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“No, no. I can’t be pregnant.” Maria laughs incredulously, waving her hands in front of her. “That test has to be wrong.”
Dr. Brown pushes back his glasses on his nose and gives a small shake of his head, gray hair fluttering in the slight breeze coming in from the window, “While there is always a possibility of a false positive when it comes to these types of tests, it is very rare . Which is why , knowing you, I also tested the blood sample we took, and it came back positive as well.”
Maria sputters, shaking her head, “But, I’m 49 years old, my periods haven’t been regular for years, I-I thought I was in menopause. I can’t be.. I can’t be pregnant.”
“I’m sorry if this is a shock, Maria, but if you’re still getting your period, even if they are sporadic, you can still get pregnant, even at 49.” Dr. Brown shrugs, reaches over to the counter, grabs a worn and faded pamphlet, and hands it to her.
On the cover is an older-looking pregnant woman, and the words, “What does it mean to have an Advanced Maternal Age Pregnancy?” are in large, bold letters. Maria’s hands are numb, and her breath is stacking up in her chest, trapped behind a tight knot in her throat.
“Maria, do you remember when your last period was?”
“February,” Maria chokes out, dazed and light-headed, “Wait, no it-it was March.”
“With it being almost November, and you're just now showing symptoms, you have to have gotten pregnant more recently. Have you noticed any spotting?”
“Maybe, a month or two ago, it was so little I didn’t really take note.” She takes a shaky breath, twisting the pamphlet in her hands, “I have to tell Tommy.” She lets out a small sound half between a sob and a chuckle, “We never even talked about having kids.”
“Well, I’d like to do a transvaginal ultrasound to try and lock down how far along you are. Do you want to come back tomorrow after you’ve talked to him?” Dr. Brown says, looking up from his notepad.
“Sure, of course.” Maria blinks, her eyes burning, and smooths the pamphlet flat against her leg. “Does it have to be Tomorrow? I don’t know… fuck. I’ve no idea what I’m- what we’re doing.”
There’s silence, then Dr. Brown’s large hand wraps around her fingers, stilling them from the restless crinkling of the paper in her lap. She looks up into his face, and his deep green eyes are soft like the spongy moss that grows on the shaded side of trees in the spring and summer. “Maria, it’s going to be okay, we will figure this out. It’s just the sooner we do this ultrasound, the sooner we can go over your… options. ”
His choice of words is deliberate, weighty. She knows what he’s saying and why it’s so important that they do this as quickly as possible. They have only a small window of opportunity to take action if this is not something she wants. If they wait too long, she’ll be devoid of all but one choice: to have this baby.
“I’ll be here tomorrow,” Maria says firmly, squeezing his hand and giving him a weak smile.
“Good, good,” Doc says, smiling. He gives her hand one last pat, then stands up, gesturing to the door. “Let me walk you out.”
Maria’s moved six times since she got home. Perched nervously in six different locations in their home, trying to decide the best way to broach the subject with Tommy.
She started in the kitchen at the little table by the window that Tommy had spent so many hours lovingly refinishing and staining. Then she moved to the bedroom, hoping it'd create a more relaxed atmosphere. Still, she worried the location might give off the wrong idea, and he would initiate something before she could tell him, and with her nerves being what they are right now, she wouldn’t put it past herself to take advantage of the distraction.
So she moved to the dining room, but immediately nixed that idea when it made her feel like she was about to host some emergency meeting.
Next, it was the front porch, then the back, but both felt too open to the outside world. Something about telling him there made it feel so much more real, and right now, Maria isn’t ready for that level of real. God forbid someone saw them on the porch and decided to stop by for a chat.
So now she sits on the couch in their living room, fingers twisted together in her lap, and counts her breaths — one after the other, slow and steady, in and out. Her gaze unsurprisingly lingers on the chalkboard over their mantle, two names and dates written across its surface. When they moved into her father's house after he passed, it felt right to have the memory of the children they lost close by. Each of them carried their names for so long by themself, it felt good to be able to share them with each other. Spending a few moments each day looking at the little memorial before they left for their respective duties helped settle them.
But today Maria looks at her son's name, and it feels like the day she lost him. Her heart broken open, bleeding inside her chest, despair trying to drag her down into the same shallow grave she’d buried her son in. If it hadn’t been for her father, she would have gladly followed Kevin into death. But her father needed her; he was a capable man, strong for his age, smart, resourceful. But losing both Kevin and her would have dragged him along into the grave as well, and she couldn’t do that to him. So she stayed, buried her son, left a small marker made from a stone from a river bank close by, his name crudely scratched into the surface with a knife, and then followed her father where he led her.
It was like that for a time, her father leading the way and her following, drifting through life like a ghost, her body alive but her soul gone. Working for her ration cards, in the Omaha QZ, eating the food her father put in front of her face, staying alive for him.
Then one day she woke up. It was something so small that did it, a woman outside her window complaining that she couldn’t feed her kids on the cards she was earning, even though she was working herself to the bone, worried that she might have to resort to other types of work so she could keep her family alive. Hearing this, a part of Maria stirred to life. A part so intrinsic to her that she could not ignore its voice.
It had always been that way for her, the need to push against the indignities and injustices that those in power forced the people in their care to endure. As soon as she was old enough, she could not sit comfortably by while others were oppressed and victimized. It's why she took up law after high school, why she spent so many hours away from her son, attending school so she could fight for the people who could not fight for themselves.
After the outbreak, there was no legal system to speak of except for the one Fedra put in place, and it was as corrupt as one might imagine. So Maria and her father did what they could for the people in the QZ. Fighting the administration as much as they could until it became clear there was no real way to live, let alone thrive, under Fedra’s regime.
So they gathered together the few survivors who would come with them and left the QZ on the backs of a rumor from a friend of her father's of a town in Wyoming with the start of a wall and a dam nearby that could possibly be made into something better — a place where they could thrive, build, and grow. She chose to rise from the death of her son, to look back on his memory and honor it, by helping the people around her, by trying to make the shity world they lived in now a better one.
Looking at Sarah’s name on the chalkboard, she can’t help but think of Tommy’s brother and how he decided to deal with his own child's death. She could understand his despair, his need to bury her memory as far down into himself as it could go. But she could not understand how he could have lived through that loss and then put others through the same experience. The things Tommy told her about what they used to do on the road made her shudder.
Maria’s not naive; her hands are stained with blood as well. Almost everyone who had lived throught the Outbreak had done things they never would have imagined doing before. But she had only ever killed in the name of protecting those under her care. The way Joel chose to live after burying his daughter is so foreign to her, it’s a dishonor to that girl's memory.
She understands why Tommy decided to leave him in Boston, to follow the fireflies out west on their misguided mission, to free the people from Fedra’s oppression. She’s happy he’s here now, away from Joel and the fireflies' influence.
She looks back at Kevin’s name and is overcome with emotion as she thinks about the baby growing inside of her. A large part of her is still trying to wrap her head around the idea of it. The idea that she could even be pregnant. Another part of her is ashamed even to be entertaining the idea of bringing a new life into this world, sure that’s part of why she and her father wanted to start Jackson, so people could have a safe place to grow their families. Each child born in their town is a precious gift to protect. But she never imagined that for herself; she had her chance, what right had she to have another child when she couldn’t protect the one she had?
Yet, there was a small part of her that imagined herself holding a baby with Tommy’s ears and her nose and hair like Kevin’s and longed for it — longed for her son to have a sibling. That longing sat inside her heart, next to her son’s memory, and burned. It was both painful and soothing at the same time.
Of course, she was afraid of doing this at her age and of raising a child in the world they lived in now, but thinking about doing it all with Tommy in Jackson makes that fear more manageable.
Can they do this? Can they really have a child in their 50s at the end of the world? Would that be the right thing to do?
She doesn’t have time to answer those questions for herself because, in that moment, she hears the front door open and the voice of her husband call out to her, and there’s no more time left for speculation. It’s time to bite the bullet.
“Hey there, sweetheart,” Tommy says, coming around the door into the living room. Maria’s sitting on the couch, a fire crackling in the fireplace. He rubs his hands together, trying to get back some of the circulation.
Leaning down, he presses a kiss to the top of her head and asks as he walks around the couch, “How was your day? I reckon not too bad since you beat me… “ He stops mid-sentence, taking in her tense face, ramrod straight back, and the tight-knuckled grip of her hands on her knees. “Darlin’, are you alright? Did somethin’ happen?”
Maria’s eyes are on the chalkboard, he realizes. He spins, looks at the names and dates, and scans the white writing to see if something has changed, some monumental event has occurred to make his wife look so stricken. But there’s nothing, it’s just the same as it was this morning, unchanged.
Kevin
4/3/00-9/29/03
Sarah
7/20/89-9/27/03
The Anniversary of their deaths having passed just a few weeks prior, they’ve both been spending a few extra minutes of each day staring at it, but never has Maria looked so nervous, so pensive while she’s done it. He turns back to her, and now her gaze is on him.
For a moment, her face is unguarded, and he can see a mix of emotions etched there, but then the moment is gone, and they all slip away. It’s so quick he doesn’t have time to catalog them all, but he does manage to catch one: fear. He sits down beside her, takes one of her hands into his, and rubs the back gently with his thumbs.
“Maria, what’s goin’ on?”
“Did you ever want children?” Maria asks suddenly, her eyes fixed on his face. The afternoon sunlight from the front window casts a halo of light around her head, giving her an ethereal look.
The question catches him off guard, it’s not at all what he expected to hear from her in that moment. “Well, there was a time I thought about havin’ kids, back before the outbreak.”
“Why didn’t you?” She questions, her tone curious, her fingers loosen just a fraction in his.
He laughs, thinking about who he was back then. She’s heard about his past, knows the kind of man he was, “If you’d’ve known me, would you have had kids with me?”
“I guess not.” Maria chuckles lightly and looks down at his thumbs still rubbing soft circles into her skin. “But if you could have?”
Tommy chews on the inside of his cheek, thinks about what he would have done if a woman like Maria had come into his life, and if the outbreak hadn’t happened.
“Yeah, Yeah. I think if I’d met someone like you, and she kicked my ass into shape, I would’ve wanted some kids. Maybe one or two, or three, ” He smiles crookedly, thinking of what their babies would’ve looked like. Round cheeks, sparkling brown eyes, springy dark curls, skin golden brown, his smile remains, but his eyes start to prick, and he says, “They would’ve probably looked a lot like their cousin.”
Maria’s hand turns, and she tangles her fingers with his, squeezing gently. Her face softens, lips curving into a warm smile, the one that made him fall in love with her, and she takes a slow, measured breath and asks, “How would you feel about having kids now?”
“Now?” Tommy’s brows lift, confused, “You askin’ me if it’d want kids now?”
“Yes, here in Jackson, with me.”
“I ain’t really thought about it before.” He scratches his chin with his free hand, pushes his jaw out, sucks on his bottom lip. “I reckon if you're askin’ if I wanted ‘em here in Jackson with you, yeah, I s’ppose I’d like that.” He laughs, shakes her hand a little, “Did someone find some kids wanderin’ around out there or somethin’? They lookin’ for someone to take ‘em in?”
Maria licks her lips and laughs nervously, “No, no. Nothing like that.”
“Well then, what’s got you askin’ this all of a sudden?”
“I just realized we’d never really had the conversation.”
“No, you're right. It’s never really come up, what with you not bein’ able to have ‘em anymore.”
Taking her hand back, Maria reaches for one of the pillows on the couch. She pulls it to her lap and starts to fidget with the tassels adorning the sides. Looking down, she speaks again, her voice low. “What if I could?”
“What if you could what?”
“What if I could get pregnant?”
“But you can’t, right?” Tommy says, laughing again. When Maria doesn’t answer, her eyes steadfastly on the pillow in her lap, his laugh dies away. “Right?”
She looks up, and the fear he’d seen before is back on her face. “I guess I actually can.”
Tommy stutters, his tongue suddenly feeling thick and clumsy in his mouth, “You can?”
“Yes.”
“How… how do ya know?” He asks, breathless.
“I know because I’m pregnant.”
Tommy feels the earth shift sharply on its axis. “What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
The sounds of the town outside slip away, the voices of his neighbors passing by, and the occasional shout of a child are dulled as if a great shroud is thrown over their home. His whole focus is on Maria and the words that just came out of her mouth.
“Did you just say you was pregnant?”
“I did.”
The earth snaps back into place, and he reaches for her, places his trembling hand along her face, and smiles widely, “Well shit, Maria, ain’t this jus’ the best fuckin’ news.”
“Do you mean it? You’re happy.”
“‘Course I am, darlin’.” Grabbing her, he pulls her up, wraps her in his arms, and spins around the living room. Both breathless from laughing, he puts her down on her own two feet and presses a hard kiss to her lips.
Smiling, he says against her mouth. “Christ, we’re havin’ a baby.”
Then the enormity of that information hits him like a truck, and he pulls away, suddenly dizzy and lightheaded. Bending over, he puts his hands on his knees, breathes heavily and wheezes, “Oh shit, we’re havin’ a baby.”
Maria gasps, “Tommy, don’t you pass out on me,” steering him towards the chair in the corner of the room, she pushes him down hard, and he puts his head between his knees.
They’re going to have a baby. He’s 50 fucking years old and they’re having a baby. The world ended 20 years ago, and they’re having a baby .
Oh god, what kind of father can he be? He can’t do this, he’d gonna be a terrible father, what made him think he could ever be a father. “Oh shit, oh shit.” He pants, he’s gonna throw up.
His father was nothing to model after, more likely to throw a fist than extend a hand. Javier Miller was a hard, angry son of a bitch, he beat his sons and, as far as Tommy knew, never lost a lick of sleep over doing it. Half in the bottle on the best of days, drunk off his ass on the worst. The only time he was sober was when he was on the job, he wouldn’t jeopardize his safety with the drink, it hadn’t helped him in the end.
What kind of father could Tommy hope to be, having grown up with a man like that as his role model?
But was he really Tommy’s only role model? He had Joel.
From the moment Tommy was old enough to remember, Joel had been more his father than Javier had ever been. He was the one who patched up Tommy’s knees when he’d taken a header into Cliften Creek when all his buddies dared him to jump it with his bike. He’d also been the one to take the beating from their father when he’d seen the state of the bike. Joel was the one who showed him how to throw a punch and how to avoid it, although he hadn't been very good about following that advice. He was the one to hug him in the night when he cried about their mama dying, and he was the one to pick his ass up at the junior prom after Tommy got kicked out for spiking the punch.
And this was all before Joel was even really a dad in the literal sense; once Sarah was born, it was as if that part of Joel that had always been there slotted into its rightful place. She was his world, being a father to her was everything Joel could have ever wanted. To Sarah, Joel was everything Javier wasn’t; he was kind, patient, understanding, and loving. He had his bad days, just like every other parent, but he never lifted a hand to that girl, and the one time he’d raised his voice to her was the day it all went bad.
For everything Joel had become after the Outbreak, for all the terrible things he’d done, Tommy still had those memories of what he had been. It’s why he stayed as long as he did.
Now Tommy looks back on the Joel that had been Sarah’s father and his father before her, and he knows that’s the dad he wants to be. That’s the dad he can strive to be.
He looks up at Maria, where she’s squatting by his side, rubbing his back slowly, murmuring to take slow breaths, and he reaches blindly for her other hand. She sees it and meets him halfway, a nervous furrow in her brow. He takes a few more deep pulls of air into his lungs and sits up.
“M’okay.” He says, then on a breath, “Just… we’re havin’ a baby.”
Maria nods, the furrow in her brow smoothing away. “You okay with that?”
“I am. Are you?”
Shrugging, she turns her face away from him toward the mantle, then sighs. “I don’t know. I’m scared. It’s a lot.”
He pulls on the end of his mustache, looking at the names on the chalkboard, and makes a humming sound at the back of his throat, “It is.”
With a gentle tug, he encourages her to stand; she does with a grunt for her sore knees. He lets go of her hand but only so he can take hold of her hips and maneuver her so she’s standing between his legs, her middle in front of him. She looks down at him, and he meets her gaze. He asks, “Can I?” His hand slides to the front of her pants, where her shirt’s tucked in.
“Of course.” She smiles and runs a hand through his hair fondly.
He carefully untucks her shirt, pushing it up to expose the expanse of her stomach.
“Here,” She says softly, reaching down to undo her belt buckle and the button of her jeans, and pushes them lower to expose her abdomen. Taking his hand, she guides it to the soft skin there, right over where her uterus lies. Her hand stays lightly resting over his.
He could swear he already feels a difference, a firmness that didn’t used to be there. Is it too soon for that? How far along is she? When is she due? How big is the baby?
“Are ya feelin’ okay?” He asks her, her hand warm on his.
He looks up, and she shrugs. “I’ve been a little more tired than I normally am, and I’m not really nauseous per se, but I haven’t been very hungry in the mornings either. It’s… different than before.”
Moving his hand back to her hip, he looks at the patch of exposed skin and imagines what it will look like as their baby grows within her. The opalescent stretch marks faded from her first pregnancy, growing again to help her body hold the life they made. He thinks of how beautiful she’ll be, his strong, smart, dedicated wife carrying their child. He thinks of all these things and then gently presses them to the side for a moment.
“Is this somethin’ you want? ” He asks, his voice devoid of judgment.
Smoothing a lock of his hair back, she takes a breath, slow and steady as she looks out the window. “I thought that option was closed to us. Maybe I’ve had passing moments of fancy imagining what our kids might look like, but they were never more than just that, a daydream. The reality is a lot.”
Tommy takes her hand, resting on his shoulder, and presses a kiss into her palm. “Darlin’, we don’t have to do this if it ain’t what you want.”
“But you’d be happy if we did?”
“I ain’t gonna lie, the idea of havin’ a baby with you is wonderful. But I don’t need it to be happy, I can be happy with just you and me. I am happy with it bein’ just you an’ me.”
“So if this could be… taken care of , you wouldn’t be disappointed or resentful?”
Shaking his head, he pulls her gently into his lap, sitting back into the embrace of the chair so she can settle across his legs, her arms coming up to encircle his neck, his looping around her waist. “No darlin’, never. I love you, you’re happiness is the most important thing to me. Would I love a baby that you and I both made? Of course, it’s a little piece of you walkin’ around, how can I not love that? But do I need that to make our life complete? No, no, I don’t.”
She lays her head against his shoulder, her locs brushing against his jaw, and she slowly loosens in his arms, her body relaxing against him. He breathes the scent of her in, lilac from the homemade soap she loves so much, pine from the detergent they use, and the warm musk that is all her. “You’re all I need, Cariño. Anything else that may come along is just a bonus.”
And he means it to. He never imagined that he could have happiness again, not like this. Loving Maria and having her love him back has been enough of a dream come true. He doesn’t need a baby, too.
“Doc wants me to come in for an ultrasound tomorrow. To see how far along I am.” She murmurs into his neck.
“Do you want me to come along?” He asks hesitantly, not sure how to navigate the question when the choice is still up in the air.
“Of course, if you want to be there.”
“Course I do. I’m here for whatever you need me for.” Running a hand along the line of her back, he lays his cheek against the top of her head. “No matter what you choose. I’m gonna be here for ya.”
“Thank you.” She whispers, voice thick. He can feel her eyelashes fluttering against the underside of his jaw as she curves more comfortably into his hold.
“Nothin’ to thank me for darlin.” His words rumble softly from his chest as he lets the world fade away around him, his whole world in his arms, safe in their home.
Maria lies back on the reclined exam bed, her feet in stirrups, legs spread under a blanket, with Tommy’s hand in hers, and watches the grainy image on the screen.
There had been a small moment of confusion on Tommy’s part when the ultrasound machine had been wheeled out and the apparatus on the end had not been the one he had been expecting. “What’s that?” He’d asked, his brow lifted in genuine confusion.
Doc Brown had sighed like his whole life was one giant chore and explained, “It’s a transvaginal ultrasound, with as early as I think this pregnancy is, it’s a better tool to use than the normal wand you’re most likely imagining from all the movies you’ve seen.”
“Oh, so that goes…” Tommy gestured vaguely below Maria’s waist, and she couldn’t hold back a snort, as Doc rolled his eyes in exasperation.
“Yes, it is inserted into the vagina, Mr. Miller. Now, can we please get down to the matter at hand?”
Tommy’s jaw closed with a snap, and his mustache twitched as his cheeks colored a bright pink, creeping up his neck and to the tips of his ears.
Now they wait as Doc adjusts a few of the dials and moves the wand beneath the blanket. Taking measurements and pictures as he goes, finally, he stops and pauses the screen. “Here we go,” he says and turns the monitor so they have a better view. He uses his finger to point at a small black oval floating amongst a sea of white, and in that black oval, another white bean shape rests.
A line at the bottom of the screen starts to widen and then thins in regular intervals. Doc hits a switch, and suddenly, a rapid, rhythmic thumping comes out of the machine.
Maria feels Tommy’s hand squeeze hers just a little tighter, and when she looks up at him, his face is awash with awe.
“Is that…” He starts, his words light like snow, falling on warm ground, disappearing before they’ve even had a chance to settle.
“Yes, it is,” Doc says, “A healthy 140 beats per minute.”
“And that's – that’s good?”
“Yes, that’s perfectly normal.” Doc lets it play for a few more minutes before he turns it off, carefully removes the wand, and sets it aside. He hands Maria a towel and pats her knee. “You can get cleaned up if you like.” Taking the wand to the sink in the room, he busies himself there while she cleans up and sits up on the bed, blanket over her lap.
Once she’s done, he sits back down, pulls out his notebook, and looks at them both. “From the measurements here and the information on when you noticed the spotting, it looks as if you’re about 9 weeks along.” His eyes shift between the two of them before he continues, “At this point, we still have options, but you will have to decide soon.”
“How soon is soon?” Maria asks, her gaze lingering on the small white bean.
“A week, maybe two. But we can’t wait any longer than that. After that, the pills lose effectiveness, and we don’t have the capabilities to do anything surgical unless it's an emergency.” Closing up his notebook, he stands with a grimace, obviously in discomfort, and puts a hand to his back. “I’ll just give you two a moment. When you’re done, I’ll be in my office, just poke your head in and let me know you're leaving. Nothing has to be decided today, but the sooner we have a course of action, the better.” He gives Maria’s knee a gentle squeeze and pats Tommy lightly on the shoulder on his way out.
Then they’re alone — just the two of them and the little bean-shaped blob.
The surety of what she wants suddenly comes to her like she's always known it, and maybe she has. Maybe she was afraid of what saying the words out loud would mean. But now with Tommy’s hand warm and steady in her own and their sweet baby right in front of her eyes, she’s ready to say it.
“I want this baby.”
Tommy turns from where he was also watching the image on the screen, and smiles hesitantly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She repeats, and then he’s whooping and taking her into his arms. He goes to lift her, and she has to stop him, laughter bubbling up from her throat, “Stop, stop. I’ve got no pants on.”
Letting her go, his hands go to her face instead, and he plasters it with kisses. “We’re havin’ a baby, darlin’. You and me we’re havin’ a baby.”
“I know,” she smiles, and then she cups his face in her hands, and they kiss in earnest. It starts fast and messy, but quickly turns slow and sweet. Maria pulls back and rests her forehead against his, catching her breath. “Okay, let me get my pants on and then we can get out of here.”
Tommy laughs and steps back, letting her slip back into her bottoms. But as soon as she’s done, he’s taking her hand and pulling her in for another mind-melting kiss, hot and needy. Her body feels like jelly when he finally lets her go.
“I feel so fuckin’ lucky.” He murmurs, placing his hand over her abdomen.
Maria knows what he means. She feels so lucky, too. Lucky to be in Jackson, lucky to have found a man who worships her like Tommy does, lucky to have survived the end of the world, and lucky to have the chance to be a mother again.
“I’m feeling pretty fucking lucky too.” She says. “Now c’mon, take me home, and maybe I can make you feel even luckier.”
His lip twitches with a smirk, “Well, reckon I should get you home.” Then, with a small grunt, he scoops her up
“Tommy!” She laughs, her heart skipping a beat. This is why she loves him, this is why she wants to have a child with him, invest in her future with him. He makes her see the joy in this world, helps her believe that there's a reason to fight for another generation.
“Gimme a giddyup, sugar.” He says with a twinkle in his eyes.
And rolling her eyes, she does.