Six Years Ago

She hated these rooms.

Tess didn't know who'd thought it was a good idea for all hospital rooms to be white, sure things had to be sterile but they didn't have to be boring. But it was agency protocol. As was the physical they had to get after every operation, well, every time they came home but every year they had to have a full examination, x-rays, blood tests, the actual physical- it was all standard routine, a little annoying but normal. What wasn't was the nervous way she could just see two of the nurses talking to each other in the hall outside her room before one of them rushed off. That was… weird.

But she dismissed it, until she saw the doctor come back, another hushed and almost frantic conversation before he looked in her room. That made her stomach tighten but she kept her cool, even more than she normally would have because she knew that while they might be medical professionals they were still agency staff. Jay didn't understand her distrust towards her colleagues, towards the government in general and even Greg only understood to a certain extent but the deeper in she got the more that distrust grew.

And the more it spread.

"Officer Danvers, how are you?" The doctor, a man named Bomer said as he came back in her room, his purposefully bland smile putting her even more on edge.

"I'll be better once I know what's going on."

The smile wavered but he was an older man, seasoned, and he quickly nodded. "There's something on your blood test that's confusing so I'd like to do an ultrasound to confirm."

"To confirm what?"

"One thing I believe we have in common is that we like to speak with certainty. Let me do that."

That was a non-answer.

But it was a good one.

So she took off the hospital gown, surprisingly comfortable, not those annoyingly thin paper sheets but proper linen, then laid back and let him, her mind flipping between inane thoughts like that and ones of impending dread. The hospital bed was comfortable too. What the fuck were they looking for? The doctor's little stool looked nice as well, and his desk and the two chairs in the corner. The agency clearly didn't feel the need to scrimp. She thought she knew but it couldn't be that. It couldn't be. Who the hell were supposed to sit in those chairs? Ultrasounds were used to look at all kinds of things, organs, tissues, all kinds of different structures. Fuck that gel was cold. Did it have to be so cold? All kinds of things but there was only one that stood at the forefront, only one but it was impossible. He was done. Fuck.

He was done.

Her eyes were glued to him as he turned off the machine, tracking him as he rolled his chair so he could face her, while also rolling it back, his steady breaths and carefully blank expression making her want to scream.

Impossible.

But not for her.

"I was able to confirm what the blood test indicated, which is that you are pregnant. Approximately eleven weeks. I understand this is likely a shock as you have an IUD but conception can still occur. However… there is an unfortunate link where a higher number of such pregnancies are ectopic, which means that the egg implants outside the uterus and is therefore nonviable. I regret to be the one to inform you that this is the situation in your case. I can give you your options now or I can give you a few minutes-"

"Now."

"I think the best option is to do a laparoscopic surgery; it's a simple procedure, I make a small incision in your abdomen, near your navel and then remove the tissue."

Tissue.

That was all it was right now. All it was. Not its potential.

Except that it didn't have any.

It was nonviable.

"I would like-"

Her eyes snapped to him when he cut himself off and when he met them he winced. This fifty, maybe sixty-year-old man, a veteran doctor, winced.

Men were always good with blood until it came from a woman.

"I do not know what this feels like and I would like to give you time to let it settle in but I do not believe we have it. From what I saw the fallopian tube that it implanted in seems close to rupturing and it is my medical opinion that we terminate immediately."

"Now?"

He just nodded.

Doctor. Bomer.

This old white man who was almost definitely a boomer was going to terminate a pregnancy she hadn't known about until the last ten minutes so that he could possibly save one of her fallopian tubes.

"Do you what you need to." Tess said as she laid back down, already muting the world around her. Just not the storm inside her.

All she could see was Jay's face.

And a dozen others that were a meld of both theirs.

She knew this feeling. She'd been under general anesthesia enough that she could recognize the signs of when it was wearing off, the heaviness in the limbs that came from the paralytic drugs, the slowly lifting haze that dragged you out of the forced unconsciousness. It was a familiar feeling but it was never a comfortable one. And as her mind began working again and Tess remembered why she'd been put under…

She didn't know what she was hoping for, if hope was even the right word for it, this feeling in her gut.

Was it her gut?

Or was it her uterus talking to her?

Telling her she'd failed at the one task it was designed for?

The sudden urge to cry was overwhelming and only the distant sense that she was not alone held it at bay, the desire to hold onto the few scraps of dignity she felt she'd been left with. And then she saw him, doctor boomer standing at her bedside, that carefully blank but still oozing pity stare making her gut, her uterus and her heart all start aching.

"You had to take it out didn't you?"

"We did. But there were no complications and you still have one perfectly healthy tube. There is a… slight chance that it may be harder to conceive but not at all impossible." He hesitated for a second then gingerly laid his hand on her shoulder, a kind but ineffective attempt to console her. "When you're ready."

But what if she had been?

What if she could've been?