A/N: Thanks for the love on this chapter! I hate that emails aren't working quite right (at least mine still aren't, thanks FF :/) so hopefully everyone is able to see that I have a new story going.
Hope you enjoy!
November 25, 2014
Maybe three hours in total—that's all the sleep she's gotten since last night when Henry sounded so deeply concerned about her and her health. This time when she looks at the alarm clock, like she's done so many times in the past few hours, she sees that their alarm is about to go off in twenty minutes, so she just goes ahead and turns it off.
Rolling over on her side, she tucks her arm up underneath her head and looks at Henry who is still sound asleep, emitting a quiet little snore from his lips and nose. She watches him for a few moments and thinks back to the first day she woke up as his wife, and she did the exact same thing she's doing now: staring at him and wondering how she got this lucky.
Her other hand is tucked in front of her and between her body and his, and she quietly lets her hand slide across the sheets to reach out and touch his arm with just her fingertips, trying to wake him gently. "Henry?" She whispers.
"Hm?" He asks, "What is it?" He say sleepily, trying to get himself to wake up.
"It's okay," she assures, "I'm okay, I just wanted to go ahead and wake you." She whispers.
"Are you alright?"
She smiles at having to repeat herself in his sleepiness, "I'm great." She whispers, and it was even the truth. For the first time in a few days, she woke up feeling alright, even though she's incredibly tired from her lack of sleep. She still has that uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach—whether that's from all the other stress or the stress of possibly being ill, she doesn't know. But either way, she feels alright today.
"Good," he whispers, "Why did you wake me before the alarm went off?" He asks after a moment, as though he finally realized that it was unusual.
She untucks her arm from her head and reaches out to his hand, squeezing it a little before rolling over on top of him, "I wanted to give you a proper wake up." She says softly, leaning down to kiss his lips.
"You what?" He asks groggily, his hands automatically finding their way to her waist. Even though her clothes were still on, they immediately found their resting spot just like they always do on her hips.
She snorts once and sits up, taking her shirt off over her head and tossing it to her side of the bed. "A proper wake up," she says, "It's been ages since we've had one of those."
His eyes are widening a bit more now, and he looks like he's wondering if he's dreaming. She smirks at that, enjoying the fact that she still has the power to make him think he would be dreaming when he sees her.
He slides his hands up her bare skin, going over her ribs and moving inward when he reaches her chest, giving a little squeeze on each of her breasts. "What's gotten into you?" He asks with a dumbfounded little huff of a chuckle.
She shrugs, "I feel good this morning."
"You weren't lying."
"I told you last night—it's just stress."
"You still need to get checked out."
"Henry…" She whines, "Can't we just enjoy the moment?"
"Right," Henry whispers, pulling her upper body down to him gently.
As she's drying her hair with the towel, she feels Henry's hand wrap around her stomach and his palm scrape over her skin just below her ribs. She looks back while dabbing at her ear with the towel, "We're both going to be late for work if we continue on like this." She teases, but secretly will be glad to take the dirty looks from her security detail, from Blake, and from anyone else who gives it to her.
He smirks a little and kisses her cheek from behind, his own towel wrapped around his hips, "Why does everyone say the flame dies out when you hit middle age?"
"We're not middle age." She argues half playfully, half defensively before folding the towel up and placing it over the bar. She walks over to the sink and starts brushing her hair out, "We're middle age when we're scheduling date nights at the home improvement store just to look at the exotic allure of the discounted wall tiles."
She sets her brush down and hears him laugh behind her, so she pulls her head up to look in the mirror at him. "We do that already."
"But we don't schedule the date nights around the home improvement store. They just…happen." She says before turning the blow dryer on, not allowing him to answer that with another smidge of truth that he's undoubtedly going to give her.
When she finishes drying her hair, she finds him in the bedroom already dressed, and she starts rummaging through her closet to find her outfit for the day. She grabs a skirt and tosses it to the bed, turning back to find a shirt, but then suddenly gets that sick feeling again. Her arm hits the wall a little too hard when she reaches for it, feeling as though she might pass out on the spot or throw up.
"Babe?" Henry asks, definitely alarmed when he heard her arm hit the wall. He was already walking toward her when she gripped the door frame with the other hand, closing her eyes and groaning, "Babe, what's wrong?"
"I'm just—I'm feeling a bit sick," she admits painfully—she isn't in physical pain, but it pains her to admit to Henry that there's actually something wrong with her. After waking up this morning feeling so refreshed, she thought surely she was fine and that stress was to blame. Maybe stress is still to blame, and it somehow was all triggered by her rifling through her work clothes.
She picks her head up when she hears her phone ringing on the nightstand—a call from the White House. Stumbling a few steps to the bed, she crawls across in her bra and underwear before picking it up, "Hello?" She answers.
"Elizabeth," Russell says, "We need you here ASAP. Trade deal—Russia—China." It's all he says, and it's so damn cryptic she wants to reach through the phone and strangle him.
But the wave of anger passes as she takes a deep breath, and it just turns into frustration. "On my way, Russell." She says before hanging up.
"You are not—"
"Henry," she interrupts, "You've never told me what to do in our marriage just as I've never told you what to do, so don't ruin that now." She says as she hurries into her skirt, tucking her shirt in before zipping the side of the skirt up. She rushes back to her closet and slides her feet in her favorite pair of heels, going for comfort rather than looks today. As much as they can be comfortable, at least. "This trade deal can't fall through like it's about to do."
"You can't run yourself into the ground, Elizabeth," Henry says, that deeply worried tone now back in his voice like it was last night. She'd so enjoyed not hearing that tone this morning. Hearing a totally different tone. A few moans. Groans. Snores. Kisses. But not this worried tone.
She huffs and stuffs earrings in her ears before grabbing her cell phone from the nightstand and heading toward their bedroom door, "You know I love you, Henry, I do. But I know my body, and I know when it's stressed." She confesses, "And I will admit that I am very, very stressed to the point where I don't always know up from down. I lost one of my oldest friends in the CIA by murder, I'm about to lose this trade deal, I'm possibly leading us into the worst deal ever with Iran—I'm stressed." She concludes, "But there's nothing else wrong with me. There can't be." She declares, mostly having to tell herself that, "I have a job to do."
"You have other jobs, too," he reminds her, not overly pointed, but enough to feel like a stab in her side.
She sighs and opens their bedroom door, walking down the stairs with him trailing on her and reminding her that she's a wife and a mother and a sister, too. He goes on that he doesn't really want to have to write all those things on her epitaph any time soon, but that they will come before "Secretary of State" on that gravestone if he has to.
"I get it, Henry!" She bursts, pouring the coffee into her cup quickly and screwing the lid on haphazardly, spilling a little of the scalding hot, automatically-made coffee on her hand. "You're not helping by stressing me out even more about my health."
"I'm worried about you, Elizabeth, and you should be worried about you, too."
She pauses and closes her eyes, leaning against the countertop momentarily and sighing, "I am worried about me, Henry." She says quietly, gritting her jaw to one side, "But I don't have the luxury of being able to think about me right now." She corrects, "I have the country to think about, and I have my kids to think about and get to school on time and make sure homework is done before I get the few hours of sleep that I do. I have my friend—our friend, George—to think about." She says, picking her head up and turning it to face him at the friend part, "I have the CIA and the fact that Russell Jackson could be a mole to think about. I have all that to think about, Henry, and you are adding to my plate by asking me to think about something so small as my health."
"So small?" He asks, "Elizabeth, listen to yourself." He says, pouring his own coffee now. "You're being completely irrational!"
"I'm doing what I have to do, Henry!" She snaps, then closes her eyes and swallows thick, regretting that she snapped at him. She hates it when she snaps, but he's pushed her too far this morning when she still feels like she could just pass out on the floor any minute now. "I'm sorry," she whispers, not really wanting to apologize but feeling the need to do it anyway, "I need to go."
"Elizabeth," he calls out, but she shuts the door before he's able to finish whatever he was going to say.
Once in the car, her detail shuts the door behind her and climbs in to the front seats, "White House needs me today," she manages to get out before looking down at her phone to keep it from showing that she was crying.
"Got it, ma'am," Paul replies before they drive off.
She looks up quickly at their Georgetown home, wishing she'd have just dealt calmly with Henry rather than ruining their nice morning together. Now he's probably frustrated, too, on top of being worried, and trying to get Jason and Alison corralled to get on their way to school all on his own.
A guilt washes over her that makes her feel a bit more sick, makes her feel as though something is literally pulling on her face and neck and chest, making it much too difficult to breathe. She tries to focus on her phone, but the panic is constricting her throat. She ultimately grabs on to the handle above her head, causing Lara in the passenger seat to notice.
"Everything alright, ma'am?" Lara asks, looking over her shoulder at her.
Elizabeth opens her mouth to speak, but instead is greeted with a dizziness that almost confuses her to the point where she can't speak. "I can't…" Elizabeth manages, picking her head up to look at Lara, "Breathe…"
Immediately, Paul turns around, flips the lights on and the sirens, and Elizabeth is aware enough to realize where he's headed: straight to Walter Reed.
"Female, forty-one years old," a nurse was saying as Elizabeth is being rolled back on a gurney into the depths of the emergency room. She's looking from side to side at her security detail rushing beside her, "Symptoms of a heart attack." The nurse concludes, and she looks over her body to realize there's a man who looks to be a doctor there, too.
Even though she has an oxygen mask over her face, she's still struggling to catch her breath. It feels like something heavy is sitting on her chest, and she's never experienced a panic attack like this before. Maybe it really was a heart attack—maybe Henry was right, she'd taken this too far. Would she really have to be the woman Secretary of State to have to resign because she couldn't handle the stress of the job?
"We need an EKG right away." The man who looked to be a doctor replies, and they wheel her into some very sterile looking room.
The entire time, though, Elizabeth is squinting and wondering if she should be this conscious during a heart attack—but the pains in her chest tell her she should just be quiet and let them do their thing. When they hooked her finger up to that pulse monitor, she recognized how quickly her heart was beating, and she felt a mix of concern and happiness—concern that it was going so fast, but also happy it was going at all.
She closes her eyes and tries to focus on her breathing as the oxygen is starting to do its job, and they gave her something in an IV already that must be calming her down a bit, too. Her eyes are starting to get much heavier to open each time she tries, so she finally just lets them stay closed before falling into a nice snooze.
"Elizabeth," she hears Henry's persistent voice, "Elizabeth, wake up, babe, it's me." He says more sternly.
Her eyes slowly bat open and she looks to her left first, then realizes he's standing on the right. "Henry?" She asks, "What happened?"
"Your EKG came back with a few abnormalities." He tells her, squeezing her hand a little harder. She realizes now that he's on the verge of tears, and looks like he'd been crying already. "Your coronary arteries were all okay, so they ended up concluding that it was just a panic attack."
She lets out a sigh and closes her eyes, squeezing his hand back with the little strength she had. She feels exhausted again, and she wonders briefly how long she's been asleep for since they know all this new information about her. She looks down and sees that she's been undressed and put into a hospital gown, so she knows she's been out for that at least.
"They're waiting on the blood tests to come back now since I told them you'd been experiencing some other symptoms."
"Henry," she whines tiredly, groaning as she tries to sit up.
"Lay back down," Henry instructs quickly.
She defiantly continues to try to sit up, but ultimately feels much too weak to even attempt any further. "What did you tell them?" She asks finally, plopping her head backward into the sad excuse for a pillow.
"That you'd been feeling sick and had been under a lot of stress, and that you had other symptoms of stress." He says, "They just said they'd run a bunch of tests to be sure you were okay."
She sighs a little and shuts her eyes, feeling a throbbing in her head. Bringing her hand up and rubbing between her brows, she swallows thick, "What if there's something seriously wrong with me, Henry?" She realizes out loud, trying to not let herself completely break down. But as soon as she feels his hand squeeze around her other one, the dam cracks, and she lets out a sob that wracks her entire body.
Her knees draw up to her stomach as her life quite literally flashes in front of her eyes. Did she spend enough time with her kids? Has she shown Henry all the love she wants to show him? She's had panic attacks before—she had a bout with PTSD after she went overseas that last time with the CIA. Maybe it was age, but this felt different. She actually felt sick.
She notices that he's stayed way too quiet, so she opens her eyes in search of his face, but he's buried it down between her arm and stomach. Recognizing that the weight is him, now, she feels her gown getting a bit wet, realizing that he, too, could no longer hold his tears in. Is there something he's not telling her?
"Henry…" She whispers, trying to get him to pick his head up.
The doctor opens the door after a brief knock, "Madam Secretary," he says.
Elizabeth feels her face redden, "Elizabeth here, please." She says quickly.
He nods a bit and sits down on the rolling stool. "Your cardiac enzymes came back a bit on the high side, which indicates there was a stressor on the heart." He starts explaining, "Sometimes that indicates cardiac arrest, but it can also just be a result of a panic attack as well."
"Henry explained that part," she says softly, prompting him to continue.
He nods, "We're still waiting on your blood results to—" just then, another knock on the door sounded out before a nurse came in and handed him a clipboard of papers. He leans down to whisper close to the doctor, and the doctor rifles through the stack of papers. "Are you sure?" He murmurs, and the nurse simply nods at him before leaving the room.
Elizabeth's heart sinks from her chest down to her toes, and she feels like she's going to get sick again. In fact, she's going to get sick this time—the first time she's actually followed through on this feeling. She grabs for the pail next to her bed and hurls into it while Henry shuffles her hair back into his hands, trying to keep it out of the way.
When Elizabeth finishes, she looks up at the doctor who is seemingly unphased and still shuffling through that damned stack of papers. "What is it?" She finally asks impatiently, setting the pail down on the table as Henry sits back down, "Am I dying? Or what? What's going on?" She spits out.
Henry rubs her arm a little as if to tell her silently to try to calm down—she knows she should, but if she's dying anyway, what's the point?
"There's no evidence of any illness, however there is the indication that you're severely anemic," the doctor says, still engrossed in the papers as he flips back and forth between them, moving them closer and further away. "Your hormone levels are…uneven." He says, still examining.
She pauses and looks over at Henry who looks equally confused, "What do you mean 'uneven?'" She asks, "I mean, I'm in my forties now, I suppose that they just get rocky from here on out." She says, coming to a bit more and feeling a little feisty once more.
Henry looks at her and raises his brows, and undoubtedly, they were both considering her hormone levels this morning when she woke him up.
"Madam Sec—" the doctor cuts himself off and finally sets the clipboard in his lap, turning the pages back over so they all laid flat again. "Elizabeth," he corrects, "All of this blood work points to the idea that you are pregnant."
She laughs and looks at Henry, who also is laughing, "There's no way," she says, shaking her head. "Something else must be going on with all that."
The doctor raises his brows, "Why do you say there's no way?"
"My age," Elizabeth says and raises her brows along with him, thinking he must be joking. "It's something we haven't worried about for…" she pauses and looks at Henry whose face had turned white at some point during this conversation, "For what," she asks, "A year or so?"
He swallows thick and brings his hand up to his chin, the other still holding her hand. He blinks slowly, his mouth gaping open. "Elizabeth…" he mumbles.
"Henry," she says, "There's no way."
"Elizabeth…"
It's all he could seem to get out, so she just turns to the doctor and sighs, "We'll run another test just to be certain, but everything indicates a pregnancy." The doctor states, clearing his throat, "I can see how this might be a severe shock to you since you haven't been actively considering the possibility."
The way he says it almost makes Elizabeth feel small, feel judged in some way. She looks at him and suddenly considers the possibility of her actually being pregnant. It seemed as real as her having a serious illness. "Doctor," she breathes, laughing a little, "There's just…" she starts to argue once more, but she sees Henry's sheet-white face and her breath catches in her throat. "Run the extra tests." She says to the doctor, who immediately gets on that.
She turns to Henry and swallows thick, "This can't be possible, right?" She asks him.
He moves his eyes only to look at her, still frozen in that same open-mouth, hand-on-chin position, "I don't know why I didn't see it sooner."
"Not you, too, Henry!" She whines a little and throws her head backwards into the pillow, clenching her eyes shut.
Henry shakes his head, "No, Elizabeth, I'm being serious. Dead serious." He says, his voice no longer worried like it was before, but completely panicked instead. "The nausea, the dizziness—you did that with Jason so bad that I remember you just having to lay in bed some days during the first trimester." He says, "And the sex—I…"
When he says the last bit, she swallows thick and know he's onto something. But at forty-one? There's just…such a little, small, tiny chance of her actually being pregnant that it didn't seem believable. "My age, Henry." She manages, swallowing hard once more, "I—I don't even…the chances are so…"
"Slim." Henry finishes for her, rubbing his face and absent-mindedly rubbing his thumb across the back of her hand and around the IV port.
She looks down at their hands and feels sick once more, but doesn't feel like she has anything to actually throw up so she forgoes the pail this time. "There's no way." She says. "No way."
