November heralds chilly evenings, the decision to share a bed, and a heightened sense of smell that regularly leaves Tina feeling ill.
Her stomach aches more days than not, and her breasts are tender beyond reckoning. Even the butter-soft of her camisole is too much, most days. As if that weren't enough, a bone-deep weariness claims her, one that no amount of sleep seems to shake.
One night after love-making, Tina finds Newt tracing her nipple thoughtfully. The skin there has darkened, the flesh around the peak somehow broadening, and she can see him contemplating what it could mean.
Tina muddles and stumbles through these challenges since she knows no other way to be. She naps when she can and does her best to keep Newt from actively worrying about her. This doesn't help keep her from worrying about herself though, and as the strange symptoms continue unabated, she finally considers seeing a healer.
Then comes the morning, a week before the Thanksgiving holiday, when he sets her usual coffee before her and the scent causes her to heave all over the table.
Newt hovers worriedly until the fit passes. Then he sits her down and cleans up the mess, never saying a word. When he's done and can stall no longer, he crouches before her, eyes impossible to decipher. Keeping his voice pitched to the tone he uses when working with frightened or dangerous creatures, he talks her through the list of her symptoms and their possible causes until only one conclusion remains.
Tina wants to deny the possibility but it fits. She bursts into panicked tears when he says the words.
Newt's hands tremble when he pulls out his wand and points it at her midsection. Tina's eyes widen when the charm resolves into a small, gray shape, hovering just above her navel, with a rapid pulse of red fluttering deep within. Newt stares at the apparition for a full minute, glassy-eyed and frozen. Then his gaze flicks to her face, back to the biological destiny his spell reveals, and clenches his jaw.
He keeps his face carefully angled toward the ground when he turns his back on her and walks away. The door snaps shut behind him, and she hears him descend into his case.
Tina stares mournfully at the pulsing wisp that has changed everything so suddenly until it vanishes and she's alone. She allows herself a single moment of pained self-reproach, putting her face in her hands as her shoulders shake.
Then she dries her tears, cold and alone in the kitchen, and prepares to face the day.
December ushers in a misery of gray slush, gray skies, and constant nausea.
Tina does her best to juggle the demands of her career and her ever-changing body, but by the time she pulls out the Chanukiah, she is exhausted beyond measure and feeling the full effects of her altered nutritional status.
Food puts her off entirely; the few things that tempt her often come back up soon after or leave her feeling intolerably queasy. Leaving and entering the building is always a challenge: the lingering cooking smells in the hallway make her head spin. Newt eventually takes a thin scarf and soaks it in mint so she can hold it over her nose and mouth. It helps sometimes.
Newt remains prickly, and Tina isn't sure if he's upset with her or with himself. He makes no move to touch her, not even for a quick embrace, and that hurts Tina in ways she cannot articulate.
They continue to share a bed, but most nights she can barely tolerate it. He is feet away from her and covered, but he still puts out a ridiculous amount of cloying heat when he sleeps. Worse still is the masculine scent of his body, and there are nights when that alone wakes her and sends her hurtling toward the toilet.
Her time at work is little better because much of it is spent huddled in the water closet, retching up bile. She can smell her coworkers' meals on them when they approach her, and the building is always too hot, too stuffy, too close. Only the trip to and from MACUSA brings some color into Tina's gray existence. The smog of New York chokes her, but she can at least shed her jacket to walk in the crisp air, and in doing so, experience some measure of relief. Then it's up the fetid stairs to a too-warm apartment, and a man who treats her with deference, and her misery returns.
Tina broaches the subject of termination just once, after spending the day working up the nerve. Newt shares with her a look of such abject misery at the suggestion that she chokes and doesn't bring the subject up again. In truth, she is relieved by his distress. It means that, on some level, he still cares. Her own misery is temporary, and while she is a modern and independent woman, the life growing within her evokes a primordial satisfaction and fierce protectiveness. She could no more end it than she could end herself.
Despite her resolve, things deteriorate as the month passes, both for Tina's health and her relationship with Newt.
By the first day of Chanukah, she is unable to tolerate food at all, and much of what she drinks comes back up as well. Her morning, noon and evening are all the same unending suffering. Sleeping brings some measure of relief, but even that's a double-edged sword, for as soon as her head lifts from the pillow, she wages a constant battle with her gorge.
Tina takes to bedding down on the couch at night, both to avoid the scent of her bed-mate and as an unspoken acknowledgment of his displeasure. Newt doesn't seem to notice, and he certainly doesn't comment or ask her to return, and that hurt compounds her other miseries.
She faints on New Year's eve while straining to empty her stomach. One second, she is hunched and retching; the next, the world is grayed-out and swirling around her, and her ears clog with muffled sound. She tumbles and is senseless to it.
When Tina comes to, Newt is leaning over and attempting to rouse her. His expression is panicked, bottom lip caught firmly between his teeth. She wants to reach out and touch him; she wants to push his hair back and reassure him that all will be well. Tina takes in the contours of his worried face and discovers she is too brittle and dehydrated to cry.
His eyes are damp when he pulls her into his arms and settles her on their couch. Newt checks her for injury before tempting her with a cold glass of water. She drinks because he asks it of her and because her heart is soaring with the return of his attention. He is as infinitely kind and gentle with her as she remembers—and quick too, when Tina's chest and stomach clench without warning and he conjures a basin to catch the mess.
He steadies her until she calms, hands shaking with nerves, then wipes her face and mouth with a cool cloth. He pushes her messy hair back and kisses her forehead, and the scratch of his stubble is achingly familiar.
Newt doesn't ask for her forgiveness and she doesn't offer it. There have been too many things wrong with them over the past month, and it will take time and patience to heal those wounds. Instead, he slots himself back into the empty space at her side, fitting as if he'd never left, and doesn't leave it again.
January brings cold and fierce storms.
A knock sounds on the door early one morning. Newt opens it to admit Percival Graves, looking dark and formidable and vastly confused. Tina struggles up from the couch to greet him but does a bad job of it, and so settles back with a pained sigh. Graves' eyes gentle and fill with understanding when he takes her in, and his voice is kind when he informs her that she's been granted an indefinite leave from work, due to her fragile health.
The modern woman in Tina wants to protest and seethe at this treatment, but she hasn't the strength. Instead, she looks around with apathetic eyes and sees the apartment as Graves must surely do: dusty, cold due to her intolerance of excessive heat, and managed single-handedly by a wizard with a history of both absent-mindedness and running himself ragged.
She sighs and accepts her helpless fate, at last noticing the exhausted pits beneath Newt's eyes, the air of quiet desperation clinging to him.
Newt sees her boss out, and Tina takes up her daily ritual. This consists mostly of watching the clock in a stupor between bouts of doubling over the basin and attempts to retain fluid. Newt returns to hover worriedly, and Tina can't find the energy to express her appreciation for the simple act of being there. At one point he takes her hand, calloused thumb rubbing soothing circles into her skin. Her hands are bony and claw-like in his broader one and pale almost to translucence. Her fingers resemble talons, and she has to look away.
She hardly has reason to leave the couch anymore, but when she does need the toilet or just to relieve aching muscles, the room spins and whirls around her. Newt always allows her to make the attempt on her own, but more often than not Tina ends up leaning on him for support. Then he sees her safely settled back on her perch, and returns to his daily vigil. Typically this involves her rejecting all his offers of food until her skin has a distinctly green cast. They compromise by doing their level best to keep fluid in her while her body wastes away.
Newt gives her sponge baths to keep her skin healthy and is always careful to keep his eyes averted from her most intimate places. He makes potions that attempt to relieve nausea, and another that she can use to keep her mouth healthy. She gags horribly when she swishes it around, but it's still infinitely better than attempting to brush her teeth.
Newt does what he can to help her but mostly, despite his best efforts, he flounders. Tina thinks that's okay because she is floundering too.
The witch-midwife responds to Newt's summons by the end of the month, and the visit starts disastrously. She examines Tina and expresses shocked outrage at her condition. It takes her actually seeing Tina's reaction to food to understand that she hasn't chosen her current condition. By this point, Newt is quietly furious, hands curled into fists at his side.
The situation resolves quickly enough once the crone is made to understand how violently Tina reacts to food, and Newt eventually relaxes. When the witch declares the baby healthy despite Tina's challenges, she plies them with various anti-emesis potions and praises Newt for his attention. She then takes her leave, and the two share a sigh of relief.
On her way out, the crone assures them that Tina's intractable nausea should be resolving itself soon, but they are too skeptical and apathetic to be excited by this possibility.