Work Text
December 31, 2005
The first time, she’d been panicked the baby would be bipolar. She says it, out loud, on New Year’s Eve.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind.
But it’s brought to mind. Constantly, these days. From the first niggling suspicions, to the terrifying reality of that first positive test, to now, the sinking in her stomach every time she wakes up and remembers and still has no idea what to do. Never brought to mind, my ass, she thinks.
“And I’m not sure this time is any different,” she admits. This out loud, too, and she feels his arm tighten, just slightly, around her.
Of
course
it’s different now. She wants to tell him it obviously is; she
knows
it’s different now.
She’s
different. And Luka, of course. He, her most obvious and important difference from last time, from Richard and their disconnect and their marriage that’d already been circling the drain.
But the fear – of her mother’s disease, of her own failures and inadequacies – the fear does not feel different, nearly at all.
“Even crossing the street is a risk,” he says, and for a moment she just wants him to keep talking, to keep that low, soothing tone close to her ear. But she can’t help herself, can’t help the fears spilling out, and she murmurs another one into his shirt: maybe some people aren’t supposed to have children.
She’s been saying a lot of things out loud, in the past week. So has he. If they’d not talked enough the first time they’d dated - and they absolutely hadn’t - in the week since she’d taken that first test and he’d given her a compass and she’d blurted out “I’m pregnant” standing in the snow on Christmas Eve, they’ve been making up for lost time. It seems it’s all they’ve done in the past seven days: talked.
What she doesn’t say: the first time, she’d thought she could keep the baby. Her first thought had been one of hope, not panic: maybe this is what saves my marriage. And of course, that idea had been idiotic, but she’d still hung onto the optimism, the hope. Until things - big, Maggie-shaped things -
had come crashing down and she just couldn't, anymore.
“You don’t know what it was like, with Maggie.”
And it’s true, but the thing is, he’s seen enough: he’s had to pick Maggie up himself, carry her screaming through the ER and place hard restraints on her wrists. He’s seen Maggie’s hands around Abby’s throat. Hell, he’d run the code when Abby’d brought her in, unconscious and seizing from an overdose. The embarrassment, the fatigue, the defeat she feels just thinking of all he’s seen from her mother loom large, and Abby can’t fathom how he can hold onto his optimism after all of that, call it a risk on par with crossing the street.
Can she really risk a child’s health like that? Can
he
?
Her mother’s face is still in her mind, things Luka hasn’t seen: blank and barely responsive as she sits huddled in a motel bathtub, hurt and insulted as Abby counts lithium pills, contorted into anger as she chases a little girl with a knife on Thanksgiving Day.
It’s still in her mind as Luka asks if she’s looking for reasons again.
And she knows. She knows it’s entirely the wrong thing to say as it’s coming out of her mouth, but for some reason she can’t stop the words in time. “And what are you looking for? Someone to have a baby with?”
Her stomach drops as soon as the words are out, and she stops swaying with him. He pulls back just as quickly and she doesn’t want to look up at him but she does, sees the hurt in his expression as he looks at her, searching.
No, she wants to tell him. No, of course I don’t believe that. And of
course
she doesn’t, but the words get stuck and all she manages is a lame “Happy New Year.”
She thinks he’ll respond in anger, and she wouldn’t blame him if he did, but somehow the kiss he gives her is worse than if he’d snapped at her, than if he’d just walked away. She feels his hurt in the set of his lips against hers, the way he barely opens his mouth, in the stiff way he’s holding her.
Finally she can’t stand it anymore and she pulls away, drops her arms from around his neck. “Luka…”
He looks at her with a strained smile, reaches to tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “Happy New Year, Abby.” He holds her gaze for a long moment before turning away.
“Luka, I’m sorry.”
He’s walking towards the kitchen and he stops when she speaks, a hand on the back of one of the dining chairs. He doesn’t turn around so she joins him at the table, her own hands gripping a chair, too.
“I didn’t mean…” She stops, clears her throat, trying to read his expression but finding she can’t. Whether it’s because of the dimly-lit room, or the way he’s not really looking at her, or something else, she can’t tell. “I know that’s not what you – that’s not what this is.”
Luka sighs and pulls out the chair he’s holding, sits down heavily, his hands pressed flat onto the table. “I know…what it’s probably looked like, sometimes. With Alex and Sam…”
“Luka, no.” She sits down, too, her hands on the table near his, though she doesn’t touch him.
He continues as if she hadn’t spoken. “And I know you know what…” He winces as he speaks, halting embarrassment in his tone, looking down at the table, “...what I would have done with…Nicole. If there’d been…”
She clasps her hands together to keep herself from reaching to grab his, and she feels a flush rising on her neck. She can’t say to him that it hasn’t occurred to her, and she recalls that one of her thoughts when she’d seen the two lines on the first positive test had been a fear he’d feel obligated to do the
right thing
, now, with her. But even then, it hadn’t meant she’d thought… “Luka, that doesn’t mean I think…”
Again, it’s like she hasn’t spoken at all, and his voice is quiet but incredulous now, even as he speaks, still, to the table and his hands. “But Abby, you can’t think…That this has all been…”
She does touch him then, takes his hands in hers and squeezes just so he’ll stop talking and
look
at her. It works, and she meets his eyes, shaking her head. “I
don’t
think that, Luka. I promise I don’t, okay?”
She squeezes his hands again, her thumbs rubbing over his knuckles. “I’m sorry I said that. I don’t know why…” She sighs. “I’m tired and I’m scared and it just…came out. But I know that’s not why we’re…together, now.”
There’s a long pause and Abby finds herself holding her breath until Luka finally nods, turning his hands over to squeeze hers back lightly.
Over his shoulder, she can see the clock on the microwave, green numbers glowing 12:03. They’ve missed the New Year ticking over, and Abby’s not superstitious but she still feels a pang of regret when she realizes. She extracts her hands from Luka’s and reaches for the bottle of sparkling cider they’d never opened. Pouring two glasses, she slides one across the table to him.
“Happy New Year,” she says, with a small smile.
Let’s try this again.
She tips her glass towards his.
Luka smiles, too, this time, and clinks his glass to hers. “Happy New Year.” Instead of taking a sip, he pushes his glass to the side then, leaning across the table.
This time, his kiss is gentle, sweet. She has a sudden memory of him kissing her like this, years ago, in the bar on their first date before anything had happened, before either of them knew they were hurtling towards disaster.
She leans into him and lets herself feel it: hope.
—--
December 23-24, 2005
“Penny for your thoughts?”
Abby looks up at Luka, chin on his chest. “Huh?” She quirks an eyebrow, not sure she’s heard him correctly.
He gives her a slow grin, one hand buried in her hair, the other stroking lazily up and down her back. “You told me once. It means, what are you thinking?”
She feels her cheeks flush at the memory, though in the darkness of his bedroom she’s not sure he notices. Every time he does this, mentions something she’d done or said their first time around, she realizes just how much he
had
been paying attention back then - to her, to them. She knows she’d underestimated him all those years ago, misunderstood his silences, been too critical and inside her own head about what was going on in his. And she doesn’t exactly know how to make up for it, now, or if he’d even want her to try.
She breathes out a quiet laugh, instead, shaking her head a little. “You remember that?” Before he can answer she raises on her elbow, wriggling up his body so she can reach his mouth for a slow kiss.
Luka responds in kind, and shifts them onto their sides so their legs tangle, and Abby hums her approval into his mouth as she wraps an arm around his back, holding him close. They’ve always been good at this part, this kind of intimacy, even back then when they were utter crap at any other kind. She’d often gotten lost in it, in his body against hers, his warm skin under her hands, his fingers gripping her hip and cradling her face.
She almost allows herself to get lost in it again, now. She almost does, and then he tugs her closer and her breasts press against his chest and it
hurts
.
Earlier tonight, she’d taken his hands during sex, linking their fingers any time he’d moved to cup her breasts in his palms. If he’d noticed then, he hadn’t made mention of it. He doesn’t say anything about it now, either, when she pulls away slightly, gently, to ease the pressure.
“So,” he says instead, his mouth still close to hers, his breath warm against her cheek. “That penny for your thoughts? Or is it a dollar, now?”
She can’t help a snicker, distracting her momentarily from the tenderness in her breasts and what she’s nearly certain it means, the thing she’s been studiously trying to ignore for a few days now. “I don’t think inflation’s gone up
that
much in the past five years, has it?”
But then she sobers again, shifting her body, moving back slightly so she can see his face, though she keeps her legs still tangled with his.
I’m late. I’m never late but I am now, and my boobs hurt and why didn’t we use a condom the night the little girl died and I’m so afraid to find out for sure because I don’t want any of this to change.
It’s what she should say now, maybe. It’s what she’s going to need to say sooner rather than later, damn the consequences, damn the way the look on his face will change and the way he touches her will change and damn the way she will inevitably break his heart and her own, too. It’s what she should say but she absolutely cannot, not tonight, right now, lying naked in his bed with her leg held between his.
It really is a dollar’s worth of thoughts, after all.
So, instead: “I was thinking about…this.” She pads her fingertips against his chest, indicating the space between them. “Us.”
His smile is immediate and wide and her breath catches. That’s the look, she thinks. That’s the look that will disappear when she tells him and then when she says she doesn’t think she
can
. She clears her throat.
“Do you…do you think it’s crazy? That we’re doing this? Again?”
At least this fear - that this whole unexpected reunion of theirs has somehow been a mistake and they will crash and burn harder than they did last time - feels safe enough and actually even improbable enough, at the moment, to speak aloud.
“Of course I don’t think it’s crazy.” His response is quick, sure, and he takes her hand from his chest, pressing his lips to the backs of her fingers.
She squeezes his hand, grateful for his confidence, and settles back against him, her head on his shoulder.
“I don’t think it’s crazy, either,” she admits, quietly. “Just for the record.”
Luka chuckles, low, and she can hear the smile in his voice as he murmurs, “I’m glad.”
His smile, this tone of voice, has always done something to her. When they’d dated the first time and in the years between then and now, it’d been rare and usually unexpected. In the past few weeks, she’s seen it more than she ever has, but its effect hasn’t lessened: she feels it now, the warmth curling in her belly, the longing to capture this and even to be the one to make it happen again.
It’s on the tip of her tongue, what she should say next:
But you know what
is
crazy, Luka…
But she’s loath to take the smile out of his voice, to tell him something this huge without first actually confirming it’s true.
And she
will
confirm, soon, she tells herself, as she absently runs her fingertips over the warm skin of his torso. She has a box of pregnancy tests shoved in the bottom of her bag, purchased on her break this morning. Instead of going across the street to the Jumbo Mart, where most of the clerks know her and many of the patrons do too, she’d walked a few blocks to Walgreens, barely making it back to County in time to clock back in. She hadn’t even gotten the coffee she’d needed, either, and both the tests and her caffeine-withdrawal headache had made her cranky and snappish at Morris when he’d mentioned her nearly-late arrival.
She shifts against Luka, suddenly restless, anxious, as if he can sense the box of tests in her bag she’d left on his kitchen counter, all the way downstairs.
You know what
is
crazy, Luka? Me
, she admonishes herself, wryly, but she can’t get it out of her head now and she sits up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. Out of the sheet and no longer sharing his body heat, she shivers a little.
“Hey…where are you going?” He reaches out and closes his hand over her hip, squeezing gently.
She leans over the side of the bed and picks up his shirt from the floor, shrugging it over her shoulders to cut the chill of the room. She turns to look at him over her shoulder, then leans to kiss him softly. “It’s late,” she murmurs, and he kisses her back before pulling away, brow furrowed.
“Then…why are you getting
out
of bed?”
They’ve fallen back into this so quickly. They’ve barely spent a night apart, other than when their shifts necessitate it, since they’ve been back together. And it hasn’t felt too quick until just now, with the pregnancy tests shoved at the bottom of her bag downstairs and his hand on her hip. Now, it’s suddenly too much, too fast, and she has to take a long breath in to calm the panic blooming.
“I should probably…go,” she finally says, looking around for her pants as she stands up from the bed.
Luka makes a sound of protest. “You should stay,” he counters, and his words and his tone of voice have her recalling the morning after their first night back together. He’d convinced her then, so easily. She wants him to convince her, now, but then she reminds herself: she has pregnancy tests in her bag downstairs.
“I haven’t been home in a couple days,” she says as she buttons his shirt, then reaches for her underwear to tug on. “The Christmas tree probably needs water.”
He pushes himself up to sit, and she’s suddenly afraid he’ll offer to come with her. She finds her pants draped over his dresser and pulls them on, too. “Look, Luka,” she finally says. “We both have shifts in the morning. And I need more sleep than I’d get if I stay.” She arches an eyebrow at him, pointedly.
She sees when it works and Luka’s self-satisfied smirk crosses his face. Still, he can’t quite help himself: “I’m willing to be a little tired…” he offers, his tone heavy with suggestion.
She shakes her head, fondly, if a bit exasperated. “Our patients may not appreciate that,” she chides, and leans over the bed to kiss him, slowly. “I’ll see you at work.”
Pausing at his bedroom door, she turns to look back at him, wanting to save this image of him, the affection on his face, before everything changes.
–
At home, she drops her bag onto her dining table. Sorts through two days’ worth of mail. Opens a couple Christmas cards and sets aside the gas bill. She fills a cup at the sink and pours it into the Christmas tree’s base - she hadn’t been wrong about it needing water - and checks her answering machine. Just one message, Maggie: “Abby, sweetheart, call me,” and Abby’s stomach rolls at the thought of calling her mother now. Her voice on the machine sounds cheerful, stable enough, and Abby deletes the message.
She’s stalling, she knows. Finally she goes to open her bag, digs to the bottom until she finds the bag from Walgreens and brings the box of tests to the bathroom. She dutifully reads the instructions from the pamphlet inside the box - as if she can’t figure out how to pee on a stick on her own - but pauses when she gets to the line telling her
for most accurate results, use first morning urine
.
It’s just another way to stall. She knows it doesn’t matter, all that much. But she sets the box carefully down on the counter, letting out a long breath.
Might as well do it right
, she tells herself, and she brushes her teeth, instead.
As she strips out of everything except Luka’s shirt, pulls on pajama pants and crawls into bed, part of her wishes she’d stayed at his place. She’s cold in her bed alone, and she pulls her comforter up over her shoulders, wondering if she can just will sleep to come.
It’s four am when she gives up the tossing and turning and fitful dozing.
She has to pee, which is convenient, she supposes, as she makes her way to the bathroom. That’s another thing, lately: her period is late, her boobs hurt, she can’t sleep, she’s peeing more than usual. She doesn’t need years of experience in OB to know this test is likely just a formality, but her hands are shaking as she holds the test and follows the instructions.
Afterwards, she sets the timer on her microwave for two minutes. She fills her kettle with water and turns the stove on, but almost immediately turns the knob to shut the burner off; she doesn’t want tea. She opens the envelope for the gas bill she’d set aside last night but shoves it away in frustration when she can’t find her checkbook in the disorganized jumble of her bag. She fills a cup with water before she remembers she’d watered the Christmas tree last night. She picks up her phone, navigating to her recent call log, staring at the cursor blinking on Luka’s name.
The microwave timer beeps and she jumps, heart pounding wildly. She shuts her phone with a snap.
Idiot, Abby
, she mutters, and then she’s in the bathroom again, gripping the edge of the counter, daring herself to pick up the test and look.
Two lines.
It’s what she’d expected, but she still has to look at the test again. She looks from the test, to the instruction pamphlet with its little diagrams of ‘positive results’ and ‘negative results,’ and back again. Her two lines are both clear and dark. No question.
“Shit,” she says aloud, addressing the test. And then, “Oh, shit,” quieter, to herself.
Carefully, she sets the test back down on the counter. She turns towards the shower, then, reaching to turn the water on, noticing her hands are still shaking as she does. As she steps out of her pajama pants and unbuttons Luka’s shirt she catches a whiff of him on the shirt, his cologne or his soap, just
Luka
, and tears spring to her eyes, sudden and hot.
Luka.
She’s going to see Luka in a few short hours. How will she make it through an entire shift before telling him? How will she tell him and then make it through an entire shift? How will she tell him at all?
“Luka,” she says, quietly, as she steps under the water. It feels like something she needs to practice. She tips her head back to wet her hair and inhales deeply, steeling herself. “Luka. I’m pregnant.”
Without warning, her voice breaks on the word, and that will not do at all. She clears her throat and tries again, but “Luka, I’m —” is all she can manage.
Luka. Who loved being a father and longs to be again.
Luka, who knows Abby had been pregnant, if not the specific circumstances around which she decided she could not keep the baby, when she was married to Richard.
Luka, who - and this is something she’s not thought of in years, but occurs to her just now - had been ready to “do the right thing” with a woman he barely knew when he’d thought her pregnant with his child.
Her knees feel ready to buckle and Abby reaches out a hand to steady herself against the shower wall. Four years ago, Luka would have gone all in with Nicole for the sake of a baby. Eight years ago, Abby had been too panicked about her mother’s disease, had come reluctantly but firmly to the conclusion that she would not be a good mother,
should
not be a mother. Thirteen years ago, Luka had lost everything, had lost his
children
. And now –
Now, she stands in her shower, hot water cascading over her body. She brings one hand tentatively to rest on her abdomen, curling her fingers against her skin, still flat and unchanged.
Luka, I’m pregnant.
Now, she moves her hand from her belly to her eyes. She presses her fingertips to the bridge of her nose. She gasps in a breath and her shoulders shake with tension.
Now, she cries.
—--
December 3, 1997
Abby’s thought she could be pregnant only once before in her life, until now.
The summer before she’d left for college, her high school boyfriend - a relationship she’d known would never last past one semester of long distance between Minnesota and Pennsylvania - had forgotten to buy a new pack of condoms. He’d only thought of it once her shorts were already off, tossed to the end of his bed.
She’d thought it romantic, when he’d first suggested it, having sex in a real bed instead of their usual quickies on a friend’s basement couch or blow jobs in the back of his car. They’d only managed it, this time, because his mom was taking a rare day shift at the nursing home and therefore wasn’t home, as she usually was. Abby’s own apartment was never an option, either, what with Eric usually being around and Maggie being…well, Maggie.
And it
had
felt romantic, at first, both of them strangely shy and Abby giggling a little as he’d turned down the covers on his bed. It’d felt more adult, more real than anything they’d done together before, even though this hadn’t exactly been their first time. And then they’d gotten started, and her shorts were off, and suddenly he’d groaned in a very unsexy, unromantic way and told her he’d forgotten the condoms.
She’d been sitting up, reaching for her shorts, annoyed and frustrated, when he’d tugged her back. “Hey, it’s okay if I just pull out, isn’t it?”
And because she’d been young and stupid and maybe because she’d wanted to hold onto some of the romantic fantasy of it all, she’d agreed.
It turns out 18-year-old boys are terrible at pulling out in time. And it turns out Abby’s panic over this had been enough to kill any of the perceived romance from the situation.
Three days later she’d still been panicking - what had she been thinking, she was so close to getting out of here, a baby would ruin absolutely
everything
- and what followed had been a week of hushed conversations with her best friend and two separate reconnaissance missions to (unsuccessfully, as it’d turned out) steal a home pregnancy test from her friend’s mother’s or college-age sister’s medicine cabinets.
A week and a few days later, when Abby’s period had arrived, right on schedule, she’d been so relieved she’d cried. And she’d broken up with the boy weeks before she’d ever left for Penn State.
Now, eleven years later, Abby thinks she might be pregnant for the second time in her life. This time it’s a little more rational: her period is actually late this time, and she can really only blame herself for not always taking her birth control perfectly over the past month.
As she stands in the checkout lane at the Jewel, kidney beans and ground beef and tomatoes, Coke and toilet paper and a box of pregnancy tests in her cart, she thinks about being eighteen and the sheer panic that had consumed that week in July. Now, she’s surprised to realize, she feels none of the panic she’d felt then.
She and Richard aren’t exactly connecting lately - which is probably a vast understatement if she’s honest with herself - to the point that if she is pregnant, she can probably identify the exact date of conception, purely because there aren’t really other options. Ever since she’d caught him making out with the skinny blond peds resident at his department’s social last month - and the thought makes her mouth twist and her stomach churn in hurt and disgust as she sets her groceries on the checkout belt - things at home have been stilted and uncomfortable, at best.
And she still can’t muster
panic
, like she might have expected. Instead, she’s felt more optimistic in the days since her period had not shown up than she has all month.
She thinks about it as she drives home from the Jewel: She and Richard have never talked about having kids of their own; it’s always been something she’s figured they’d discuss later, when things are more settled with their school and careers. So while she doesn’t know if he
wants
kids, she does know he likes them, is good with them, even. He’s always one of the first to leave the dinner table to play with his nieces and nephews at family events, and in the summer when they sit out on their back patio, there’s always a few kids from their building who invariably make their way over to talk the Cubs’ roster or the Bulls’ chances for another championship, or to entice him into a game of Horse on the complex’s basketball court.
Richard will be a good father, she’s concluded over the past week, and that, she hopes, will be enough to bolster her own probably lacking skills as a parent.
She’s getting ahead of herself, she chides silently as she puts the groceries away and starts dinner. Still, she thinks she might tell him tonight while they’re eating, tell him she suspects and is going to take a test in the morning. Why should she be the only one with this excited sense of anticipation, after all?
An hour later and Richard’s still not home. She waits another half hour, turns the burner off of the chili that’s now been simmering much longer than she’d planned.
She waits another half hour and calls his department, a bowl of chili on the coffee table in front of her as she listens to the phone ring.
“Richard?”
“This is he,” he replies, in his professional voice, then seems to realize who’d said his name. “Abby? Oh, shit.” The professional voice drops away immediately. “What time is it?”
“It’s almost nine,” she says, trying not to let her irritation through in her tone.
“We’ve been slammed here,” is his reply, which Abby tries not to notice is not an apology. She understands, after all, getting slammed at work. She thinks she believes him. Should give him the benefit of the doubt, anyway.
“When do you think –”
“I’m probably going to have to stay a couple more hours. Don’t wait up, okay?”
She tosses the spoon back into her chili. She’s not hungry, anyway. She nods instead. “Um, Richard?”
“I’ve gotta go, babe.”
She listens to the dial tone and tells herself it hadn’t been the blond peds resident’s voice she’d heard in the background.
–
In the morning, Richard’s side of the bed is rumpled and slept in, but he’s already up. His running shoes are gone from the front door, and she starts the coffee pot before going into the bathroom and locking the door.
She’d put the box of pregnancy tests in the drawer with her tampons, because it’s a drawer Richard will never open. She can feel her heart rate increase as she opens the test package and she takes a few deep breaths. It still doesn’t feel like panic. It feels like anticipation.
She thinks it might feel like hope.
It’s so simple, really: pee on a stick and two minutes later your life has changed.
The timer on her watch goes off and it feels like it’s only been seconds, not two minutes.
And here’s the panic, now, suddenly. “Oh, god,” she mutters. She grips the test in her palm but can’t turn it over.
The timing is all wrong, with her med school course load and with Richard’s job being so busy. She and Richard are all wrong, their fights and their silences and the peds resident. She’s two years sober and that isn’t all that long, in the grand scheme of things, and maybe that’s all wrong, too. Certainly thinking she has any business being a mother is –
“Pull it together, Abby,” she snaps to herself. She takes several deep breaths, trying to call back the feelings of calm, of anticipation, of hope she’d had this week, yesterday, just minutes ago.
She turns the test over and there it is.
“Oh, my god.” Tears spring to her eyes and she looks again, just to be sure.
A knock on the bathroom door. “Hey, Abby, come on, I need to take a shower before my shift!”
She startles and swipes at her eyes and shoves the test box back into her tampon drawer, palms the test so it’s hidden by her sweatshirt sleeve. She could tell him now, she thinks, but…
She unlocks the bathroom door and steps aside to let him in.
He’ll be a good father, she reminds herself as the water turns on in the shower. Things will be better now. He’ll stop seeing the peds resident when he has more than just Abby to come home to. They’ll have the baby to talk about now, she thinks. No more long, stilted silences.
She closes the bathroom door and slips the test into her sweatshirt pocket, keeping the hope close.
She’ll tell him tonight.
-----
December 27, 2005
She can’t sleep.
Luka is snoring quietly next to her but she’s wide awake, staring at him in the near darkness.
It’s been not quite a week since she started to suspect. Only three days since she took the first test, two days since she took another whole package of tests, just to make sure. And the results of the blood test she’d run today told her nothing she didn’t already know. All the confirmation she’s gotten has done nothing to point her towards one decision or the other. And it’s done nothing to ease the ache she feels when she looks at Luka now.
She should be awake right now because her body’s buzzing with endorphins, coming down from the high of his body against hers, in hers, the intoxication of his hands on her skin and in her hair. At the very least, she should be unable to sleep because she’s contemplating this sudden change their friendship has taken, back here together after so many years apart. God knows she’s been awake in the middle of the night for both of those reasons over the past several weeks.
Instead, tonight, she’s wide awake and staring at him in the darkness, wondering if she’s strong enough - if she even
wants
to be strong enough - to do this thing that will make him a father again.
And she knows, of
course
she knows, she cannot have a baby just so Luka can be a father again, any more than she could have had a baby to fix her marriage to Richard. Stupid, reckless reasons, both of them. But the Luka reason, this time she aches with it, with wanting it for him because
he
wants it so badly.
He hasn’t said so, of course. He’s come close: he’s said “we could do this,” and “we’d do it together,” and once, only once, a quiet murmur as she was walking into the other room, so quiet she’s not sure he intended her to hear: “I want us to keep it.” But he hasn’t come right out and
asked
her to keep the baby. Hasn’t said he, singularly, wants to have this child.
She knows, anyway. She’s always known. No one she knows is more suited to being a father, wants it more, should have it more. The knowledge makes her throat tighten and she sighs, turning onto her back and staring up at the ceiling, instead.
And then, with the movement, she realizes she has to pee. She can’t sleep and she has to pee. Is the baby - the fetus - whatever it is today - really already messing up her circadian rhythms and putting pressure on her bladder? She sighs again and slips out of bed.
Maybe it’s just stress, she tells herself as she shuffles towards the bathroom, and she narrowly avoids a burst of hysterical laughter. That’s exactly what she’d told herself nearly a week ago, when her period was late and her breasts were unusually tender. She’d known it was bullshit then, too.
She’s reaching for the towel to dry her hands when she sees them: the used pregnancy tests at the bottom of the trash can, halfway hidden by a few tissues but still glaringly
positive
. She feels her face heat at the ridiculousness: she has a white coat and an MD behind her name and she’d still kept thinking, hoping, one of them would be negative. And instead, with each positive test, her stomach had dropped a little more with the repeated confirmation that yes, she will have to make this decision. She will have to make a choice that, either way, will irrevocably change things between her and Luka, far before either of them is ready for any sort of change bigger than
let’s order Indian instead of Chinese tonight
.
“Shit,” she mutters in the direction of the trash can and the accusing tests, and she’s frustrated to feel tears welling up. She presses her fingertips to the bridge of her nose but it doesn’t help and she has to scrub a hand across her eyes to clear her vision.
She mutters another expletive and suddenly she needs the stupid tests
out
of here. She reaches for the trash can and grabs the bag, tying it up tightly. It’s not enough: she needs them out of the apartment entirely.
On her way to the front room she pauses by her bedroom door, listening. No sign of Luka stirring, but she still tiptoes, not wanting him to wake. At the front door she steps into her boots, quickly and quietly. Luka’s coat is on the coat rack so she pulls it on instead of going into the closet for hers. It’s comically large on her but at two in the morning she doesn’t care; she pushes the sleeves up and tugs it around her body, wrapping it like a blanket instead of doing up the buttons.
No one’s in the hallway to see her carrying the small bag down the stairs, no one’s in the lobby to see her shoulder open the door at the back of the building, no one’s in the alley to see her stomp through the poorly-shoveled snow to the row of trash bins. She tosses the bag into the nearest one and lets the cover drop with a too-loud bang that makes her jump with its sudden finality.
Hands empty, she tugs the sleeves of Luka’s coat down over her hands, shivering. Why he does not have a warmer coat is beyond her; it’s not even lined and it’s no wonder he always looks like he’s freezing whenever the temperature drops below 45 degrees. It’s well below that tonight, of course, nearing zero she’s sure, and her breath clouds in front of her face and her cheeks sting, the building not doing enough to block the wind.
She should have bought him a coat for Christmas, she thinks, a properly insulated one like he’s crazy not to have already after over six years of living in Chicago. She pulls the building door open and as she trudges back up the stairs, she thinks about what she
had
gotten for him: the new album from Oliver Dragojević, a Croatian singer she knows is one of his favorites, a book he’d been flipping through with interest at a bookstore while they waited for their table before dinner one night, a sweater in the blue he looks absolutely delicious wearing. She’d purchased everything before she’d known she was pregnant, before she’d even suspected, when the biggest decision she had to make was what to get for a man she’d been dating for only a few weeks - or did the five years prior count, too?
Then there’d been the cheap plastic snowglobe she’d panic-bought when she realized he’d actually brought a gift for her to work.
And then. And
then
, a pregnancy announcement that came with the caveat that he might not get to become a father again, after all.
She definitely should have gone with a coat, instead. Certainly instead of an insane amount of pregnancy tests in the bathroom sink on Christmas Day. Those goddamn tests: she’d expected to feel relief at throwing them away, but she’s dismayed to feel the leaden dread, still, as she opens the door of her apartment again.
The living room light is on and she blinks in the sudden brightness, at Luka standing in the middle of the room, hair mussed and eyes bleary as he squints at her.
“Abby? What…where were you?”
She lets the door shut behind her and she stands, boots melting snow onto the rug, his coat hanging loose on her frame. Where was she: going crazy and throwing away pregnancy tests in the middle of the night? She can’t say that. Instead,
“Your coat sucks, Luka. I mean, honestly, no wonder you’re always cold. How do you not…”
“Abby.” He cuts her off and steps towards her, one hand on her shoulder and the other running down the arm of said coat, searching for her hand buried in the too-long sleeves. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
She shuts up about the coat and looks up at him, shrugging helplessly. “I don’t know,” she admits, honestly. “I just…” She shakes her head and lets him push the coat off of her shoulders. He reaches to hang it back up on the coat rack even as he keeps his eyes on hers, concerned. “I just couldn’t sleep,” she finishes.
Stooping, she tugs off her boots and steps onto the hard floor, toes curling a little at the chill. When she straightens, Luka’s still looking at her, brow furrowed, and she sighs. “I’m sorry,” she takes a step towards him and puts her arms around him, wanting to erase the worry from his expression. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m fine, really.”
“Are you hungry?” he asks against her hair as he wraps his own arms around her. “I could make you something…go get something…”
“Luka…” She burrows a little more into his warmth, her eyes burning at his words. What does it cost him, she wonders, to ask her about cravings, for a pregnancy he desperately wants and isn’t sure she will even keep? “I’m not hungry,” she finally tells him, honestly.
“Come back to bed, then,” he suggests, and she feels his hand rubbing slowly over her spine, soothing.
But she’s not tired, either, at least not in a way that makes her think she’ll be able to sleep anytime soon.
She doesn’t know
what
she is.
She turns her head, her cheek resting on Luka’s chest. The tree they’d picked out a couple weeks before Christmas stands dark in front of the living room window and that, too, makes emotion rise up; she presses her lips together against it. She pulls away from Luka gently and walks to the tree, plugging the strand of lights into the wall outlet.
“I might…” She gestures at the couch, shrugging, “...sit out here for a little while.” She settles on the couch, feet tucked under her. When Luka stays where he is, she holds her hand out to him and he smiles, slightly. On his way to the couch he switches off the floor lamp so the only light comes from the tree’s multi-colored bulbs.
They watch the lights in silence, his hand in hers, shoulders pressed together, for several long minutes before she speaks. “I got up to use the bathroom and I saw all those tests in the trash can.” Luka tightens his hand around hers, just barely, and she rubs her thumb over his wrist before continuing. “I just…needed to get them out of here. So I took them out to the dumpster. That’s all, that’s where I was.”
It sounds absolutely insane when she says it aloud, and the way Luka is gripping her hand tighter has her looking up at him again, regretting the crease between his eyes. She put it there, she knows. “Luka, it doesn’t mean anything, okay? I haven’t decided anything.” She sighs and his hand relaxes around hers. “I still…I just don’t…know.”
“It’s okay,” he says quietly, and she shakes her head, shifting on the couch to sit cross legged, facing him.
“You don’t have to say that, Luka.” She wonders what it will take for him to get fed up with her, with her indecision and anxieties and doubts. “It’s not
okay
. God, I know the holidays are hard enough for you and…” She reaches for him, placing her hand on his cheek, aching at the vulnerability she sees on his face. “I’m sorry this…I’m sorry I’m making it worse.”
Luka closes his eyes and leans his head, almost imperceptibly, into her palm. She’s relieved he doesn’t protest her words, glad he doesn’t need to pretend, not tonight, not with her. She stretches her fingers up, stroking them through the hair above his ear. “I know you want this,” she admits, quietly. “I’m not…ignoring that.”
He opens his eyes, and even in the dim lighting from the tree she can see the longing in his expression. “I know you’re not,” he says, and he turns his head to press a kiss to her palm, before taking her hand to hold it between both of his. “I also know this has to be something you want, too.”
She nods, squeezing his hand, an acknowledgement but nothing more.
I want it for you
would be true, in a way, but also cruel, too much like hope. She doesn’t know what else to say to him right now, and suddenly she’s exhausted, her body feeling heavy and slow. She eases herself down to lie on her side on the couch, her head in his lap.
The tree and its lights fill her line of sight. When she’d tugged her cheap plastic tree out of its ragged box a couple weeks before Christmas, Luka had put his foot down and insisted they get her a real tree, instead. She can’t help smiling a little now, thinking about it: Luka in the middle of the tree lot mugging with a goofy grin in front of the ridiculously massive tree she’d vetoed - and still taken her cellphone out to snap a photo of, anyway. Both of them laughing as they’d untied the reasonably-sized tree from the roof of Luka’s car and wrestled it up the stairs of her building. More laughter as they’d worked to untangle her strands of lights and string them evenly. Luka kissing her when they’d finally plugged the lights in and her living room was bathed in the cheerful, warm glow, the same way it is now.
Remembering it now, she’s glad she hadn’t suspected then. Because she can picture that, too, different possibilities, another life, what once was, what could still be, beautiful and utterly terrifying at once: a baby, mesmerised by the lights, reaching out to touch the branches. Wrapped toys under the tree. Luka lifting a small child up to put the star on top. Those images, she knows, are not unfamiliar to Luka, and the grief of that knowledge almost threatens to overwhelm her. He should have that again, she thinks. Who is she, to deny him that?
She blinks, rapidly, to dispel the images, and rubs her palm over his knee to help ground herself in the here and now. It doesn’t work, not really. She can still see it in her mind’s eye: Luka and a baby in the glow of Christmas lights. She pushes herself up to sit upright again, her head resting on his chest, not sure if she can look at his face when she speaks again.
“I never asked you when we were doing this,” she says, gesturing at the tree. “How do you decorate the Christmas tree back home?” She can’t get it out of her head, the image of Luka and the baby, and she doesn’t know if she’s imagining something that happened years ago, or something that could happen here, with her, maybe. She has no idea how to tell.
He’s quiet for a few moments and she feels him playing with the ends of her hair, fingertips brushing her shoulder. “It’s mostly like it is here,” he says, finally. “Lights…ornaments. But in Croatia, there's none of this decorating way back in November. Everyone puts their tree up on Christmas Eve.”
“Not until then?” she asks, mildly surprised.
“Well, most people aren’t obsessed with starting Christmas as soon as October is over like Americans are,” he mutters, wry teasing in his tone.
Abby huffs out a laugh. “That’s just the stores,” she protests. “Most of us think that’s dumb, too.”
“Sure you do,” he concedes, still with the teasing tone, though he presses a kiss to her head to soften his sarcasm.
“So the tree on Christmas Eve…” she prompts quietly, curling closer into him as she does.
Luka hums an assent. “Yeah. It’s something fun for the kids before they have to sit quietly in fancy clothes at Mass.” His shoulders raise in a shrug. “I mean, that’s not why we do it on Christmas Eve. But it was always a benefit.”
The baby in her mind’s eye transforms into a little girl, the Jasna she’s seen in Luka’s photo, curls brushed out and held in a red bow, wearing a frilly Christmas dress, the kind Abby remembers Maggie trying to convince her to wear every year until she gave up the fight or just couldn’t care, anymore. She curls her fingers around the edge of Luka’s shirt but stays quiet, wanting him to keep talking, if he wants to. She holds her breath.
“Jasna always liked to put the first ornament on the tree. She took it very seriously, but I guess I didn’t realize how much she thought it was her job. The year Marko was one, I made the mistake of helping him put one on first. Jasna was so mad she screamed and hit the baby, just smacked his arm away from the tree. She hit me, too.” He smiles, chuckles a bit. “Danijela was so upset when I just laughed.”
“Luka!” She sits up a little, looking up at him, not able to help the mild indignation on his wife’s behalf.
“What?” He shakes his head. “I could never be angry at my little girl,” he admits, a little abashed. “She was so sweet, and even when she was being naughty…”
He’s smiling as he says it, but even so, his voice breaks on the last word and Abby sees sudden tears spring to his eyes. He draws in a shallow breath and squeezes his eyes shut, and Abby takes his hand, holding it tightly. The indignation is gone, replaced by a sharp pain for the barely contained grief she sees on his face.
“I’m sorry,” he says finally, and when he opens his eyes tears are still pooling there. Abby shakes her head and reaches to rub her thumb under his eye, catching the moisture.
“Don’t be sorry,” she murmurs, and Luka’s lips quirk up in a small, strained smile that wavers when his eyes meet hers.
“I’d forgotten about that until just now,” he ventures, looking down at his lap, at their hands clasped there. “God, Abby.” He clears his throat, and his voice is ragged when he speaks again. “Sometimes I think I’m forgetting them. I can’t even
see
them anymore, sometimes. And then other times…it’s like they’re right here.” He gestures -
right here
- then puts a hand to his eyes, pressing hard, either to dispel or to imprint what he’s seeing, she’s not sure which.
Abby shifts on the couch, hesitating only briefly before giving in and pulling him into her arms. He goes easily, sagging against her, his face pressed into her neck, breath coming in loud, uneven gasps against her skin.
“I wish you still had them,” she whispers against his ear, and she realizes it’s true: if she could take this grief, this guilt from him, she would in an instant, even though she has no idea what that would mean for her, for them, for the baby she’s carrying now.
Luka says nothing, but she feels his body shudder under her palms. She holds him close and strokes his back, and she can’t absorb his pain into her own body so she keeps whispering close to his ear, soothing nonsense like she used to do for Eric when he had a nightmare and crawled into her bed.
Eventually, his breathing calms and the tremors still, and Luka pulls away from her, straightening on the couch. When she looks up at him his eyes are reddened but clear of tears. Abby drops her arms from around him and he puts his arm around her shoulders instead, tugging her to rest against him again.
After another long silence, she murmurs against his shoulder, “Luka…thank you for the tree.”
And thank you for telling me about your babies
, is what she doesn’t say but hopes he hears, all the same.
If he’s surprised when she speaks, he doesn’t let on, and she feels his hand come to rest on her head, his fingertips smoothing across her temple. “I still think we could have gotten something taller,” he says, just a hint of teasing in his tone, even though his voice still sounds a little raw.
“That one you wanted would have scraped the ceiling,” she protests. “This one is perfect.” Her last word is swallowed in a yawn and she sighs, curling closer to him.
He notices her yawn, maybe stifles one himself. “We should go back to bed.”
“Mmm…” She’s drowsy, warm, but she doesn’t want to get up just yet. She presses a kiss to his chest. “Just a few more minutes.”
“Okay,” he whispers.
She can still see the glow of the lights, faint through her closed eyelids. She drifts off to the soothing rhythm of his fingers combing slowly through her hair.