Free Fall

Chapter Thirteen: Free Fall

Kenzie was exhausted. It wasn't the typical tiredness that usually hit her after a full day but the bone-tired, barely put one foot in front of the other tired. Penny had been released from the hospital four days after she was admitted and had just spent almost a full month at home without any more physical troubles. Kenzie had used her "Spiderwoman" persona to drop in on the little girl every once again to make sure she was alright and tonight she had taken Peter along with her. Penny had been speechless and enthralled at meeting Spiderman.

"You alright?" Peter asked.

Kenzie had dropped down on a rooftop to rest and pulled her mask off. "Yeah, just need to catch my breath." In the last two days she had been short of breath and nauseous. She was down to one chemo session a week so being this nauseous was a surprise.

"You don't look so good."

"Says the man dressed head to toe in spandex." She was starting to feel shaky and feverish. Smoothing down the hair that had started to grow back, she pulled the mask back down over her face. The hair was enough now to actually style, even if it was just spiking it. She and Peter had had a good night and to call it over and go home wouldn't be out of the question. Besides, she was missing Harry something terrible. "Last one home gets sprayed with Raid."

Kenzie shot off a line of webbing and quickly took to the air. She glanced over her shoulder to see Peter close behind. She loved these moments, swinging through the city in the early morning hours. But something wasn't quite right. She was shivering now and barely able to hold onto her web lines so she dropped down to another building. The suit was starting to feel terribly constricting and she pulled the mask off once again. What a time to get claustrophobic.

"Do you want to take a cab back home?"

"No, I'll be fine. Just give me a minute." She tried to control her erratic breathing but then that now familiar tingle of her spider-sense went off. She looked wildly around her but all she could see was a very concerned Peter.

"What is it?"

"My spider sense is going nuts," she continued to look around the area, peering over the edge of the building. A sudden wave of dizziness hit her and she stumbled back from the edge. Maybe it was warning her, not of what was happening around her, but what was going wrong inside of her. She turned back towards Peter to try to tell him but a wave of darkness came over her and everything disappeared from view.

Harry kept looking at his watch. It was almost two in the morning. Kenzie and Pete weren't usually back until at least three. He could work for another half hour before he needed to clean up. Ever since Kenzie had joined forces with Peter, Harry had started to feel like the odd man out. He would sit at home and worry about her safety and couldn't help but feel he should be the one out there helping her fight crime.

He wasn't jealous of Peter, at least that's what he repeatedly told himself. There were still times when he felt that deep seated rage at Peter but then Kenzie would cross his line of vision and all that seemed so insignificant. So he had put the time he had alone to good use. He had unlocked his father's study and spent the time buried in technical and mechanical books in the lab.

He was quite proud of himself actually. He had studied the technology of the glider and had custom built his own. It looked more like a snowboard but with the propulsions from the original glider, it would be an airborne snowboard. He was still going through the planning and sketching stages of the weaponry though most of the new armor was ready to be worn.

The green cast to the lab was from the green tubes of the serum his father had poured his life into. Harry had vowed to himself never to use the stuff. That was why he had to come up with clever weaponry and a swift mode of transportation. The use of the serum had turned his father into a manipulative, unbalanced individual and Harry refused to put Kenzie through that.

Speaking of his father, that had been the hardest part to all of this. As soon as the door had been unlocked, insults had been hurled at him from the mirror. But Harry had developed a secret weapon…the iPod. Armed with Linkin Park, Pearl Jam and anything else that was loud, he was able to drown out his father's accusations. Ignoring the images in any reflective surface was slightly harder but he had the routine down now. So when he first heard his name shouted, he ignored it. But then he realized the tone that it was being shouted in was not anger, but panic.

Pulling the ear pieces out of his ears, he could hear Peter above him, shouting for him. Desperately, he wiped the grease off his hands and ran out of the lab. He was able to get out of the study and half way up the stairs before Peter came into sight. His mask was off and Harry tried to see some kind of injury but couldn't. "Where's Kenzie?"

"Bedroom," he pointed back towards the master bedroom. "We need to get her costume off and get her to hospital."

"What happened?"

"She had a seizure. She was fine all night and then all of sudden she said she needed to catch her breath, she turned pale and just started convulsing."

Harry rushed into the bedroom but from the looks of it, the seizure was over. Kenzie was laying there, calm as could be like she was just sleeping. "Has she woken up at all?"

"Not yet."

Peter left the room and shut the door so Harry could change her into street clothes before calling an ambulance. Just as he touched her, her eyes opened. He sat down on the side of the bed and waited for her to get her bearings straight. When she finally focused on him a slow smile spread across her face.

"I know you."

Harry had to stifle a laugh. "That's good. How are you feeling?"

Her brow furrowed, as if she were trying to determine that herself. "Odd."

"How?"

"I'm tired." She rolled over on her side, her back facing him. It was the position that they normally slept in so he took the invitation and laid down beside her.

"Pete thinks you need to go to the hospital."

"Hmph."

"I think you should too."

"Why? I'm just tired."

Harry ran his fingers over the raised webbing of the costume. He never could tell where it ended and where it began. "He said you had a seizure."

"Oh."

"Why don't you get changed so we can go to the hospital?"

She was quiet for a while and Harry was afraid she may have fallen asleep. But after a few minutes, she moved into a sitting position. "Alright."

Kenzie hated tests. Needles and scans were her least favorite and apparently that was all they were interested in taking. After withdrawing five vials of blood and taking all of her vitals, they sent her in for a CAT scan followed by an MRI. She had finished all the tests and was now just waiting to hear the results.

Peter had class and Harry had to show his face at a board meeting though both of them had promised her they would skip these appointments. She insisted they go, that she would be fine and reluctantly, they left. Kenzie had visited the chemo room even though today wasn't the day for her treatment and visited with the kids and their parents. It seemed like a good day, most every one of the kids were getting better. It was in that room that Doris found her.

"Kenzie?"

"Yeah?"

"Let's go down to the exam room."

Kenzie sucked in a breath. That was never a good sign when Doris wanted to talk in private. The nausea that had plagued Kenzie was back in force but this time it was due to nervousness.

"Is your hubby still here?"

Kenzie shook her head. "No, he had a meeting, which he was willing to skip but I wouldn't let him."

Doris shut the door to the closet sized office and Kenzie sat down in the hard plastic chair while Doris sat behind the dented up desk. "Well, we have a lot to go over."

"All because I passed out?"

Doris fixed her with a steady gaze. "Sweetie, you had a seizure, brought on by the brain tumor. According to the scans, it's grown smaller but closer to the carotid artery. Surgery can still be an option but it'll be a high risk surgery if I've ever seen one."

Kenzie shrugged. "So I keep up with the chemo and we throw some radiation in there again."

Doris sighed. "That would be the next course of action, yes, but your blood test showed something as well."

Kenzie gripped the edge of the plastic seat. Leukemia? It wasn't impossible in a situation like this. Maybe it was just anemia. Why did Doris look torn? "What is it?"

"Kenzie, you're pregnant."

In that moment she had lost the ability to come up with a definition for the word. Then when it came back to her she was certain Doris had meant to say something else. "What?"

A small smile ghosted across Doris' face. "You're pregnant, sweetie."

"How?"

"Do I really have to have that talk with you?"

"No," Kenzie rubbed her face. "That's not what I meant. What can we do now?"

"Well," all seriousness returned to Doris' face. "That's the problem. The surgery is so risky I don't know of a doctor who would take that chance. If they so much as nick that artery, you would bleed out in seconds. As for continuing with your chemo and radiation, that's not a possibility either while you're pregnant."

"While I'm pregnant? What does that mean? I wait nine months, have the child and then go right back into radiation? Won't that give the tumor time to grow?"

"It would. So that only leaves the other option that you have."

"What option?"

"You could terminate the pregnancy."

"Abortion?"

"It falls under the umbrella of risks to the mother's health. You're only two weeks along so it wouldn't have to be an invasive procedure."

"What about the chemo treatment I received last week? How did that affect the baby?"

Doris shrugged. "We wouldn't know that until it develops further and we do an ultrasound and an amniocentesis."

Kenzie nodded slowly. "So what do we do now?"

"Now, we wait." The smile came back. "And celebrate the good news."

Kenzie indulged Doris as she went over the dos and don'ts of a pregnant woman but her mind was still processing the situation. She said her good byes to Doris and promised to get a check up with a suggested OBGYN. She supposed it was when she hugged Doris that her mind had settled on a solution.

She hailed a cab and gave them directions to her apartment in the Bronx. She and Harry had come to the decision to actually live at both places. Her apartment couldn't hold a third of his belongings and she found the penthouse too big and intimidating so they compromised and lived in both places. The entire trip there she rationalized why this was the best course of action.

The thought of killing the child inside of her just so she might win this fight with cancer didn't seem altogether justified in her mind. But to carry the child to term and either die from the brain tumor and kill the child that way didn't seem appropriate either. Even if she was able to carry the child term and deliver it, who's to say it wouldn't be motherless months later. No, this did seem to be the best course of action. She tried to communicate silently with the life growing inside her, assuring it that what she was about to do was for it's greater good.

She paid the driver and headed up to her apartment. She didn't want to leave a suicide note. She would say her good byes to everyone night and head out on patrol with Peter. She could pass her death off as a web shortage if she had to. Peter could assume that the chemo had weakened the structure of the webs and it just didn't hold. But she did want to leave her own message to them and her eyes fell on the bookcase.

She looked at the clock and realized Harry would be out of his board meeting in twenty-minutes and Pete was already out of class. She wouldn't have much time. She picked a stanza from the Scottish fairytale she had told Harry one night and set to work at rearranging the books. Each book title held one word from the stanza. Peter would figure out there was a message but Harry would figure out what the message was. Perhaps it would be enough to help them realize how well they could work together. What better gift could she give them than that?