life and I want it with you. If we'd ended up going in order, don't you think we would have had a baby in a couple years?"
For one fleeting moment, I wished that this was how it had worked out, but the baby fluttered underneath my hand as Owen pulled into the driveway, and tears filled my eyes again—I would choose this experience every time.
"Do you mind if I ask you something?" he asked as we walked into the house.
"Go for it," I said, sitting down and positioning myself on the couch so that Owen could lean his head on me to feel the fluttering for himself.
"Why are you so afraid of losing this baby? I know you, Teddy. I saw your face the entire time we were in Arizona's office, and I know you think something is starting to go wrong. But you're also one of those people…you take the crap life hands you and make the most out of it, every single time. You are the one person I know who always has a bright side to look on. The baby's healthy. You're healthy. But I haven't seen you this on edge in years. If there's something going on, can you tell me how I can help you?"
"No. Because I don't think you can," I said softly. Every muscle in his body stopped moving—I had not noticed that he was absentmindedly tracing slow circles on my abdomen with his hand until he wasn't doing it anymore.
"We're in this together. You and me. Why can't I help you?"
"If I can't help myself, I don't see how anyone else can. Believe me, if I thought you could fix this, I'd want you to. I just…what would you say if I told you I'd already lost a baby?"
"I would say I already knew. Who do you think stayed with you until you woke up?"
"Absolutely no one," I shot back. "I woke up to an empty room and left to be with Henry. He was having a tumor resection procedure at the same time. I didn't want him to wake up and think that I was gone, so I signed a paper saying I was leaving against medical advice, put my scrubs back on, and waited in his room. No one was with me for that."
"I got paged. You were asleep still. I just didn't want you to have to go through that alone. I would have stayed longer, but I wasn't who you needed then. You needed your husband. And I wasn't…I was in the right place at the wrong time."
I reached down to squeeze his shoulder, but his hand caught mine before I could get there.
"I know everything is perfect right now," I said softly. "but you know my life as well as I do. Everything tends to fall apart at the last second. I never get to be happy and stay happy. It makes me uncomfortable when I go a long time without my life trying to implode on itself. I'm waiting for something to go wrong because I've never known anything else."
"So you're waiting for disaster out of habit."
"Exactly."
"What if I told you that that's not something you have to worry about this time around? Would you believe me?"
I absentmindedly ran my fingers through his hair.
"I'd want to. God, I'd want to so badly. But you know me. You know I like to have proof before I start believing in things."
"That doesn't explain where you stand on Santa Claus whatsoever," Owen joked.
"First of all, I will have you know that my parents never did the Santa thing with me. I may be obsessed with Christmas but that doesn't mean my family didn't try to ruin it every chance they got. Second of all," I tilted my head to direct what I was saying to the baby, "you have my full permission to kick your daddy in the face when your flutters get stronger if he's going to keep making fun of me."
"Hey," Owen argued, laughing and sitting up slightly.
"I'm messing with you," I said, guiding his head back down as he rested it against my abdomen again.
"How about…we take this one day at a time?" he suggested after a minute.
"Baby steps," I said softly.
"Baby steps," he agreed. "Just like I promised when you got home. We'll take this slowly. But I need you to promise to talk to me if something is on your mind."
"Keeping things to myself is a habit, too."
"I know," he said. "You've done it since Iraq. It's not your fault. Your brain is just wired like that. But try for me, okay?
"I will. I promise."
Owen leaned up again and kissed me softly, stroking my hair with the hand that wasn't still positioned waiting for the baby to flutter.
"That's my girl."