AN: I was originally going to write this as the chapter where Baby Steve is conceived, but then I decided that maybe he was conceived in the first scene of "Boy's Don't Cry". Also, I found a Baby Steve conception chapter to be unnecessary. I should also warn you that there are some mentions of child abuse (including incest) in this chapter.

Summary: Jordan and Asher take Lea out drinking to help take her mind off of her Asherman syndrome. Also, Dr. Lim tries to help Shaun after hearing what he and Lea are going through. Meanwhile, Shaun's patient with the surgical towel left in her hits too close to home for him. Set throughout "Sorry, Not Sorry".

It had been a rough couple of weeks for Shaun and Lea due to Lea's devastating diagnosis, and they had been trying to find good distractions, most of which involved two bottles of wine while watching TV or playing Super Mario Bros, Mortal Kombat, Ratchet and Clank, or Animal Crossing.

For Shaun, he thought about grading his residents on a scale and ranking them. As for Lea, she considered looking at open houses out of their price range...mainly for the free cookies.

Right now, Jordan, Asher, and Lea were out drinking together at the brewery as a way for Lea to try and forget about her infertility for just one minute.

However, that task got difficult for Lea when she noticed an obviously pregnant couple walk by, cradling her belly. Also, because Dr. Patel and Nurse Jenkins were currently pregnant, Lea preferred to isolate herself and eat her meals in her office with the blinds shut because she was afraid of walking by them or any other pregnant woman.

Every time she saw a pregnant woman - recently and also around the time she lost the baby - she was jealous of that woman no matter how much she probably went through to conceive the child. It didn't matter what that woman's circumstances were, but Lea didn't like being around them because they had something she desperately wanted.

"Don't look at them, Lea," sighed Jordan as she arrived at their table with more shots of tequila. "Just talk to us. How does this make you feel?"

"Like it sucks," Lea lamented, swallowing two tequila shots with a somber expression.

"Yeah," Jordan nodded softly, joining Lea in tequila consumption.

"It's all my fault. I'm the one with a bad uterus," pitied Lea, resting her head in her folded arms over the table. "Shaun's swimmers are probably just fine because they could tear through a condom and birth control easily."

"No, it isn't, Lea," sighed Jordan as she placed her hand over Lea's shoulder, hating that her friend and her husband were going through all this. "Blaming yourself isn't going to make things any better."

"No birth control is 100% effective," Asher, who already had too much to drink since they arrived and was leaning tipsy, said sloppily. "Did you know Frida Kahlo probably had Asherman's? It was probably from that metal rod that punctured her uterus. I mean, many of her paintings represent her pain of being infertile."

"Seriously?" Lea softly slammed her fist on the table. "You think naming anyone famous with Asherman's is going to make me feel better?"

"I don't know. I just..." Asher paused before sighing, "Nevermind. Sorry."

He took another shot, not caring that he was borderline drunk.

"Why me?" Lea's voice broke out into quiet sobs. "Why do I have to be that small chunk?"

Jordan didn't say a word to her friend. Instead, she just nodded and wrapped her arms around her.

Asher just sat there and listened after deciding that he had enough tequila shots and would only drink water for the rest of the night.

"It's not fair," Lea continued to utter fiercely. "Remember those kids whose mom shot them?"

Jordan and Asher nodded, remembering the incident with the Hart children (two of them were now Morgan's patients). Two years ago, a mother came in with her three children, screaming that they were all shot in a home invasion. While the only injury she had was a gunshot to her left anterior forearm, her children's injuries were much more severe.

Stacy, their mother, claimed the story that a prowler broke into their house in the middle of the night and then shot her kids before shooting her. However, what actually happened was much more horrific.

First, Stacy walked into her children's room and then shot her oldest seven times. This happened to awaken her two younger children, and then she shot them as they tried to make a run for it. Her new boyfriend wasn't a fan of children, so she chose him over them and decided to get rid of them.

Charlie, who was four years old, had two gunshot wounds to his torso - one to the chest and one to the abdomen. One of them was lodged in his aorta and another hit his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

Nora, who was six years old, had a single gunshot wound to her neck, which ricocheted inside and caused a lot of damage to the organs in her throat, even her larynx and some of their nerves. She was now just starting to regain her ability to produce vocal sounds.

Evelyn, who was eight years old, unfortunately didn't survive. She had four gunshots to her upper limbs, two to her torso, and one to her head. Although Dr. Lim, Shaun, Jordan, and Olivia were able to fix the damage done to her limbs and torso, the one that hit her brain left her brain dead.

The true story was suspected all along. First, everyone in the ER suspected that something was up with Stacy was too calm about it. Second, when Lim and the rest of her residents went to break the news to Stacy that Evelyn wasn't going to make it, Shaun noticed that something was off about the location of Stacy's gunshot wound after hearing the story of how it happened (leading him to hypothesize that she was lying about something, along with him noticing that she only provided first aid to herself and not her children). Third, when Park and Villanueva informed Andrews that Nora (who was unable to speak) got distressed when Stacy approached her, everyone began to clue that Stacy was definitely involved in this, but not as a victim. And finally, Charlie admitting to Claire that mommy shot them was exactly what they needed to confirm their theory along with further evidence gathered.

It was one of the most tragic casualties St. Bons ever had to deal with.

"Why does she get to have a kid if she didn't even want to take care of them?" Lea ranted.

"I know, it's awful," sighed Jordan sympathetically.

"Some parents don't deserve to be parents," agreed Asher.

Dr. Lim teared up when Shaun told her that he missed their friendship how he felt when he saw her and Dalisay lying there, bleeding. In fact, she had missed him, too.

Still sitting in her office chair, Audrey wiped her tears with a tissue before trying to lighten the mood for just a few minutes by asking Shaun how he had been personally, especially in his marriage to Lea. "How have things been between you and Lea?"

"Lea has Asherman syndrome from the fetoscopic laser ablation and the D&E, so we have to wait to have a baby," shared Shaun as he sat down in the chair across from Audrey's desk. "Or never."

"Oh," sighed Audrey dismally. "I'm so sorry. How are you and Lea holding up?"

"We want to be distracted," answered Shaun. "And Lea doesn't want to wait to get pregnant. We wanted to have a baby now."

Because she performed and led Lea's fetoscopic laser ablation, Audrey was now starting to feel a bit of guilt bubble in her stomach. She even told them that it wouldn't affect their chances of having a baby later after their daughter died...but it did.

She spent so much of her time being mad at Shaun about being paralyzed, and then she realized she kind of did a similar thing to Shaun and Lea, and now they couldn't have a baby because of it.

Audrey wondered if Lea was now secretly mad at her.

"Is that why you wanted to save your patient's uterus?" She asked, hearing that Dr. Glassman mentioned to her that Shaun thought about only removing uterine tissue...which although it would have made pregnancy still possible, it would have been difficult and high risk for Naveen.

"Naveen really wanted to carry a child," choked up Shaun, trying to hold back his tears. "She and Luna deserved to have a baby, but Naveen's life mattered more."

Audrey nodded in understanding, thinking that maybe she could be the one to help Shaun and Lea fix their problem, given that Shaun offered surgery to fix her paralysis. "Did your OB suggest a hysteroscopy?"

"No," exhaled Shaun. "I suggested one to remove adhesions with surgical hysteroscopies, and she said we could attempt that, but she said pregnancy right now would not be safe for Lea or the baby."

Audrey paused for a minute, wondering if this offer was appropriate right now. "You know, if or when you and Lea decide to maybe try for an operative hysteroscopy, Dalisay and I will be happy to be the ones to assist," she offered before chuckling nervously. "We kind of owe you one for ruining your wedding," she joked lightly.

"No. You didn't ruin our wedding, Villanueva's ex-boyfriend did," reassured Shaun. "But Lea just wants to be sad right now. She doesn't want any more surgeries right now."

"Okay," Audrey chuckled before getting serious again. "Again, I'm so sorry that you and Lea are going through this."

That night, as Shaun and Lea lay in bed together, Shaun told Lea what his patient's outcome was.

"We had to take Naveen's uterus," sighed Shaun grievously, allowing Lea to snuggle up against him. "Her wife still loves her, but Naveen's infertility was preventable if only the surgeons were more responsible. However, Naveen would still forgive Luna. They deserved to have a baby."

Lea just sighed. Although she wanted to forget about her Asherman's for five minutes, she still validated Shaun being upset over a surgical outcome, even if it saved a patient's life...but at the cost of their dreams.

She didn't know Naveen and Luna, but the stuff Shaun told her about them and how they had been trying to get pregnant for almost two years and then couldn't all because of a surgical towel - that was heartbreaking.

It also angered him that those parents were allowed to procreate and probably get a child so easily (some without even trying, and that included Shaun's biological parents), let alone raise children.

And there were many good parents and also deserving childless people who had to put so much time and money into getting a child - getting poked and prodded by doctors, injecting themselves with hormones, ejaculating into cups, taking fertility drugs, undergoing surgeries, getting scrutinized by social workers, being put on wait lists, paying out-of-pocket expenses.

"It's not fair that some bad parents get to have as many children as they want while people like us and Naveen and Luna have to spend money to get just one," vented Shaun, who thought back to people like those religious fundamentalist families who had as many children as a couple from the 1800s or even infamous people who committed filicide.

The church that Shaun grew up in told him that everything happens for a reason, a phrase that even a 10-year-old Shaun couldn't fathom, even today. By that logic, when applying it to infertility and the myth that "a couple having trouble conceiving means they aren't meant to be parents", why did God let people like Theresa Knorr, Waneta Hoyt, and Marie Noe have five children if they were just going to abuse and kill them? And why did God let his own biological parents have children?

Shaun has witnessed these sad cases with children as a doctor more than once in his surgical career. Nothing was more horrifying than the child suffering and dying because of their own parents' actions. Since med school, he has seen abused children come to the ER.

He once treated a broken arm on an eight-year-old, and Shaun could tell that child was being abused when he saw the bruises on his body and the temper his father was displaying (he was also obviously drunk), so he expressed his concerns to Dr. Lim...and it turned out that his instinct was right. He treated a four-year-old with burns over 80% of his body because his abusive, alcoholic mother poured gasoline on him and set him on fire. He removed five tapeworms from the digestive tract of a 16-year-old whose mother tricked her into swallowing diet pills (which happened to have tapeworm eggs in them) to make her lose weight for the beauty pageants she made her do. He even assisted with an abortion on a 14-year-old victim of incest.

He's treated two autistic minors for issues caused by the dangerous "cures" and "treatments" their parents forced on them that only caused long-term health problems. The 15-year-old survived and his parents thankfully learned their lesson (he also happened to be Shaun's first autistic patient as a resident), but the six-year-old died because the damage to her alimentary canal was too severe.

Recently, he operated on a 10-year-old with a complex medical history that turned out to be caused by her own mother, who had been purposefully making her sick. If Jerome didn't catch her tampering with her daughter's urine bag, the patient would have died.

"Yeah, I know," sighed Lea, running her hand down her husband's arm. "It's like the ones that deserve it the most don't get what they deserve while those that deserve it the least get all they want."

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

Next Chapter Prompt:
Shaun and Lea discuss what happens now that Lea is pregnant again.