"Hey Hank, Nick's upstairs," Monroe said. "There's coffee in the kitchen if you want some."
"That sounds great," Hank said, handing Monroe the newspaper he'd brought in for them. Then after a brief pause, he asked, "Is he really okay to work today?" before trailing Monroe into the kitchen. "He'd lie to me. You wouldn't."
Monroe huffed. He didn't really know how to answer Hank's question. The answer was, ostensibly, yes but he really thought it would be beneficial for all involved for Hank to know what Nick's, er, condition was, if for no other reason than that it would improve his peace of mind. The fact that Nick constantly had a target on his back and no sense of self-preservation was aggravating enough under normal circumstances. Add in the fact that there was tiny human growing inside him, well... it just seemed like a recipe for decapitated Grimm.
But because he knew it wasn't his secret to tell, Monroe turned it over in his head, taking an unnecessarily long sip of his coffee. At the moment, Nick seemed mostly fine, physically speaking, some bouts of nausea aside. Emotionally, on the other hand...well, at one point or another in the course of the past three days, he had found Nick hiding in their bedroom, trying very hard to act like he hadn't just been crying and then, when he had attempted to pry, Nick had point blank refused to admit it or talk about it. He was almost glad they were planning on going to Rosalee's doctor later that week, though he half thought he ought to be taking him to a therapist.
Finally, keeping Nick's privacy in check, he settled on, "I'll say this, though there's really more to the story, I don't think he's suffering from the concussion anymore, but that snake venom really did a number on him."
"Huh. So that's not definitely a yes," Hank said, giving Monroe an appreciative nod as he sat down cradling a mug of coffee.
"No, no it's not. But he really wants to put this case with the Hexenbiest to bed," Monroe said, tapping his fingers along the counter in contemplation. "And you know how he is."
"So what you're saying is nothing short of tying him down for his own good is going to stop him from coming with me?" Hank asked, chuckling.
"Uh, yeah," Monroe nodded. Since Nick had spent most of the previous evening going through his case notes, complaining about how much further behind being out for three days would put him, Monroe imagined this was true. "So just keep an eye on him, would ya?"
"You know I will," Hank promised as they heard the creak of the wooden stairs that Nick was now ambling down.
"Kind of you to grace me with your presence," Hank teased when he came in the kitchen.
"I can't let you get too used to working without me. You might remember how to work by yourself," Nick said as he pulled down his own coffee mug.
Monroe smiled to himself as their light banter continued. Nick hadn't sounded so normal since the night they were at the museum. Work would probably do him some good, he decided.
When they were all finished with their coffee, Monroe ushered the detectives out the door, encouraging them to stay out of trouble, if at all possible.
"What would be the fun in that?" Nick asked before leaning over the doorframe to kiss him. Monroe cupped his hands behind Nick's neck, tipping his head back slightly as he ghosted one finger over the bite mark that still remained there.
"Yeah, what would be the fun in that?" Monroe echoed hollowly. "We might, you know, have normal problems."
Nick snorts, "I don't think that was ever in the cards. Now stop before Hank figures out something weird is going on."
"Okay. But really, Nick, just...just be careful," Monroe said, pulling his hands back in surrender.
"I will," Nick said, nodding, in a way that Monroe didn't find particularly persuasive. He just had to fall in love with a man that always seemed to be on the verge of fulfilling some kind of death wish, didn't he?
"I'll be in the car when you two lovebirds are finished," Hank shouted from the driveway. "Any time now would be great."
"Yeah, that is definitely it," Monroe said as Rosalee pulled him away from the mist filled vial on the counter. "That's a smell that really sticks with you."
"Don't inhale it again," Rosalee said, her grip on his shoulders tightening. "Didn't it cause enough trouble the first time around?"
"I wanted to be sure it was the same thing; I didn't breathe in too much or anything just now, did I?" Monroe asked.
"You're still lucid. That's a good sign," Rosalee said. "Let's move into the back room to look over the diary so you're further away from it though."
As Rosalee steered him towards a chair, he saw a book that would have fit easily into the collection in Nick's trailer lying open on the far table. One of the pages was filled with neat, cursive text in two full columns, and the facing page had an illustration which appeared to be graphically depicting a C-section gone wrong.
"That looks pleasant," Monroe said dryly. "I don't think I'll be showing this to Nick anytime soon..."
"How is he?" Rosalee asked as she traced her finger along the text. "You had me worried when you told me not to come over the other day."
"Better today, I think. But he's kinda been falling apart, and, Rosalee, I don't know what to do about it," Monroe said, throwing his head into his hands and resting both on the table. "I keep trying to talk to him, but I don't think he wants to talk about, well, any of this. Which I sort of don't blame him for, but...maybe I shouldn't have told Hank he was okay to work."
"No, you did the right thing," Rosalee said, resting her finger in the book as she watched Monroe. "Maybe having a day of relative normalcy will help. Besides, he's not going to have a choice about talking with Dr. Lehrer. Trust me."
"She's a good doctor, but she can be a little intense at first blush," Rosalee said in response to Monroe's raised eyes.
"Well, she's probably the only one that will see him anyway..." Monroe said. "She will definitely see him, won't she?"
"Don't worry. I'll give her a call myself; I've been building a really strong rapport with her recently over the shop," Rosalee said. "She's been sending some of her patients here for wesen medicine. I've had a few things on the shelves that she couldn't find anywhere else."
"This shop really is a novelty around Portland," Monroe said.
"It is for wesen anyway," Rosalee said with a grin. Then, turning the diary towards Monroe, "Before we get completely sidetracked, this is the part of the diary I thought you'd be most interested in."
"Over the past few weeks my sausage has become less tender," Monroe read aloud before giving Rosalee a sideways glance. "So this was a translation, then?"
"Yes from Latin to German to this, and I meant the next part," Rosalee said.
"Oh...okay. Galba has been ...is that word frelling... fretting? ...over me. He says that the healer woman needs to put a spell over my abdomen so that she can cut me open in the manner of Caesar's mother. Oh geez...I see where the picture comes in He says that this is the only way the child can be born since I cannot give birth in the way that a woman can, not having all of woman's parts. /i Well, we kind of knew that anyway," Monroe said as Rosalee motioned for him to keep reading. "Galba keeps telling me not to worry about what the child will be as any child delivered in such a way will be a gift blessed by Hera and the snakes she sent to Tiresias. However, it will be of no consequence if the child is a bear like him. If the child is like me or like both of us, my fear of what will happen to it or to me is too great to even write. Galba completes me, and I him. But there are few else who understand a bear and a beaver." /i
"Well, even if they threw it off a cliff or something, which they probably did, at least it was blessed," Monroe said wryly.
"Keep reading," Rosalee said.
" Galba had hidden the writing tablets from me, urging me to rest. He thought that everything that has happened would make writing this too tiring for me. I was not well after Livia was born, and the healer woman gave a potion to me that was to help as my body returned to its original state. It was less painful than the first change, though only slightly so.
Despite some difficulties with being cut open in the manner of Caesar, as I have learned it is not possible for those who are not of creature origins, and other men bitten by the snakes of Hera have not lived to tell the tale, we have our Livia. She is part bear, part beaver. But only Galba, the healer woman, and I know this. She told us that all such unions would yield mixed results, but that, as in nature, the bear will be more dominant, " Monroe finished.
"So, you think that our kid...will be part Grimm with a hint and a dash of Blutbad?" Monroe asked.
"It could be part Blutbad with a dash of Grimm. Nick's ancestors have a dark reputation, but," Rosalee said.
"But you're not sure he's really at the top of the Wesen foodchain?" Monroe suggested. Musing on it, he felt the same. Although Nick had the ability to see wesen for what they were, and scare the bejesus of of them, Monroe saw little else about Nick, a few known Grimm quirks aside, that wasn't completely human.
"I suppose we'll find out," Rosalee said. "I've been scouring for information on any Wesen, Grimm relationships, but I've been coming up empty. You can ask Dr. Lehrer, but I'm not sure she's any more likely to have answers."
"Mr. Burkhardt, Dr. Lehrer will see you now," one of the nurses whispered, pressing her hand lightly against Nick's shoulder. Nick imagined she was trying to be kind by not shouting across the nearly full waiting room. He had, after all, been sitting with his head ducked down, in a vain attempt not to draw attention to himself. He had heavily suspected that revealing that he was a Grimm to a room half filled with pregnant wesen would be roughly the equivalent of lighting his own funeral pyre.
However, questioning eyes had been drawn to him and Monroe anyway, not because he was a Grimm, but because, while they were not the only men there, they were the only men there not in the company of a woman. It was, truth be told, somewhat difficult to explain their presence in a OB/GYN clinic, wesen or otherwise.
Or maybe the stares were just because Monroe had been rambling, for the past ten minutes, about the mechanics and history of the old fashioned grandfather clock that was standing in the corner. But Nick didn't really believe that.
He gave the nurse a faint smile before starting to follow her and Monroe back to the exam room.
She checked his vitals and promised the doctor would be right in.
"Even though Galileo had a design for a pendulum clock, that's a grandfather clock to the layman, they weren't really invented for about another twenty years," Monroe continued, picking up, presumably, where he left off, as he sat down in the now vacant chair across from the exam table. Nick, who had become rather fixated on the fact that there were stirrups, didn't comment or bother to point out that he knew, because Monroe had told him no less than three times, what a pendulum clock was. Unable to stop staring at them, but unable to bring himself to point them out to Monroe, Nick gripped the armrest of the chair tightly and let Monroe's continued babbling soothe his nerves.
After hearing the unmistakable click of heels on wood, the door swung open. Monroe immediately fell silent and stared at the floor. Nick noted, with some puzzlement, that Monroe now looked as nervous as he felt.
"Mr. Burkhardt, on the table please," a voluptuous woman with dark red curls commanded as she walked to the sink and began to wash her hands. Nick gave Monroe a sidelong glance before doing what she asked.
"Now, I understand that you were bitten by a snake? I'll need to see the bite mark," she said as she turned on her heel, wiping her hands dry.
"It's on my neck, but it's almost gone," Nick offered, pulling back the collar on his button down.
"Perfectly fine; it's still there, and that's what I need," she said as she pulled the shirt further away from his back and examined the bite mark intently for what felt like forever. Nick looked back to the chairs and watched Monroe methodically twiddling his thumbs.
"Ms. Calvert was right about this being from serpentes gravitas or more informally Hera's Serpent . The first instance I've ever seen. Likely the only instance I'll ever see," she said briskly as she walked back to her cabinet and picked up a chart, wrote a few notes, and then started gathering a few things from the cabinet.
"Now, if you could take your shirt off and lie back," she said. Nick took a deep breath; this was the part he had really been dreading. It was all going to become that much more painfully real that he was pregnant. Certainly Monroe and Rosalee had already told him, as had a convenience store pregnancy test that he had bought in the vain hope that he could prove that those two were wrong. However, neither of those ways seemed as hopelessly clinical as what was about to happen.
"Mr. Monroe, if you want to watch, you'll be able to see better if you move over here," she said, gesturing for him to pull the chair closer.
Monroe skidded the chair unceremoniously across the tile floor, ducking his head as the noise echoed around the small room. He didn't reach for so much as seize Nick's hand when he sat back down, suggesting to Nick that it was not purely for his benefit. He gave Monroe a questioning look before returning his focus to Dr. Lehrer.
He shivered slightly as she squeezed a dollop of bluish clear liquid on his chest. She waved for both of them to look up at her computer screen as she ran her probe over the freshly applied gel.
"Now you're not far enough along to hear the baby's heartbeat, but you will be able to see it," she said, tapping the center of the screen.
Nick squinted at the screen, frowning. If he was right, what he was meant to be seeing looked roughly like a peanut. He had really been expecting something more substantial, and he felt oddly disappointed.
Then he felt a slight tremor against his palm, and he realized Monroe's arm was shaking. He glanced over at him, and he couldn't help smiling himself when he saw that Monroe was suppressing a broad grin. He looked back at the screen with renewed perspective; if that little blob meant something to Monroe, then it meant something to him too. He whispered, barely audibly, "Our family."
"Our family," Monroe agreed.
Dr. Lehrer let them have their moment, but she quickly pulled the attention back to her. "Now, based on what I see here and what I know about fertility inducing venom, I would expect your due date to be around the second week of March. However, since this is out of the ordinary, I'll have to reevaluate as we go along."
Nick and Monroe both nodded dumbly, neither of them having really thought that far ahead.
"I'd say by the time you're in your second trimester, we can schedule a C-section, for obvious reasons."
Nick swallowed hard as he kept his grip tight on Monroe's hand. As far as thinking ahead went, this seemed completely out of scope. "That will work?"
"There's no reason why it shouldn't," Dr. Lehrer said.
"It looks like what the other men did, or, er, tried to do, just with less mysticism and ceremony," Monroe offered. "And probably considerably more safety. So that's a good thing."
"Yes, even despite wesen tendencies to err on the side of herbal remedies, modern medicine for our practitioners has still come a long way. This will be as safe as it is possible for it to be," Dr. Lehrer said, smiling at Monroe. As she did, Monroe's grip on Nick's hand loosened slightly. "Now, I'd like to talk to Nick alone for a few minutes, if that is alright with both of you?"
Although he'd prefer not to be left alone, he imagined, to be asked invasive questions, he supposed it was another thing he was just going to have to put up with. So he nodded up at Monroe who then clasped his shoulder for a moment before turning for the door.
"How are you doing, Nick?" She asked. He gave her a wan smile. Monroe and Rosalee had kept asking him the very same thing, repeatedly, and he'd come to the conclusion that it was simply a loaded question.
"Fine, I guess," he said. He figured it was true too, as he had mostly come to terms with the situation. That didn't mean he was okay with it, but he felt like he was coping the best he could. If coping happened to involve spending a more than necessary amount of time in the trailer over the past week so that Monroe wouldn't find him trying, and failing, to hide unbidden, and not particularly masculine tears, then that was that.
She went on to ask him, first if there was anything he wanted to discuss in private, which he figured was a polite way of asking if he really wanted to do this - which he didn't, but he wasn't all that fond of the alternative - followed by several probing questions about his sleeping and eating patterns and if they had changed over the past week. They had, significantly, but he had not thought that was out of the ordinary, considering. She tapped her pen against her clipboard a few times, looking lost in thought.
"Now, before you go, there are few things I want to discuss. First, since this is highly unusual, there is a lot of risk. I'm not saying this to worry you, but rather because you need to be on the lookout for any warning signs that something is wrong. Nick, if you can, tell someone that you work with about this," Dr. Lehrer said. "I already know that Monroe and Rosalee are looking out for you, but the more people that are the better."
"Watching me like a hawk, more like," Nick muttered under his breath, momentarily forgetting that he was in the presence of a Fuchsbau.
"I'd say that's a good thing. My questionnaire wasn't for no reason," Dr. Lehrer said. "When Rosalee called to ask me if I'd see you, she told me that she was worried about you. Rightly so, I'd say."
Nick cocked his head up at her warily. He was already pregnant, what else could there possibly be?
"What makes you say that?" He asked.
"Although I'm not going to diagnose you with this right now since it really hasn't been long enough, I want you, and anyone else you can enlist to do so, to keep track of any further major changes in your diet, sleeping habits, or levels of emotional stress. You're showing signs of depression, and I'd really like to keep tabs on that," Dr. Lehrer said. "You're certainly at risk for it..."
"Of course I am," Nick said cynically.
"...considering the unusual circumstances of the pregnancy and the stress that your job and identity undoubtedly put you under."
"Is there a way to prevent that from happening?" Nick asked.
"Mood disorders can be unpredictable, and in this case, set off by a major life event that you don't really have control over, so, I'm afraid not," Dr. Lehrer said.
"Would it affect the baby?" Nick asked.
"If we didn't do anything about it, possibly," Dr. Lehrer said. "You have to take care of yourself in order to take care of something growing inside you. So, keep me and, at the very least, Monroe, informed about what's going on."
As he accepted the prenatal vitamin prescription that Dr. Lehrer was handing him, he felt as though he were watching several future, undoubtedly awkward conversations unfold in his head. With a deep sigh, he wondered how long he could put them off.
He went out to the lobby only to see Monroe standing in front of the grandfather clock, staring at it longingly. With a soft laugh, he crept up behind him and placed his hands on his shoulder.
"I think we have enough at home, and that's an understatement, but if you aren't too afraid to ask, maybe Dr. Lehrer will let you take this one," Nick said.
"You have no idea how upset I am that you aren't being serious right now; this clock is a masterpiece," Monroe said. "Also, I'm not afraid of Dr. Lehrer. Doctor's offices in general just kind of give me the heebie jeebies, and the picture Rosalee painted of Dr. Lehrer for me wasn't helping."
"You could have said something," Nick said. "Just because you want to be here for me doesn't mean I don't want to do the same for you."
"Thanks, Nick," Monroe said before pulling him up to kiss him. Nick leaned into the kiss before realizing that they had given the women in the waiting room another reason to stare.