Dallas, Texas
June 1978
"Don't touch me!"
Sue Ellen roughly shook his hand from her shoulder, not even glancing his way. He had followed her inside from the pool, giving her some time before knocking on the bathroom door and opening it, trying to see if there was anything he could do to help.
He found her kneeling on the bathroom floor, looking pale and sickly. The sight of her caught him off guard. The last time he'd seen her rush to the bathroom like this was when she was expecting John Ross, and a familiar instinct made him wonder if history was repeating itself, this time, without his involvement.
Earlier, outside by the pool, she had looked different: a healthy glow, a fuller figure noticeable in her bathing suit. It was the image of a woman carrying new life, vibrant and blooming. But seeing her now, drained and without her usual grace, confirmed that something wasn't right. If he had indeed fathered John Ross, his current smugness felt well-earned. She wasn't built to carry JR's offspring, the toll it was taking on her was obvious. With John Ross, it had taken much longer for her to look this worn out.
"Sue Ellen? Are you ill?"
Pamela appeared beside him, barging in and kneeling down to check on her new sister-in-law, completely encroaching on their space.
"Not now, Pam," he grumbled, trying to smooth things over. But Pam showed no appreciation for his efforts.
"Actually, not now, either of you. Please, leave me alone."
Sue Ellen's eyes darted between them, her miserable expression making it clear she wasn't joking. She had shaken off his touch earlier, but he hadn't thought much of it. Now, however, he felt a pang of hurt.
"If you need anything..."
JR couldn't understand what was going on. Sue Ellen was hot and cold, with him and everyone else.
Returning home from a meeting in Fort Worth, he found Pamela and Mrs Reeves outside with John Ross, while Sue Ellen was inside, lying down and refusing to speak to him. He couldn't figure out what had happened since he last saw her.
She didn't want to kiss him hello, didn't care to hear about his day, didn't share anything about her own day. She seemed completely uninterested in the fact that Pamela Barnes was acting more like John Ross's mother than she was. It was as if she wanted nothing to do with him, and it left him puzzled.
Dinner was a quiet affair, only disrupted when Pamela asked about Sue Ellen's health. That's when he realised she had been sick, though how sick, he still wasn't sure. Sue Ellen brushed off the question with a polite answer before quickly changing the subject.
When he asked her himself, he got nowhere, she clearly wasn't in the mood for talking. When he tried to touch her, she recoiled. Eventually, he decided that since she seemed desperate to be alone, he'd give her the space she wanted and head back into town for the night.
July 1978
"It's very difficult to say considering the dates you provided weren't consistent, but if I had to guess, I'd say you're about nine weeks along."
Nine weeks. The realisation made her pause. It meant something had happened spontaneously, almost immediately after she had permanently moved out of the guest room and back into her and JR's bedroom.
She hadn't thought about preventing it, given the doctor's previous comments about their combined fertility being low. But it seemed their circumstances had changed.
Last year, she'd been overjoyed at the idea of having a child, bursting into tears at the news. But now, with a son already in her arms, the excitement was gone. Instead of joy, she felt quiet shock, sitting there in stillness.
Leafing through the papers from the lab, the results didn't surprise Jock. He'd already suspected Sue Ellen's condition based on his observations, and he'd directed JR to do precisely what seemed to have happened.
What did surprise him, though, was the gnawing sensation in his stomach. He'd felt something like this before, the anxiety of not knowing whether she was carrying his child. But this feeling was different, less like anxiety and more like envy. The realisation that she wasn't carrying his child was deeply unsettling and unpleasant.
He had encouraged JR to compete with Bobby, to get ahead of things before he lost control. He just hadn't expected his plan to work quite this well. He had assumed it would be nearly impossible for JR to manage it in the bedroom, but clearly, he'd been wrong. What he'd overheard, what he'd walked in on, had been more than just physical.
Logically, he should be pleased. It was a natural outcome of their actions. It was an expansion of the Ewing family. But his heart wasn't logical. The thought of someone else having Sue Ellen and giving her the same experience that had been so special the first time didn't sit right with him. He couldn't pinpoint when he'd started to think of her as his, but the feeling was too familiar to be new.