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“So… I’m pregnant.”
Sam made herself a promise at fifteen years old, terrified and in unimaginable pain, as a nurse held her hand and told her lies like “you’re going to be okay” and “push, honey, it’ll be over soon”, that she would never, ever, ever say those words again. But here she is again, fifteen years older and apparently none at all the wiser.
“Wow,” Tony eventually says after a long, oppressive silence that makes Sam’s heart feel like it’s going to burst out of her chest, “Who’s the father?”
Shoving him is cathartic. After all, this is at least fifty percent his fault. Maybe more, since he was the one who forgot the condom and told her lies like “I’ll pull out” and “it’ll be fine, you’re on birth control, right?”. She’s just the idiot that listened. “Tony.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He sits down heavily on the bed, staring at his feet. “This is just… wow”
“Yeah,” Sam agrees tiredly.
The sound of muffled shouting comes through the floorboards and fills the oppressive silence in their small bedroom. Somewhere a million miles away and just downstairs, Alex and Sarah are playing Mario Kart, mercifully oblivious to the conversation taking place above their heads. Sam is unspeakably jealous; she wishes she was down there playing with them. She wishes she could sit beside Tony and bury her head in his chest until she forgot where she was. She wishes she was done talking, but she learned a long time ago that she couldn’t always get what she wanted. She waits until he looks up again to drop her second bomb. “I’m not keeping it.”
It feels important that she says that before anything else, and that she offers no qualifications. Not “I think I want an-”. It’s just the course of action she’s taking, same as saying what she’s making for breakfast. Same result too. Scrambled eggs.
Wow, bad joke. She really must be spending too much time with Tony.
She doesn’t feel guilty about the decision, mostly it’s just relief over getting the words out, but she thinks she at least owes Tony an explanation. It comes out in a single, breathless rush with more hand movements than probably strictly necessary. She’s a bit jittery. Sue her. “It’s not- it’s not because of you, okay? I love you. But I don’t- I already have a kid. And you have Sarah, and we both have our jobs and I just passed my nurse anesthetist class and everything is so good right now and a baby would just derail everything.”
If the wide eyed look Tony is giving her is any indication, she probably sounds as manic as she feels.
Because it’s Tony, Sam braces herself for the inevitable fight. Does she think it’s a bit too soon to decide, or doesn’t he get a say in this? There’s a non-zero chance he’ll decide that her issue isn’t with the pregnancy at all, but the fact that they aren’t married and overcompensate by proposing. At least if he did, she wouldn’t have to worry about scheduling an abortion. She’d just die laughing on the spot.
Tony takes a deep breath. Sam holds hers. “Okay.”
Sam blinks at him, not quite comprehending. She waits a second, but he offers nothing else. Probably more harshly than the situation demands, she asks, “‘Okay’? That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”
“It’s a start,” Tony says indignantly. “I’m sorry, are you mad at me for taking this well?”
“No! Yes! I don’t know!” Sam throws her hands wide. She’s aware she’s kind of acting like a crazy bitch, but she was braced for a fight and has no idea what to do without one. Still, God help Tony if he makes a joke about pregnancy hormones. “I guess I just thought you’d have more of a reaction than ‘okay’.”
Tony shakes his head in disbelief, standing up. Sam wonders if she’s riled him up enough that he’s going to walk out the door, but instead he goes to her, taking her by the shoulders. “Look, is there a part of me that would love to have a baby with you? Of course there is! And if you decided you wanted to keep it, I would be with you every step of the way. But you made it clear from the start that it was off the table and that’s always been fine by me. You’re right. We have a good life and two great kids already. So if you say you want to get an abortion, then I’m with you every step of the way there too. So: okay. Okay?”
Sam feels fairly bowled over. There’s an embarrassing, not as distant as she’d like part of her that feels like it’s about to cry.
She thinks about Steve abandoning her as soon as he found out she was pregnant, her mother kicking her out with nothing but a hastily packed duffel bag of clothes and the couple hundred bucks she managed to scrounge up in tip money, the look on Luka’s face when she told him she was glad their pregnancy scare was just a scare. And here was Tony, staying right by her side. Who would’ve guessed?
She whispers, “Okay,” and lets herself be pulled into a hug. They stand that way for a good, long time.
Eventually, he presses a kiss to her forehead and breaks contact. “Hey, how about if I made you dinner. What are you in the mood for? Scrambled eggs?” He waggles his bushy eyebrows.
Oh God. The difference between them, Sam realizes, is that he genuinely thinks he’s being funny. She snorts, not for the reason he thinks, and shoves him away, but doesn’t resist when he tucks her under his arm and herds her downstairs.
Maybe they were spending too much time together, but right then, that didn’t feel like a bad thing.