Max Main ≡ Lois Lane (bylined) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-12-23 12:16:00 |
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Entry tags: | lois lane |
Who: Max
What: Narrative
Where: Clinic
When: Backdated to 12/16
Warnings: None
Max had considered telling Thomas about the doctor's appointment, but he was still at the warehouse with Luke, and she was still at Bathos, and in the end she couldn't bring herself to bother him with it. Juggling work during the day with what was going on at night, it was enough for him to handle, and she was perfectly capable of going to an appointment on her own.
She went to the same clinic she had before. It seemed safer, even if she didn't have to lie the way she had the first time. They had all her information already, and there was something soothing about the long drive outside the city limits.
The place looked just like it had the first time, really, but to Max there had been two months and a world of difference. The young girls were still there in the waiting room - different faces but the same, nonetheless - and the scared housewives too. She wasn't scared anymore, well hardly, anyway. She could do this. Alone or not alone, she could do this.
The doctor was visibly surprised to see her again, and Max knew that the woman assumed she was pulling the wool over her husband's eyes. She knew, too, that she wondered why Max hadn't found a good obstetrician by then. She would, Max decided, after this visit. There just hadn't been time, and she told the disbelieving doctor as much. It earned her a lecture on needing to adjust her schedule, one Max listened to halfheartedly. It wasn't like she could explain why she hadn't had time, not without ending up committed.
The exam table's white paper covering crinkled against her bare spine, and the robe was the disposable paper kind, and she didn't realize she was scared until the doctor began to place gel on the transducer. What if something was wrong? She'd missed appointments, hadn't been back in two months, but she hadn't worried that anything might be wrong, not until that moment. And then the gel was cold on her stomach, and he doctor was talking, and she stopped worrying and just stared at the screen.
No matter how often the doctor pointed, Max couldn't make heads or tails of the image on the ultrasound screen, but the gentle swish, swish, swish sound was reassuring, and she almost sobbed with relief when the doctor told her everything looked good, and did she want to know the gender? There was something about that question that made it all real in a way it hadn't been before that moment.
Did she want to know the gender?
She worried, really worried, then, about how badly she could fuck this up. She wasn't maternal, hell, she wasn't even particularly kind. She sucked at emotions, didn't know how to hug or soothe, cursed every other word. And she was better at all of the emotional stuff than Thomas was. She knew that now. She had no doubt that Thomas felt deeply for Luke, that he would feel equally deeply for this child, but she wasn't sure about herself. She'd had a childhood without hugs, and she knew what that felt like. She knew, too, what it was like to never be good enough, and she didn't want that for-
"Do you want to know?" the doctor asked again, impatient to get back to the girls and wives outside.
Max nodded.
She was in the waiting room within five minutes, a copy of the ultrasound rolled in her coat pocket and reality weighing heavy on her shoulders. As she waited for a referral for blood work, a little girl - no more than two - ran into her leg, and Max just stared at her, waiting while her teenage mother realized she was missing. It took about five minutes, and Max could have walked away at any time, but she didn't. She just looked down at the brown crown of messy curls as the toddler clung to her leg.
The drive to Bathos passed in a blur, autopilot, and she was back in her apartment before she even realized it. She hadn't been back to Aubade since the doors had been locked, and she really didn't know when Thomas and Luke would be back there. The media frenzy had died down, but that didn't mean they'd go back home.
She sat there, and she thought.
She had no way of knowing what would happen once the baby was born, no way of knowing where she'd be - if she'd be here or across the city. But she knew Thomas would love his child, and she knew there was one thing she could do to make everything more sure for the baby, if not for herself.
She called in a favor, and she made an appointment with a lawyer for that afternoon.