TRIGGER WARNING (maybe?) - This chapter touches on mental health/self harm/ risky behaviours/ disordered eating, etc. Nothing overly detailed or graphic, a very brief conversation, but better safe than sorry, right?
May 11, 2011 (8w)
She sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair, pressing two fingers to the cotton ball taped to her inner elbow. She didn't mind blood tests, a little pinch was usually the worst of it, but this withdrawal took several attempts and would more than likely leave her bruised.
Her free hand gripped the bottle of orange juice that Castle had handed her when he dropped her off. He had offered to stay, but she insisted she was fine. They'll just be going over my family medical history, she had told him, hoping to deter him. It had worked, and now she wished she wasn't sitting there, alone. The juice was warm now, still untouched. She didn't want it, the thought of even a small sip provoked her uneasy stomach, but she accepted it with a smile.
Because it was thoughtful. He was always so thoughtful. Even after everything she had put him through...
A little bit of juice always makes me feel better after a blood test.
Absentmindedly, she pressed against the needle mark in her arm a little too hard, the pain shooting through her arm bringing her from her thoughts. She hissed at the pain, rubbed gently at the skin around the cotton ball.
"Katherine Beckett," her GP called from the hallway.
She rose from the chair, her most convincing smile on her face, and followed the woman into the examination room.
Her whole body ached: restless nights and long work days starting to catch up to her.
"How are you feeling today, Kate? May I call you Kate?" Dr Wilkinson asked her as she sat down.
"Kate is fine," Kate grimaced as she sat. "Feeling fine, thank you."
"Any morning sickness?"
"A little," she lied. She had had to get Castle to drive her to this appointment as she didn't quite trust her stomach to cooperate long enough to last the drive here.
"Every day?" Dr Wilkinson enquired further, hoping to pry a little more information.
"Yeah." Kate nodded, shuffled in her seat. "Yeah it comes and goes throughout the day but, it's every day now."
"If it helps, morning sickness is usually at its worst around the 9 week mark. It should start to subside soon."
She sighed. "That's a relief."
Dr Wilkinson smiled warmly as she began jotting notes down in Kate's file. "So today we will just be going over your medical history, getting you set up in an antenatal clinic, et cetera. We also have some questionnaires for you to fill out."
She handed Kate a clipboard with two pages of questions: one with questions designed to gauge her mental health and one that seemed to be a partner-based questionnaire. She recognised some of the questions, similar to forms she had seen around the precinct, scoring the likelihood of a domestic violence situation.
"I don't think this one applies to me," she said, gesturing to the partner-based questions. "I'm not currently in a relationship with the baby's father."
"It's not necessarily the child's father, it's any intimate relationship you may have at the moment," Dr Wilkinson explained. "Your relationships can greatly impact your child, even before he or she is born. This questionnaire, as well as regular check-ins with your midwives, just help us monitor for any potential risk factors."
Kate rested a hand across her stomach, drawn to the guilt that was settling there. She worried at her lower lip, her eyes nervously avoiding the doctor's. Everything she had done, was continuing to do, was already setting the course of this baby's life.
"You don't have to fill this in," the doctor said, taking the form from her. "You have total control over everything. We are just here to help. Over the next several months, you'll be offered advice, appointments, classes, tests... but you have final say over every aspect of this."
Kate nodded, not trusting herself to talk. She swallowed, trying to rid her throat of the constricting lump of emotion that had formed.
"I would like you to try and fill this one in, though, if you're up for that," Dr Wilkinson requested, gesturing to the first questionnaire. "Try to answer as honestly as possible. You'll be asked to fill one of these out at every antenatal appointment. As I said, you don't have to do it, but it will help us gauge how you are coping and we can plan how to best help you."
"I can tell you right now, I'm not off to a great start," Kate said with a slight laugh, trying her best to downplay the situation.
"Why do you say that, Kate?"
She hesitated for a moment. Why did she say that? Why didn't she just fill in the questionnaire? She knew what answers they were expecting, what answers would get her out of here without drawing unwanted attention to her current mental state.
But she knew she had to do this, to open up, to get the help she needed. For Castle. For their future.
"I just don't feel like I'm cut out for this, I guess."
"The pregnancy was unplanned?" Dr Wilkinson asked.
A sharp puff of air escaped Kate. "Yeah, something like that."
"And your options were explained to you at your last GP appointment?"
Kate nodded. Dr Sewell had been very thorough in his explanation of her options, having sent her home with an assortment of pamphlets. Prenatal vitamins, Lamaze classes, parenting groups in the area, adoption agencies, counselling options and lastly, the different options available for ending a pregnancy. Between these pamphlets and her own frenzied internet searches, she felt very well informed of her options.
"And yet here you are. So, some part of you believes that you can do this, right?" Dr Wilkinson suggested.
Kate took a deep breath and began to read through the questionnaire. Each question was more a statement than a question: I have been able to laugh, I have been able to enjoy things, et cetera. And for each statement you must answer: never, rarely, sometimes, often or always.
The process started out easy enough, ticking each box that felt most accurate for her.
I have blamed myself unnecessarily when things went wrong.
She faltered. But she knew there was nothing unnecessary about the blame she had been placing on herself. It was the opposite, in fact. She was miserable, and she had no one to blame but herself. Maybe she was a little hard on herself at times, but someone had to be. She ticked the rarely box and moved on.
I have been anxious or worried for no good reason.
Pending motherhood seemed like a pretty good reason to be anxious and worried. The inevitable fallout if this baby wasn't Castle's seemed like a pretty good reason, too. Things that didn't seem like a good enough reason: driving to work, being in a crowded room, being alone, phone calls from her father. Sometimes.
The thought of harming myself has occurred to me.
This sentence seemed to suck the room of its air. She felt... exposed, vulnerable. She didn't like it.
Self harm, a dark path she wasn't unfamiliar with. Abusing her body: depriving it of water, starving it of nutrients for days at a time, exercising to the point of total burnout, followed by weekend long benders that only stopped so that she could hypocritically call out her father's self-destructive behaviour. She did everything she could, even things she knew she shouldn't, to feel some sense of control. She would be lying if she said she hadn't been fighting off falling into those past habits again.
She took a deep breath, ticked the box and clipped her pen under the metal claw of the clipboard. Never.
Her heart began to race as the guilt inside of her grew. She grabbed the pen again, uncapping it with an unnecessary amount of frustration. She scribbled over the tick. Answer as honestly as possible, she repeated to herself. Sometimes.
She placed the clipboard on the corner of the doctor's desk before she had a chance to change her mind again. Dr Wilkinson stopped writing her notes and took the questionnaire, looking over Kate's answers so that she could give her an overall 'score'.
"Do you have a history of anxiety or depression?" she asked after a few minutes of examining the questionnaire. "You've scored quite high."
"I take it that isn't a good thing."
Dr Wilkinson smiled apologetically. "Unfortunately, no."
Kate nodded, she wasn't surprised. "My mother passed away when I was nineteen. I didn't handle it very well," she admitted. Dr Wilkinson began scrawling notes in Kate's file again, but Kate knew she was still listening intently. "It took my father hitting rock bottom for me to realise I didn't want to end up that way. I was on antidepressants for almost two years."
"I'm sorry for your loss, and I'm sorry to hear of your struggles since then," the doctor put her pen down, turning her focus back to Kate. "Do you think not having your mother around has contributed to you having doubts about motherhood?"
Kate stifled a laugh, an attempt at deflection. "Are you qualified for this conversation, Doc?"
"I have a master's degree in psychology," she informed Kate.
"I'm sorry."
"No, you're absolutely right. You should be having these conversations with someone who is qualified to help you. Is that something you're willing to do?"
"I have a pretty intense work schedule," Kate offered the weak excuse, knowing it was nothing more than that - an excuse. Montgomery was happily allowing her lenience to make appointments, no questions asked.
"A colleague of mine practices after hours. He has an office downtown and I know he has availabilities."
Her mind was working overtime trying to come up with an excuse - any excuse - to say no.
"Please, just take his details and think about it," Dr Wilkinson pulled a business card from her desk drawer and passed it to Kate.
Kate took the card, glancing over the information embossed into it. "Okay," she relented.
For their future.
"Do you have any preferences?" she asked as she shut the car door.
Castle looked at her, confused by the lack of context she had provided. "Preferences?"
"I know nothing about this," she started as she buckled up her seatbelt.
The rest of her appointment had been spent going over the process, what was yet to come. Scheduling appointments with midwives and obstetricians, outlining what tests she should expect, and which ones might be offered depending on the circumstances of her pregnancy as it progresses. She was given a list of recommended classes: pre-term labour education, breastfeeding consultations, sessions with nutritionists and dieticians, parent education programs, gestational diabetes education, just to name a few.
Dr Wilkinson had assured her that today was just a rundown, and that it wouldn't seem like that much when it was spread out across the next several months, but it still seemed very overwhelming.
"I thought you just pick a hospital and show up when you're in labour. But you have to have a plan," she explained to him, her voice beginning to break. "Natural, assisted, medicated, water birth, home birth, cesarean-"
"Woah, okay, you're freaking out."
"I'm not-" she stopped, took a breath and restarted in a calmer manner. "I'm not freaking out, there's just a lot more decisions to make than I thought."
"You have time," he reassured her.
She sighed and looked out the window, watching the buildings they drove past. "You didn't answer my question: do you have any preferences?"
She turned her head back in his direction, watched as his focus split between the traffic and her question. He shook his head.
"No, you do whatever you need to." He hesitated for a moment and she could see there was something more he wanted to say. She waited, patiently, and eventually he continued. "But, thank you for including me in the decision making process. I appreciate that."
She smiled softly. "I told you, Castle, I want to be better and I'm doing what needs to be done. That includes not always being so hyper-independent."
"That's never been a strength of yours, allowing yourself to rely on someone else."
"It's never too late to start, right?"
He didn't want to get his hopes up, but this seemed like she actually was trying, like she actually did want this to work. He smiled, "Right."
She focussed her attention back to outside of the car, watching the vehicle's reflection in the windows of the buildings as they drove past.
"How did it go with Candace?" she asked after a few moments of silence.
"Oh, nothing there. Tribeca Grand confirmed that Stark and Candace were together. Baron's alibi checked out too. So, dead end, unfortunately."
"Damn." She chewed at her bottom lip, considering her next move. "We should keep on them. Just because they've alibied out doesn't mean they aren't involved somehow."
Castle shook his head, disappointed. "I think even your Debbie Winaker would be appalled."
"Yeah, she would've," she said with a touch of sadness in her voice. "Debbie wanted to be a beauty queen because she believed in the ideals of beauty. She wanted to be beautiful on the inside and outside."
"I thought you didn't like her," he said with smirk.
She smiled. "Well, deep down, behind all the makeup and the hair, she wasn't terrible. She was just a miserable person to live with. Unlike Amber, winning wouldn't have meant a thing to her if she had to cheat to do it."
"Yeah, talk about choices that change your life. When do you make that choice? When does winning become more important than your soul?"
"I don't know. You have to be pretty cold and calculating to make some of the choices Amber did."
"Cold and calculating," he echoed, lost in his thoughts.
"What?"
"Amber was cold and calculating," he clarified, kind of.
She wasn't following. "Yeah. So?"
"So, all of those people we talked to about her? One of them was lying."
"Justin Hankel," she realised. She pulled her phone from her pocket and began to dial. "I'll call it in."
She was curled up in bed, book laying flat against her chest, eyes struggling to stay open. She knew that she should put the book on her nightstand, turn the lamp off and let herself succumb to her need for sleep, but she was struggling to muster the energy to do that.
She could feel sleep taking over: the book slipping down her chest as gravity overpowered the little strength she had left to hold it in place, the muffled sounds of traffic outside of her building fading to nothingness. She was startled back into consciousness by the harsh vibrations of her phone against her nightstand.
"Seriously?" she groaned, stuffing her bookmark into the book and placing it down on the nightstand. She considered muting her phone, ignoring whoever was calling her and hoping she could drift off to sleep easily enough. But when she tilted the phone and saw his name on her screen, she knew she couldn't ignore it. That didn't mean she wasn't pissed, though.
"What, Castle?" she answered grumpily.
"Alexis is going to Stanford," he said, not even registering her frustration.
She sat upright, trying to focus her attention. "What?"
"Stanford, Beckett," he all but yelled through the phone. "In January!"
"She isn't going to Stanford in January, Castle," she reassured him. "She doesn't even graduate this year."
"She has credits. She's applying for early admission."
"Oh." Kate sighed, realising that maybe he wasn't being dramatic. If anyone was capable of graduating early and making it to Stanford in the spring, it was Alexis. "I'm sorry, Castle."
"Don't say that. Apologising means giving up, means there's nothing I can do."
"If this is something she wants-"
"She doesn't know what she wants," he cut her off. "Twelve hours ago they were broken up."
"And you thought that she was giving up too soon," she reminded him.
"Yes, but I didn't realise that the alternative was her... leaving."
She could hear the sadness in his voice. He knew his little girl was growing up, that soon enough she would be leaving the nest and flying out there in the big, wide world on her own, but he thought he had more time than this.
"Are you okay, Castle?" she asked, wishing there was something more she could do to ease his concerns. She pulled her knees to her chest, resting her head against them.
"I will be," he said with a sigh. "Sorry I woke you."
"You didn't wake me," she reassured him, but her eyelids were beginning to weigh heavy again. "We can talk as long as you need, I'm fine."
"You sound like you're half asleep. I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry. If you need me, I'm here. Always."
"I know. Thank you. Goodnight, Kate."
"Goodnight, Castle."
