The next morning, Derek's phone rang.
Emily had fallen back into a fitful sleep somewhere around two AM and he knew she needed the rest, so he scrambled to answer it before it could wake her. Groggily, he answered with a raspy, "Morgan."
"Good morning, sleepyhead," Fran's voice answered.
"Shit," he muttered under his breath. He'd forgotten about their weekly phone call. Which meant that Fran was going to be suspicious and now was really not an opportune moment for her suspicions. Especially considering that she'd long suspected his dormant feelings for Emily...
Fran hummed a note that said she was, in fact, very suspicious. "Is this a bad time?"
"Well, actually..." he started, faltered. He didn't want to give too much away, didn't want to tip his hand – Fran was very intuitive and it wouldn't take her long to put two and two together if he wasn't careful.
Beside him, Emily's weak voice said, "You should tell her."
Startled, he shot her a curious (and, perhaps, confused) glance. "Mama, give me a second," he said into the phone, then covered the speaker with his hand. "Are you sure?" he asked her, very much doubting her words. He knew just how tightly Emily clung to her secrets, just how reluctant she was to share of herself – it had taken him a long time to truly earn her trust and he wasn't about to flush all that work down the toilet...
"Tell her," she said again. She offered a faint smile – more of a grimace, really – then added, "I trust her." He still seemed to have his doubts, but he knew better than to try and argue with her. He leaned in to kiss her temple, then returned to the call.
Before he could say anything, though, Fran asked, "Am I interrupting a 'sleepover'?"
"It's not like that, Mama," he said, "It's nothing like that..." He could hear her skepticism over the line, so he added, "It's just Emily." He could practically see her expression at the use of the phrase 'Just Emily', but she didn't call him on it, for which he was grateful. He really couldn't handle an interrogation on his feelings just then.
She did, however, remark, "You sound exhausted..."
"It's been a long night," he said, then – lest she mistake that for meaning something sordid – quickly added, "We had to go to the emergency room."
Immediately, Fran was on edge. "Are you both okay?"
Once more, his gaze flicked to Emily's to make sure she really was okay with this. When she nodded, he sighed, confessed, "We, umm... It was... Emily...had a miscarriage."
In the silence that followed, Fran could be heard going through the spectrum of human emotion. Then, "I'm flying up there."
"Oh, no, Mama, that's really not..." he stammered. He glanced at Emily once again and she looked so utterly small and afraid – so unlike herself – that he faltered. He covered the speaker again and said, "Tell me honestly: would Mama's presence help?"
Later, she couldn't have said whether it was because of everything that had happened over the past few days or whether it was the simple fact that Fran seemed to care more for her than her own mother ever had, but in the next moment, she burst into tears. All she could do was nod insistently, knowing that words were simply beyond her capacity just then.
Leaving Emily once again sleeping fitfully, Derek collected the bloody bedclothes, Emily's pyjamas and underwear, and carried them down to the laundry room. He loaded everything into the washing machine, then faltered. Everything hit him in that moment...
Emily had been pregnant.
Pregnant with his baby.
His baby – their baby – would never take a step, take a breath. Their baby was the stain on his bed sheets and he was about to wash away any evidence it had ever existed at all.
The force of that knowledge hit him square in the chest with enough force to nearly knock him off his feet. He stumbled backwards a few steps, then dropped to his knees on the laundry room floor, struggling to catch his breath.
He'd spent the past few hours holding himself together for Emily's sake, he hadn't allowed himself even a moment to let the news sink in enough for him to truly grasp what it meant...
Sure, he wanted a wife and kids and the whole white picket fence picture. Eventually. He knew that he had a reputation as being a player and he didn't exactly discourage the rumours, but the truth was that was a lot closer to settling down than everyone realized – maybe even more than he was willing to admit to himself...
He could see himself settling down for Emily. Maybe that was why, in the heat of the moment, a little over six weeks ago, when she'd assured him that they didn't need a condom, that she was on the pill, he'd so readily agreed. (At the time, he hadn't thought much of it, hadn't thought they'd actually end up creating a life, but the idea of it hadn't been so scary...)
He didn't know when he'd started falling for her, what had been the tipping point, but in that moment he knew that he was fully and completely, irrevocably and irreversibly in love with Emily. In that moment, he knew that he'd wanted that baby – even if he hadn't know it existed yet, even if he hadn't known until it was too late.
As he struggled to catch his breath, he was startled by a hand landing on his back. He hadn't heard her approach, but in the next moment, Emily was on her knees next to him, holding him so tightly it was as if she were afraid he'd fall apart without her embrace. He wrapped his arms around her as well, holding her just as tightly.
Together, they sobbed in each others' arms, holding the broken pieces of each other together. Maybe, for now, that was enough...