Summary: Lea learns what happened after she wakes up from her emergency surgery. Set during "Quiet and Loud" after the emergency surgery.

As soon as Shaun came in with the ultrasound machine, Lea was already breathing heavily and a little disoriented, clearly frightened. She could feel herself slipping away as she saw Shaun's figure rush closer to her and tell her to respond to him as he got the ultrasound ready.

"Shaun?" Lea, afraid and disoriented as Shaun pulled up her gown and glided the transducer over her belly, heard him say something about fluid in the abdomen and internal bleeding.

As she closed her eyes, she knew she was losing this baby.

Lea was still unconscious but off the ventilator in the post-op recovery room. Shaun was by her side, waiting for her to wake up. It had been almost an hour since the harrowing emergency surgery ended.

Nurse Kelly was here a few minutes ago to check Lea's vitals and the dressing on the surgical site. Dr. Lim had run a fetal doppler test and performed a post-op ultrasound as well, and all was good so far as the fetal heart rate had improved since the surgery.

Although the scar tissue that got tethered to her uterine artery was removed, Lea still had some scar tissue left. Fortunately, the scar tissue in her isthmus was gone. The only scarring left was the minor scarring in her cervix and top of her uterine cavity.

Shaun, on the other hand, had been checking Lea's freshly stitched bikini cut every five minutes.

Annoyingly, Lea's phone would not stop ringing, and Shaun's wouldn't stop either. It appeared that her mother had been texting and leaving messages for the past two hours. Pam didn't know that Lea was in the hospital right now, and neither did Mike. Since he accidentally revealed the pregnancy to them, he wasn't sure Lea would want him to tell her parents for her.

"How is she doing?" A familiar voice from behind Shaun asked. He turned his head to see that Dr. Lim, who had just had dinner with Clay, was standing beside Dr. Glassman.

"The stitches are looking normal. Lea has a heart rate of 78 and an O2 sat of 94. The fetal heart rate was 147 the last time Dr. Lim checked. Her post-op ultrasound is also good," elaborated Shaun.

"Good," smiled Aaron, right before sighing along with Audrey. The two of them were still processing how close they were to the alternative of having to tell Shaun and then later Lea that they would never have a rainbow baby. "Let's go have dinner. You and me," he offered.

"No," declined Shaun, reaching his hand out to hold Lea's. "I can't leave Lea here alone. She needs..."

"Shaun, you need to eat," encouraged Aaron. "It's an hour past dinner time."

"I'll sit with Lea until you come back," offered Audrey with a reassuring smile. "Go eat," she urged. "I'll keep her company. She'll be fine. I'll call you when she wakes up."


Aaron served himself a tuna melt while Shaun just had a bowl of soup. The two didn't converse much during their late dinner except for a few brief one-word responses to questions.

"So, are you two going to learn the sex of the baby?" Aaron asked inquisitively. "Or is it still TBD?"

"I already know," replied Shaun, gulping a spoonful of his soup.

"Really?" Aaron's eyes widened with amusement and excitement.

"Lea doesn't know," added Shaun. "She doesn't want to know, but I have been looking at her uterus a lot."

"Okay," chuckled Aaron (a little weirded out by Shaun's choice of words before realizing Shaun was definitely referring to looking at the ultrasounds) before his smile faded, deciding now it was the moment he needed to inform Shaun about what almost happened. "Look, Shaun," he began, putting his sandwich down.

Shaun looked up from his soup and then at his father-figure. Even though he said Lea and the baby were okay, he was obviously serious about something.

"Because we had trouble finding the source of the bleed, we almost had to take her uterus for real," Aaron admitted candidly, rubbing his head. "Just, something you should know. We had already clamped the uterine horn and we were just about to ligate the uterine vessels when I found the source of the bleeding. Shaun, we were seconds away from performing the procedure."

Although that didn't surprise Shaun very much, that fact was still a hard and frightening thing to process and grasp as his wife was actually this close to losing her uterus. He could already picture Lea waking up to him telling her that they lost their baby and that her infertility was permanent. He would have been just as devastated, and he wondered if she would resent him for suggesting the surgery if the alternative happened.

Thank goodness that didn't happen, but Shaun knew that their grief would last longer than last time. However, Lea still wasn't entirely out of the woods yet.

"Okay," breathed Shaun deeply, placing his spoon into the soup and deciding to change the subject to something more positive. "I just booked a prenatal massage for her in Sacramento for our babymoon. It will not be a grief trip."

"That's cool," said Aaron. "You both deserve to treat yourselves after all this."

"We're also going to order some paint samples to test on the nursery walls," added Shaun.


Lea awoke to a dim room surrounded by wires and machinery with Dr. Lim and a curtain beside the bed, trying to process where she was and what had happened. It then resurfaced to her that she was in the hospital because she needed surgery to fix the thinning on her uterine wall. The last thing remembered was feeling nauseous and then Shaun detecting fluid in her abdomen.

Oh, god! She thought.

Audrey, who had been watching Lea for a few minutes, noticed that Lea was about to panic as soon as she opened her eyes. She didn't want Lea to rip open her stitches as she basically had a procedure equivalent of a c-section.

"Hey, Lea, both you and the baby are okay. Nurse Kelly checked the fetal heart rate a while ago, and it's all normal," she reassured, grasping her hand and telling her the first thing she was wondering before informing her about everything that happened. "We took you to emergency surgery when you lost consciousness. Your left uterine artery was tethered to some scar tissue. It ruptured as the uterus grew. Dr. Glassman and I fixed that..."

Lea moved her head and looked around to notice her husband was nowhere in sight. "Where is Shaun?"

"Glassman and I told him to go eat dinner, so he's probably with him somewhere," Audrey chuckled before getting earnest, deciding that Lea needed to know how close she was to either dying or losing her uterus. "However, there is something you should know."

"Okay," sighed Lea, afraid of the answer. Let me guess, she thought. I'm going to be on bed rest for the whole pregnancy.

"We were able to fix the problem and remove most of the scar tissue. However, if Dr. Glassman didn't catch that, you would have lost the pregnancy...and your uterus, too. We were already in the beginning process of a hysterectomy," continued Audrey, pausing before resuming. "If you weren't in the hospital when it happened, you probably would have died."

Although relieved that her baby was okay, that statement frightened Lea. Not only was she close to death, but she was also close to being permanently sterile. In fact, she still had 22 weeks left in her pregnancy and six weeks left until the baby would be viable outside the womb.

"Because you had uterine surgery and there is still a small bit of scar tissue left. Fortunately, it is minor scarring. It's a lot less than you started with," continued Audrey. "But you might still need to be monitored during labor. I have papers of information regarding all of this for you and Shaun to tell your OB."

"So, my uterus can still rupture?" Lea rasped weakly. "I'm six weeks short of viability."

"We still need to monitor you for a few more days in the hospital and see how the patch is doing," Audrey advised bluntly. "But right now, you're doing fine."

Great, more time in this place, thought Lea. She was not looking forward to being further confined to a bed and feeling sore for a week or two once the painkillers wore off.

"Do you want to hear your baby's heart rate?" Audrey offered, grabbing the doppler nearby, knowing that Lea probably wanted to see for herself.

Lea nodded, kind of wanting proof that her baby was okay.


Morning had broken, and Asher was giving Lea one of her post-op ultrasounds, being careful with the freshly stitched surgical site. The rest of Lea's pregnancy and whether it would be safe for her to have a vaginal delivery was something that was going to be determined by Dr. Winkler.

Shaun and Lea stared at the screen with delight as Asher turned the machine on and allowed the whooshing noise of the baby's heartbeat to fill the room. The screen displayed a close-up view of the fleece patch before Asher moved on to the fetus.

"The fleece patch is holding well and expanding with the uterus," observed Shaun elatedly.

"Everything looks great," examined Asher. "Your baby is very cute and squirmy."

Shaun and Lea watched the silhouette of their child with excitement and wonder. Their baby was squirmy alright, because it was practically dancing the worm on its back.

"So, do you want to know what it is?" Asher asked.

Lea wasn't sure if she wanted to know yet, so she turned to Shaun to see if he still wanted to know, but he must already have because he had a guilty look on his face.

"You already know, don't you?"

Shaun bit his lip while Lea just smirked at him smugly. "I have been looking at your uterus a lot."

"Mm," she hummed. Of course, she thought.

"But, I can keep a secret."

Yeah, right, she thought, smiling as she breathed excitedly. "Go ahead and tell me."

Asher turned his head to Shaun, letting him share the exciting news.

Shaun paused for dramatic effect before revealing the sex to Lea. "It's a boy."

AN: I hope you all enjoyed. Please review :)

Next Chapter Prompt:
Lea and Shaun blueprint the nursery.