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The dark orange sun dips behind the roof of the house as Diane pulls the car into the driveway, and she finally relaxes her squint against the blinding rays.
She puts the car in park and breathes a sigh of relief and exhaustion. Her feet are killing her after assisting in surgeries all day, and she’s anxious to get inside and see her family, not to mention change out of her scrubs.
She reaches back and undoes her ponytail, combing through it with her fingers to the best of her ability. She flips down the mirror and checks to see how her makeup has held up. Not bad, she decides, and makes a note to keep buying that brand of concealer. Her dark circles had been gnarly this morning.
That’s partially because she woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of Beth padding into the master bedroom to tell her she had a bad dream.
Four year olds, she’d thought, grumbling when she first felt a tiny hand pull at her pajama sleeve at 4am, but quickly pushed her annoyance aside and went to go put Beth back in her own bed. She was already wide awake so she gave Rick the night off and rubbed her daughter’s back until she fell asleep, padded around the house getting ready for work early, read her book for a bit, kissed Rick and Beth goodbye when they woke up, then worked her usual 9-5.
The twenty minute commute home has made her remember how hungry she was, to the point of almost feeling nauseous. She pulls the key out of the ignition and yawns, lightly slapping her cheeks to snap herself out of her tired daze.
She takes a final breath to steel herself for the evening routine of dinner, cleanup, Beth’s bathtime and bedtime - she was just so tired - and heads inside to see what sort of shenanigans her family has been up to today.
Diane hears it from across the house as she opens the door - the thundering stomp-run of footsteps pounding on the hardwood floor, accompanied by her daughter’s high-pitched squeals of excitement.
“Mommyyyyyyy!!!”
She braces herself for the impact, drops her purse on the floor and opens her arms as Beth comes rushing into them for an enormous bear hug.
“Hiiiii Bethieee!” she matches Beth’s enthusiastic tone, giving her daughter an affectionate squeeze as she takes in the scent of kid’s tear-free strawberry shampoo.
She gets eye level with her daughter and holds both of her hands, suddenly giving her a very serious look, but her words are playful and mysterious.
“Guess what I did today?”
Beth’s eyes grow wide as saucers, alarmed at Diane’s sudden change in demeanor. “What did you do today, mommy?”
“I got to help a zebra get a baby out of its tummy.”
Beth’s mouth falls open into a perfect ‘o’ shape in disbelief.
“No. Way.”
“Way,” Diane chuckles.
“Did you have to use a knife ?”
“A great big one!” Diane exclaims, raising her hands up and apart from each other, exaggerating the length of the actual scalpel she’d used for dramatic effect.
“Woah…” Beth gapes, her barely there eyebrows raising up to her light blonde hairline.
“Your mom’s pretty cool, huh, Bethie bug?”
Diane looks up and for the first time since this morning, she sees her husband.
He’s leaning against the doorway to the kitchen, tomato sauce-stained apron over his casual stay-at-home dad attire, arms folded across his chest, a smile playing at his the corners of his mouth.
“Yeah,” Beth agrees, but she’s losing interest. She turns to leave and go to the playroom. Halfway down the hallway though, she adds, “I can’t wait until I grow up so I can be a horse surgeon just like you, mommy!”
Diane laughs at this and Rick smirks, finally making his way over to his wife.
“Hey,” he says, wrapping his arms around her waist.
“Hey,” she sighs, leaning into the hug. Rick relaxes under her touch, ever so slightly. All the tension from her day melts away as she lays her cheek on his shoulder.
They drink in the comfort of one another’s embrace for a few moments before it's back to business, and they mutually break free. Diane stands on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. It earns her a crooked smile from her husband - god, she loves those.
“So, uh, zebra c-section, huh? Anything top that today?” Rick asks over his shoulder, heading into the kitchen to check on dinner.
Diane kicks off her shoes by the door and hangs up her purse before following him into the kitchen.
“Nope,” she replies. “Just an antelope with a tooth abscess, a wildebeest with an ingrown hoof, and -,” she trails off, hit with the strong scent of garlic and meat cooking. She’s suddenly eager to change the subject.
Diane loves her job, and doesn’t normally get bothered by discussing details of her day, but all this talk about surgery while Rick is cooking dinner has her feeling unusually squeamish.
Rick turns and gives her an inquisitive look.
“We weren’t really that busy today,” she finishes, lamely.
He looks suspicious. She’s not getting off that easy.
“What about you, what’d you two get up to today?” Diane asks, hurrying to distract him with something else.
Before Rick has the chance to answer, a small voice beats him to it.
“Froopyland,” Beth says matter-of-factly as she reenters the room. She scans the room with her eyes for a moment, grabs a rogue stuffed animal, and leaves again.
Rick makes eye contact with Diane and chuckles nervously, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. Froopyland has been an ongoing point of contention in their discussions of parenting style.
“Uh, yeah, about that…I’ve been meaning to tell you about some adjustments I made,” Rick says, turning his back to her, and begins plating the food.
Diane can’t reply, but she’s not angry. She’s hit with a wave of nausea that she can’t ignore.
“Diane? I’m…I’m sorry, okay? I should’ve asked you first,” he tries to apologize and sets a plate of chicken parmesan in front of her.
It’s her favorite, but for some reason the sight of it makes her feel repulsed.
“Diane…you okay?”
She’s not, but she doesn’t want to freak him out. She wordlessly stands and leaves the room, her lips pressed together tightly into a thin line.
Maybe he would mistake her nausea for anger and leave her alone, she thought hopelessly as she stumbles toward the bathroom. No time to shut the door behind her, she falls to her knees in front of the porcelain bowl and gags once, twice, then loses the contents of her stomach.
Somewhere during this, Rick enters the bathroom, confused and concerned. Nonetheless, he gathers her hair in one hand and pulls it behind her, and rubs her back in soft, comforting circles with the other.
“It’s okay baby, get it out," he encourages, "that’s right...”
When it’s over, he fills an empty glass on the bathroom counter with water and sits next to her on the floor cross-legged. Diane sits back on her knees and groans, a noise somewhere in between misery, relief, and embarrassment. She accepts the water when Rick wordlessly hands it to her.
As she rinses out her mouth, something clicks. The nausea, the fatigue...she quickly does the math in her head, and realizes: she’s late.
Her jaw almost hits the floor.
Rick presses the back of his hand to her forehead. “You don’t feel warm…how long have you been feeling sick?” he asks.
Diane throws her head back and laughs, despite herself. Rick looks so confused.
“Rick…I’m pregnant.”
~~~
Rick opens his eyes slowly, but his mind is racing.
He sits there for a moment, unmoving.
When Diane miscarried, she had been 12 weeks along. They didn’t know the gender, didn’t care, all they knew was that they were going to be parents again. They hadn’t even told Beth she was going to be a big sister yet. They were planning to tell her once they had a sonogram photo to show her…
But it all came crashing down when Diane started bleeding. Rick recalled Diane’s panicked cries from the bathroom, how they quickly found a sitter for Beth, and rushed to the ER, but it was too late.
He reaches with shaky hands to remove the helmet. He holds it in his lap and just stares at the floor, his usual jaded scowl replaced by a deeply disturbed frown.
He remembers how Diane wouldn’t eat for days afterwards, how she hadn’t slept, how she cried until the tears ran out, and after that, just sat around numbly, staring into the distance. And with Rick dealing with his own grief in addition to seeing his wife waste away, Froopyland became the default babysitter for a time. He still felt guilty about that.
Six months after, Diane came to him and asked if there was something he could do, which was fortunate for him, because Rick couldn’t bear to watch her go on like this any longer. She knew he had been working on memory tech, and consented the moment he let her know he’d cracked it.
Even after he erased the memory of her short pregnancy and miscarriage, they didn’t try again for another year. Diane didn’t understand why Rick was so hesitant all of a sudden, but didn’t push the issue. It was rocky for a while there, but they were dedicated to making it work. They were on the upswing when Prime came and killed her, and his original Beth, and his entire potential future.
A wave of grief hits him like he’s been blasted with some type of ray, one that makes it feel like the wind has been knocked out of him.
It's stupid , he thinks, because he knows he’s dealing with past events, here. What’s done is done. But this time, the thing he can’t get over is how out of control he felt. And if there were things he couldn’t control then, there are things he can’t control now. He’s sweating now; the room feels like it’s closing in on him.
He fumbles over the pink tube, biting his lip in concentration but finally manages to unscrew the stupid thing and his trembling hands can’t put it back on its place on the shelf, so he hurls it at the concrete wall and watches it shatter.
He curses whatever force that possessed him to go down to the secret room under the garage and spend his afternoon doing this, reminiscing - no, ruminating - on his dead wife’s worst memories, as his breathing picks up.
Rick is standing now; he whirls around 360 degrees, looking for something, anything, to help him avoid the inevitable. He knows he’s supposed to find five things you can see, four things you can touch, and so on, but he can’t look at these damn vials for another second and even if he could, what’s the point?
His eyes fill with stinging tears, and he’s suddenly more angry than sad. He picks another pink vial off the shelf and smashes it on the floor. He does it again, and again, and again, and again until he comes back to himself and realizes he’s going to regret what he’s doing. He sinks to the floor and buries his face in his knees and begins to cry.
The hardest part about grief, for Rick, was allowing himself to physically mourn . Even while actively sobbing, he feels ashamed for doing it. He should be over it by now. But Dr. Wong had told him no, that’s not the case. For most people, grief lasts a lifetime. It doesn’t get lighter. You just learn to carry it better over time.
The tears don’t flow long, just a minute or two. He doesn’t have time for this shit.
But he had to admit, even if only to himself, he feels a little bit better.
He gains control of himself and wills his breath to return to normal, dabs his eyes dry with his wrist.
Something catches his eye and he heaves himself to his feet. He doesn’t know why he didn’t think of this sooner, but he picks up the nearest bottle of vodka and downs all that was left in that one, then picks up another half-empty bottle and does the same.
He sets the bottle down, sighs deeply, and drags the sleeve of his lab coat under his nose. He checks the time and, oh shit, remembers he’d promised Morty he would take him to Blips and Chitz tonight if he deep cleaned the ship, which he had, the helpful little shit.
He stares at the mess of broken glass and liquid memories on the floor, tries to muster up the will to clean up after himself, but finds his energy is spent. He taps the Mr. Meeseeks box on the shelf and a Mr. Meeseeks appears in front of him.
“I’m Mr. Meeseeks, look at me!”
“Clean that - uurp - up,” he mumbles, pointing to the mess.
The blue humanoid swiftly finds a broom, sweeps up the glass and disposes of it, and wipes up the liquid with a towel that Rick will have to burn later. Task complete, he promptly disappears from existence.
Alone with his thoughts again, Rick’s mind wanders to his grandson and how excited he’d been to clean the ship for a chance to go to the intergalactic arcade. He straightens his lab coat, preparing to go find Morty and tell him he's ready to go.
Rick almost smiles thinking about how Morty’s saved up all his tickets from the past three times they’ve been so he could trade them in for a big prize, instead of the dinky little prizes like alien candy or a cosmic slap bracelet. He rolls his eyes fondly thinking about how he’s probably going to have to stand there and watch while Morty wastes his virtual life doing fuck-all playing Roy.
Slightly drunk and still feeling emotional, he has a moment of clarity. He can’t waste his life pining for a past that’s physically impossible to return to, and even if he could, he doesn’t want to. That would mean giving up going on adventures with Morty. It would mean giving up having Beth, the Beth he knows now, in his life. And he doesn’t want that.
He thinks of something else Dr. Wong said as he opens a portal to the main house and steps through:
It’s healthy to revisit the past. It’s okay to wish you had that. But since you don’t, you can’t live there, Rick. You live here, now. With a family who despite your flaws, cares deeply for you. In times when it gets hard to pull yourself from those memories, focus on them.
So for tonight, he does.