Chapter six
"You didn't get the ice cream," Finn noted. She sighed and rolled her eyes. She, in reality, didn't care about ice cream. "Sorry," she said as she pattered into the kitchen, laying her purse down. "I…must have forgotten." Her head was practically spinning, but she didn't want him to know. Not yet, anyway. "You didn't get anything," he said, looking at the empty counter. When Rachel grocery shopped, she grocery shopped.
"Finn," she said, growing impatient already. "I decided that I wanted to go on a walk, instead." He wrinkled his eyebrows. "Is it 'cause you didn't do it this morning? I know how you are about your routine."
She woke up every morning and did ten to thirty lunges, depending on her mood; she followed it with thirty minutes on the elliptical and ten minutes of weight-lifting. It sounded more intense than it actually was. She'd gotten used to it.
He spotted the paper on the counter, his eyes locking on that. Rookie mistake, she thought. She had no excuses for that one. He picked it up and read over it; he wasn't really sure what any of that meant. H-hormones, or whatever the paper said, were a bit too confusing for him. "What's this?" he said, thankfully overlooking the lab summary. She snatched it away, or tried to. "N-nothing, I just needed another test done to see…" He didn't hear anything after that.
"I thought you said I could come with you when you got your chemo done?"
"It was chemotherapy," she said gently. She could see the look on his face. "Then what was it?" She had to think of something, and quick. He scanned over the paper again. This time, he couldn't miss the paragraph at the bottom.
Patient is presenting typical signs of pregnancy. Lab results show that she is anywhere from two to three weeks into the first stages of pregnancy. Hormones are elevated; she presented nausea, headaches and an overall "different" feeling.
He blinked a few times. "…With a human baby?" It was all he could say. Her eyes filled with tears and she nodded, instantly wrapping her arms around his neck. It was sort of a flashback for him, all the way back to his sophomore year of high school, when Quinn informed him that she was pregnant. It was different this time, though. He stood, his mouth slightly agape. He'd gone pale, and his mouth felt dry.
"I…"
"I know, I'm sorry, Finn." She buried her nose into his neck. Why was she apologizing? "Stop," he said quickly. His arms wrapped around her. "Stop apologizing. We didn't do anything wrong." They stood that way for a few minutes. The shock was settling in, comfortably, making its way into both of them. Words couldn't be enough, at least not at the time.
"I want to see…it," he said, pausing on his wording. She pulled away. "It's not big enough to see, Finn. We won't be able to until about six or eight weeks." That was another month of waiting. If it was possible, he would have made her have the baby right then, but he couldn't. A thousand questions rushed into his mind.
"Is it a boy or a girl?" He followed her into the living room, taking a seat next to her. She couldn't help but laugh, but her next bit of news wouldn't be quite as cheerful. She carefully took his hand, her other one instinctively resting over her stomach. "I'm not sure if the baby will even live long enough." She sucked in her lip. "I-I'm too sick." She looked at him, clearly heartbroken.
He didn't see it that way, though. "Well why not? We um…we made it, didn't we? All we have to do is take care of it." It was somewhat adorable, but it would be even harder when something did happen, which she was already warned of.
"Women with your type of cancer rarely reproduce. You were lucky you were even able to conceive. If you want, we can abort the baby before it becomes too big of an issue." She could hardly believe what she was hearing. Being pregnant was one thing; being pregnant with cancer, she thought, was another.