THE BEST PART OF ME
CHAPTER 7 – Inner Peace
Sunlight streamed into the hospital room as Donna stirred and slowly opened her eyes, the peach voile curtains emitting an amber glow into the room. She squinted at the brightness as her vision became accustomed to the dazzling morning daylight.
He was still there. Except this time he was awake and watching her, his face different. His smile uneasy.
She eased herself up slowly, wincing at the cannula which was still stuck into her hand. It felt strange. It felt like a broken bone protruding from under skin. She flopped her head back against the pillows, her red hair listless and stringy against the crisp white cotton.
Her voice croaked with sleep. "Harvey, have you been here all night?"
The muscles in his jaw pulsed as he looked at her. "Yeah."
"It's a bit creepy you sitting there watching me sleep."
"I wanted to be here when you woke up." His mouth tweaked upwards at one corner, his eyes were smiling at her.
"How did you get in?" she whispered knowing it wasn't customary for a hospital to allow an all-night visitor.
"Specter charm and wit," he said, making her laugh. He stood up from the chair and walked around her bedside, perching on the edge of the bed. "You had us all worried." He placed his hand on hers, squeezing it reassuringly.
"I feel better now, you don't have to worry about me." She looked into his eyes, which were still smiling, but she could tell that the worry was still there.
"Louis was pretty freaked out when I got back to the office. Said he couldn't wake you for five minutes and you kept drifting in and out."
"That's what I heard." said Donna with a shrug. "I've been pretty run down."
Harvey nodded taking in her words. "Run down?" He remembered Rachel having a similar episode a couple of years ago. He'd blamed himself for working her too hard and not realising how much pressure she was under juggling work with school. But, Rachel always seemed that little bit more fragile, so seeing Donna like this was agonising for him. "I'm sorry, I feel like a complete dick. I should have realised you weren't coping and I should have done something about it. All I've been thinking about was work. I needed to put things right after the mess I'd started with Mike. I just expected you to be there beside me … like always … I didn't think for one minute …"
He looked sad and she couldn't bear him blaming herself for a condition she didn't have. "Harvey, I need to tell you something." She shifted nervously, biting her bottom lip. She hadn't expected she'd be telling him like this.
His face changed from mild concern to intense concern. "Is it bad?" He swallowed hard in dread, squeezing her hand tighter. "Is there something bad you're not telling me? Are you very ill."
"No, Harvey. I'm not ill at all, really." She watched his anguish be replaced by confusion. "I've been trying to tell you this for weeks. Then you shouted at me and I was so mad at you … then you've been working so hard and I … well I was scared of how you'd react and …" Her face dropped. "I'm still scared of how you're going to react."
He frowned. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what this was all about because he didn't want her to feel scared. He had once promised her, after the Liberty Rail case, that he'd never let anything bad happen to her and she'd never need to feel scared ever again. "Just tell me, Donna. As long as you're going to be fine, nothing else matters."
She left her hand in his and she inhaled a deep breath. "Okay," she said nervously as she locked her eyes with his.
"I'm pregnant."
Nothing.
His eyes didn't change and neither did his expression. Was this a joke?
"You're … pregnant?" He repeated her words, arching an eyebrow, half expecting her to burst out laughing because she'd fooled him. But she didn't laugh. She just waited for him to say something. He broke her gaze, withdrew his hand and stood up, looking out of the hospital room window while his brain frantically processed what she was telling him. He was stunned. He hadn't expected this at all. He put the jigsaw puzzle together in his mind, rearranging each piece to make it fit. The pregnancy tests. Rachel not being pregnant. Her uncharacteristic inefficiency. Her flip-outs. Her spending so long in the bathroom. Her vomiting in his trashcan (again). Her fainting. 'Okay, don't panic,' he thought. His stomach flipped over as the news registered with his body. It was clear to him now. Donna was pregnant. Was he going to lose her? Was she going to go back to Mitchell?
"Uhm … are you okay?" She watched him stand motionless beside her and his silence was unbearable. "What are you thinking, Harvey?"
"I don't know." He kept staring out of the window, his back to her. "Uhm … how long have you known?"
"Well, since you stumbled on Rachel with the pregnancy tests that day."
"Of course, and … uhm …?" Then it hit him. "Shit." He turned around and started pacing the small island of floor space between her bed and the wall, his hand scratching the back of his neck. "Shit."
Her brows knitted together as she watched him and her body started to tremble with nerves. This was it sinking in. Shock first. A bit of thinking next. Then the realisation.
He sat back down on the bed, his arms crossed around his body, the sunlight was bothering him as his right eye squinted half-shut. "How many weeks pregnant are you?" He'd assumed it was Mitchell, but now he was wondering.
"Almost nine weeks." She watched his mind tick away with the mental arithmetic. The same sums she'd done when she'd found out.
"Nine weeks was before 'that night'?" He waited for reassurance that his maths was correct.
"They count from your last period, not from when the baby was conceived." She realised that it had only just dawned on him that this could be down to him. She watched him stare blankly, his eyes pleading with her to tell him. "It's your baby, Harvey," she said.
He turned to face her and he licked his bottom lip as he nodded his head, his brain racing with each robotic nod as the news slowly sunk in. His eyes were vacant and his face flushed pink as he tried to process what she was telling him. "You sure?"
"Yes!" Her eyes and her tone of voice told him she was getting cross. Why was he doubting her?
"It's just … I thought … there was that other guy."
"Harvey, what are you asking me here?" She didn't know what to expect when she told him the news, but it certainly wasn't this.
He straightened his tie and stood up again, his mind whirring with … with what? Dread? Fear? Anxiety? Worry? Guilt? He hadn't ever thought that something like this could be on the cards after 'that night'. "I'm sorry. This is a lot to take in, I mean, Jesus Christ, how did this happen?"
Donna's eyes almost popped out of her head and she screwed her nose up comically. "You want to know how babies are made?"
He rolled his eyes and chewed on his bottom lip. "You know what I mean."
"Harvey, I'm not sure I do," she said, raising her voice slightly.
"Well … back then, 'that night' … I thought you were with that guy … uhm Mitchell … and you'd … you know be on the pill or something …"
"So this is my fault?" she asked him angrily. "Harvey, of all the things I expected you to say, that wasn't one of them. I don't recall you checking if I was on the pill when you were fucking me up against your office window."
They both froze as the door swung open and a nurse practically tumbled into the room. Her face was a picture as she overheard Donna's last sentence. "Uhm … I'll come back later …" she said. Then she looked at Harvey. "How did you get in here?"
"Never mind!" he said, glaring at her.
She disappeared back out the door as quickly as she could.
Harvey turned back to Donna, his heart aching as he saw how upset she was. This must be worse for her, he thought. "Donna, I didn't mean to … it's just I thought … I'm sorry, I know this is my fault, not yours, I do know that. I wasn't thinking about the possibility of this happening 'that night', I just assumed … and I assumed wrong … and that's all down to me. Hell, I didn't even know Mitchell wasn't in the picture anymore until last week. You never mentioned him." He was rambling, but he needed to tell her what was on his mind. "It's been eating me up. What happened 'that night'. I had become 'that guy' and I'd made you my mother. That's why …" He searched her face trying to work out if she understood what he was saying to her or whether he was making her more cross. "… That's part of the reason I just wanted to push it to one side and forget. I told you it was a one off because I wanted to believe it was a one off myself. But that doesn't mean I wanted it to be a one off because with you I … uhm … I mean I couldn't bear that I'd done that with you when you were seeing someone."
"Oh, Harvey, why didn't you say?" The pieces of her own jigsaw puzzle fell into place too. 'Was this why he hadn't said anything?' "It was never a big 'thing' with Mitchell. Not really. We broke up in the middle of Mike's trial, weeks before 'that night'. You didn't need to feel guilty."
He took in her words and a sense of relief washed over him. A transitory relief. There was still a gigantic elephant in the room. "Why did it take you so long to tell me you were pregnant?"
"I was petrified, Harvey." Her eyes filled up as she remembered back to those early days when she first found out. "I needed to get used to the idea myself. Then … well when you thought Rachel was pregnant you said Mike would have been happy about it because he wasn't like you. You said a baby would be your worst nightmare."
Her voice broke as she talked and he felt like an insensitive bastard. No wonder she'd ended up in such a state. "Donna … I … I don't know what to say. Did I really say that? I can't even remember."
She nodded her head. "Yes, and I got scared and, well, then I got sick. I was going to tell you tonight actually. After you'd cooked me a dinner that I'd probably have thrown up in your toilet."
He twisted his mouth. "It's that bad?" He winced at the thought of her being so sick.
"Yeah. The doctor said I have hyperemesis gravidarum, which basically means excessive vomiting." She pronounced the hideous long name for her condition perfectly as she'd been practicing it. "Apparently mine isn't the worst case they've seen, but that's what's put me in here with this drip hanging out of my hand."
"Oh. That sounds terrible." He gulped with sympathy as he considered what being permanently nauseous must be like. "What can they do?"
"Just monitor me and if I still can't keep anything down after I go home, they'll just have to keep feeding me fluids through an IV."
"You look worse than I've ever seen you."
"Cheers, Harvey," she said jokingly. It was a stupid thing to say, but just like him.
"I'm sorry … I … I just don't know what to say to you. I want to say all the right things, but I'm … this feels weird. It's like I'm in an alternate universe. It doesn't feel real."
"Do you feel happy?" she asked tentatively, her eyes pleading with him to give her something back that she'd like to hear.
He felt the urge to lie, but he opted for the truth. "I honestly don't know. I think I'm just stunned that this has happened. Who else knows?"
"Well, Rachel knows everything."
"She knows about me?"
"Yes. I needed to talk to someone, Harvey."
He dismissed her reply with a wave of the hand. "Yeah, I'm sorry, I know. I don't mind Rachel knowing. I find it odd I've just spent three days with her in Boston and she didn't let anything slip, but I don't mind."
"Gretchen knows too."
"Gretchen?" He was surprised. He could hear his ex-secretary tutting away over his behaviour and he laughed. "Bet that made her day."
"Leave her alone, she's been sweet," she said with a chuckle. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. "Oh, and Louis too."
"Louis? LOUIS!" he yelled. "How? You told him before me?"
She laughed at his words without meaning to. Louis had revelled in knowing her news before Harvey. 'So, totally not a competition guys!' she thought. "Don't worry he thinks its Mitchell's … and I allowed him to think it was, so he doesn't know about you."
"Well I don't want him to think it's Mitchell's! I want him to know it's mine."
Her eyebrows arched in surprise. "You do?"
"You're damned right I do! It's my … baby …" His voice trailed off as soon as the words left his mouth and the magnitude of the situation hit him again. 'His baby.' Two words he had never contemplated he would ever say. "Donna, this is … huge. Really, really huge."
"Do you need a day?" she quipped, using one of Louis's best lines.
"I think I need a month. I've never really thought about being a dad." Then his face changed and he smiled warmly. "I can't wait to tell my brother. He'll be made up."
She smiled back at him. "And what about us? How do you feel about us … uhm … doing this?"
"Shit, Donna, I don't know," he said despairingly and her heart sank back into her stomach again. "It's up to you I guess, how do you want to play this?"
"I don't know, Harvey." She really needed him to step up to the plate, but she knew he'd need a bit of time to adjust. She'd have to give him that. "Why don't we just carry on the way things are for now? Just keep saying I'm run down?"
"Okay, if that's what you think's best."
"Okay, but we can't keep it a secret for very much longer. I'm too sick and soon I'll be too fat."
Harvey jolted to his feet again. "Shit, I hadn't thought about that."
Donna chuckled. "Oh and yes, you're going to have to buy me a whole new wardrobe."
"So long as you don't start wearing smocks."
She grimaced comically. "Are you serious? Donna in a maternity smock? How dare you!"
His whole face melted into a big, warm smile as he saw a hint of Donna's 'Donna-ness' returning to the fray. "We'll talk properly when you get out of here." He squeezed her hand in his again. Then he let his fingers linger as he traced circles on her wrist. "It'll be okay, don't worry. I don't want you to worry about this."
Donna took in his words and felt relieved that 'telling him' was finally over. And it hadn't been half as bad as she'd expected. She felt like a giant weight had been lifted from around her neck and her body responded by giving her a sickness reprieve. She looked at him as he touched her hand softly. He looked lost in thought. "What is it, Harvey?" she asked him gently.
"I'm happy."
Her heart skipped a beat at his words and she felt her eyes glaze over. "Good," she said, smiling.
"Good," he repeated and he kissed her softly on the forehead, then paused over her. "I'll come back later."
She nodded as a tear fell from her eye and rolled down her cheek. He noticed and wiped it away gently. "Hey, no crying. I'm going to fix this. But you have to promise to talk to me straight away about everything. Don't keep things from me again. You know I hate it when you keep things from me."
She nodded. "I promise."
He kissed her again before he left and then she fell back to sleep. She felt peace. The inner peace that she'd been yearning to find for weeks.