(here is prelude again, and I’m gonna go ahead and slap a big ol trigger warning on this one: tw: miscarriage. sorry folks, this is the soap opera AU.)
It’s generally considered that the nightmare scenario for a dispatcher is to take a call in which a friend or family member is involved, but John’s got three brothers in three separate lines of emergency service, and it’s not that big a city. He’s pretty sure if he worked it out, he’d find he routes a call to one or the other of them at least once a week, and this is compounded by the fact that he hears about it, any time one of his colleagues dispatches one of the Tracy brood for whatever reason. John and his brothers are halfway to being city mascots, by this point.
It’s probably because he and his brothers are almost city mascots, and that John’s already a senior dispatcher despite being in the younger half of the crew, and because John hasn’t frozen on a call in years that his supervisor stands him down immediately.
It’s probably mostly the latter.
It’s a minor miracle that John’s here. She so easily could’ve been alone.
There’s no emergency contact listed in her phone, and she’d realized this only as they were loading her into the ambulance. It still doesn’t feel entirely real that they’d called an ambulance, but nothing that’s happened in the past hour really does. The last thing Penelope remembers clearly is feeling utterly foolish, sitting in the bathroom in the middle of the lunchtime rush, her abdomen wracked with cramps and her head just absolutely spinning. She’d retreated to the bathroom for fear of throwing up in the middle of taking Mr. Ambreaux’s order, and just hoped that the spell would pass. She doesn’t remember if it had been the sight of the blood that had caused the fainting spell, or if she’d stood up too quickly, or if it’s really just that serious.
From that last clear point in her memory, everything dissolves into a haze of sensations; shivering against the cold clamminess of the floor and the coppery smell of blood, like a handful of pennies. Her head in Moffie’s lap, the coffee stain that marred her white apron, the first thing Penelope had seen when she’d managed to open her eyes and to try to sit up. Miss Edmunds had pushed her firmly back down, her voice the sugarcoated steel of a career waitress, and she’d snapped into the phone that they needed an ambulance now.
Penelope remembers the wetness of tears on her cheeks and the pain that had caused them, the awful, seizing cramps that seemed to come on in waves, made her want to throw up. She remembers the flood of relief that she’d felt at the sight of a dark blue uniform, immediately familiar—but it had belonged to a dark skinned man and his partner had been a blonde lady, and the names they’d exchanged as they’d worked on her had been Clark and Sontag. They’d both had that same reassuring lightness in their voices, and Penelope had tried to ask them if they knew her boyfriend, if they might know where he was, if they could find him. They hadn’t seemed to understand. Maybe she hadn’t been clear.
Penelope remembers hearing the word miscarriage, and how impossible that had seemed.
Because she hadn’t even known. She’s more afraid than anything that Gordon will think she’d been trying to keep it a secret, but the truth is she just hadn’t had the first idea.
In retrospect it explains so much, and makes her feel incredibly stupid for not having added all the pieces together into the glaringly obvious whole.
She’d put the fatigue and the tiredness down to the extra shifts she’d picked up at work, or just the change of the season, as the weather turned colder, from autumn to the beginnings of winter.
The soreness in her back and breasts she’d assumed was just a cruelty of the universe at large, a wicked irony of the fact that she’d actually saved up and splurged on a sexy, gorgeous little bra, a surprise for their first anniversary. The look on Gordon’s face as she’d slowly popped open the buttons on her pink uniform top had been worth every cent, though the thing had become the very devil to wear, despite the way it had been comfortable when she’d first tried it on.
She’d had some nausea and a few mornings before work she’d actually thrown up—but she’d had Gordon paying close attention to that, and when it had seemed to clear up as suddenly as it had started, he’d put it down to a stomach bug or a minor food allergy, especially when she’d found out that the diner had switched the sort of creamers they offered for tea or coffee, non-dairy replacing regular cream. He hadn’t been concerned, so she hadn’t been either.
The lack of her cycle—she’s dropped nearly twenty pounds since striking out on her own, she’d gotten used to the absence. Ironically, lately she’d also started to notice a slight tightness to her uniform, and had been almost grateful for the fact that she was starting to fill out again. Now she knows why.
They’ve always been careful. Mostly. They’re not perfect, but they’ve always tried to be careful. If some nights they’d been too tired and desperate for the comfort of each other to be quite as careful as usual, then they’d just hoped to be lucky and before now they always had been. If some mornings there’s a little too much urgency, if they’ve been a little too focused on the process of getting away with a quickie before work—well. It doesn’t matter. They should’ve been more careful, is really all it is.
Careful fingers gently brush her hair off her face again, and suddenly she remembers that John’s there at all. He’s not Gordon, but she’s suddenly unsure if she really wants Gordon. She wants him here, but she doesn’t want to have to tell him what’s happened. It’s the worst sort of catch-22.
“Pen, not that I blame you, but you’re kinda starting to hurt my hand a little bit,” John tells her, almost casual as though the fact that her grip is growing painful is only a minor inconvenience. She means to let go, but before she can, there’s another wave of intense cramping, and she keels forward with a moan of pain, one her hands tightening against his fingers, the other twisting in the hospital sheets. She’s sobbing again even as she leans into him, and the only word she can summon up is just, “please”, repeated again and again. It’s the last thing she says as the light in the room goes grey and then darkens to black.
Rent Day Blues 