Chapter Text
“What possessed you to run a pregnancy test on this visibly gestational woman?”
Harper has prepared for this moment. “I had a lapse. I don't know what I was thinking.” She’s a med student, no one thinks she has her head on straight, including her sometimes. The lack of sleep is brutal, juggling it with the pace of the work…and trying to fit in any time to see John. He’s great and all, but sometimes she really wishes she had decided not to date during her ER rotation.
“Well, try to be more thoughtful when you’re ordering tests, please, even ones as simple as pregnancy tests,” Dr. Weaver says in her Teaching Voice that she must think makes her sound relatable and empathetic. “It came back positive, obviously, and we don’t need to slow down the lab by running tests we don’t- Harper? Harper, you look pale, sit down.”
Dr. Weaver grabs a rolling stool and shoves it under Harper while the patient asks if maybe the aliens have visited her as well, and did the aliens look like her ex-boyfriend too? Harper tries to tune out the ramblings and focus on her breathing. She mumbles something about her blood sugar and Dr. Weaver shoos her off to the lounge to get something to eat (with a pointed instruction to get something other than coffee). Harper almost bursts out laughing; she’ll have to start working on her diet, if she’s going to be living on coffee and granola bars for two.
-/-
John paces back and forth in his apartment, running his hand back through his hair that way that makes it all floppy and disarranged. That hair is part of what got her into this whole mess. And the big pretty eyes it falls into.
“God, I can’t- and you’re sure? The test was definitely positive, it didn’t get mixed up with any of the- because you know, there were about twenty pregnant women in that ER all day, maybe one of theirs-”
“It was nine, and no one was actually running pregnancy tests on those ladies, John. Just me looking like an idiot.” She rubs her hands over her face and inhales some of the steam from the mug of tea in front of her. John doesn’t really drink tea, but when she said she liked it occasionally at night, he got a box for his apartment. It’s the most expensive tea she’s ever seen in her life, she had to ask him to go back and buy a strainer because he went and got loose-leaf Darjeeling, it tastes like perfume and she wishes he had just grabbed a box of Lipton, but she’s glad to have the mug to clutch right now. “I took a bunch of home tests after, they all came back positive too.” Doing the blood test first is more than a little backwards, but the last thing she wanted was to send a test to the lab with her actual name on it.
“Oh. Oh wow, I- oh God.” John falls into the kitchen chair next to her and lets his head keep falling, forehead thunking against the table. “This can’t be happening,” he tells the place mat. “We were careful.”
“They say nothing’s one-hundred percent but abstinence,” she mutters, remembering the dozen lectures she’s gotten from her mother over the years. They were about as effective as all the Just Say No drug talks in high school. “And I thought that condom from your glovebox looked weird. It wasn’t in there baking since summer, was it?”
John’s eyes jolt up to meet hers, full of horror. “Oh God. Oh God, maybe.”
“John!”
“Well, you thought it looked weird and what, you didn’t say anything? I could have bought different condoms, Harper!”
“Don’t you blame me, it was that day with the swing shift, we had half an hour in the parking garage and I had just been on for twenty hours! It was wrapped around your penis, you didn’t notice it felt weird?”
“Oh god, you’re right, this is my fault.” John’s forehead briefly meets the table again before he leaps out of his chair, back to pacing. “I can’t do the first year of my residency with a new baby; Susan makes it look so, so hard and she’s already a third year. And that’s if I even match here! Dr. Greene had to commute from Milwaukee and it nearly killed him; what if I end up matching in Detroit or something and you’re still here? I’m supposed to drive across all of Michigan every week to not be a deadbeat dad?”
Harper holds up her hands to try and stem the wave of craziness coming out of his mouth. “Wait, John, you don’t-”
“And Jesus, my dad is going to kill me. It’s not like either of my parents will want to be involved at all, past making sure it’s named John Carter the Fourth.”
“There’s not going to be a-”
“No, it’ll just be the two of us, an MS4 and an intern trying to find enough time to eat and sleep, much less keep a baby alive. We can’t manage that!”
“Of course not!” The time for calm interjections has passed; Harper gets to her feet and stands in the path of John’s pacing. “That’s why I’m not keeping it!”
She’s looking right into his face when she says it, and gets to see the shift cross his way-too-open face. Usually she loves that he doesn’t have any poker face, it’s so incredibly earnest (and good to play poker against), but now she is confronted with the vulnerability and hurt painted in every line.
“You’re- you want to terminate?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Why?”
Harper can’t help snorting at that. “How about all the reasons you just listed? And about a dozen more!”
“Harper, I’m sure we can work something out.” He reaches out like he’s going to take her in his arms. “I’m scared, sure, we both are, but that’s not a reason to do something drastic.”
She takes a step back, away from his grasp, as much as she would like a bit of the comfort. She’s got to be the sensible one here. “Having a baby would be the drastic thing, getting an abortion just makes sense. I don’t want to be pregnant my last year of med school, my feet hurt all the time as it is! And I certainly don’t want to be in the Air Force as the unwed mother of a five year old.”
“Of course not!”
“Right.”
“No, we’ll get married, obviously. I’m ready to do the right thing.”
She takes another step back, hands raised placating like she’s trying to get through to a delusional patient, not just a delusional boyfriend. “There’s no right thing to do because there won’t be any baby! John, I don’t want to be a mother, at least not right now. Do you seriously want to be a father less than a year after graduation?”
At least Harper can read the correct answer in the flush of his cheeks and the way he rubs at the back of his neck. John takes a deep breath and blows it out heavily before he answers, not quite meeting her eyes, “I mean...I wouldn’t have chosen it, this couldn’t be worse timing…but apparently I already am, so I’ll step up! What I said earlier about my parents, that was catastrophizing, I’m sure they’d be happy to help. Hell, some of my old nannies are probably still working.”
“John, you are not a father.” She tries to say it kindly but firmly, because this can’t be an ongoing debate. “And I’m not a mother. I’m not going to change my mind on this.”
They stand in silence for a few moments. When he reaches out for her hand, Harper lets him take it. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t want at least a bit of the comfort. His big doe-eyes are beautiful when he glances down at her.
“We could be a family. I believe in us. It’d be hard, but we could make it work.”
“John. We’ve both worked too hard for your gross glovebox condom to stop us now.”
His little chuckle finally breaks the tension and it feels like they can both breathe again.
He tugs on her hand and she goes with the motion, folding herself into his long arms and leaning against his chest. Sometimes it’s annoying that he’s so much taller than him, especially at the hospital; so many people look down on her, it can set her teeth on edge how literal it is. She wears the highest heels she can get away with for twelve hour shifts, and she’s still nowhere near eye-level with the male patients, not to mention the towering doctors who work in the ER. But for moments like this, when she wants to feel wrapped up and held, the eight inches of height John has on her are pretty nice.