Peter Kimura Whelan (itakunai) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2015-12-26 10:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | # 2018 [12] december, pete whelan, teagan morgan |
Who: Pete Whelan & Teagan Morgan
Where: The LBJ Library's health wing
When: 12/7, afternoon, just before winter curfew begins and a few hours before the snowfall begins
What: An awkward meeting and doctor's visit
By this point, after the bombing at the Dog Park, Pete knew what decision he'd end up making when given the chance to choose between refusing care to a Hellhound and going against everything he knew to be right. But knowing what choice he'd go with and actually acting on it was an entirely different story. As much as he'd known that helping Teagan was the right thing to do, he didn't like the thought of circumventing the law and the UMCB to do it. Nor did he like the idea of asking a favor from Savannah and, in the process, having to finally face the fact that she'd allied her shelter with a band of outlaws that was actively attempting to destroy their city. After they were introduced in the LBJ's foyer, Pete let the two women have their privacy to talk, first. He spent the time making sure the LBJ's makeshift health wing was to his standards -- it wasn't, not really -- and pacing around, waiting for Teagan to come down. Their facility didn't have any of the equipment he'd need to do more than a cursory exam, but at the very least he hoped he could at least provide her with the basics of care. "Ready to get started?" he asks once Teagan comes into the room and the door closes behind her, gesturing for her to take a seat. A quick nod, a quick crack of her knuckles and Teagan is sitting where the doctor has gestured for her to go. Her two hands are on her stomach - protective, comfortable. What she’s guarding is the only person she really had anymore. Her child is someone that she is going to live for and die for. The stance she's adopted is enough for Pete to decide, in a split second, that he's made the right decision here, uncomfortable as he may still be. “Demi’s said good things about you.” she tries. It’s always important, she figures, to find some string - especially when you are putting your health and that of your child in the hands of someone that could loathe you and what you stand for. “You’re doing this for her?” He keeps his expression as neutral as he can as he considers how best to answer. "She and I have been friends for a long time. But it's not about doing her a favor or anything like that. This is about me doing what I do. You and your child need the help. I'll provide what I can, here." It doesn't seem like a good idea to bring up the fact that he'll likely never be able to set her in the hospital. "We'll start with your vitals first, if you don't have any questions for me." She thinks on it. Does she have questions? She’s always been told she should write down questions before she goes to the doctor, anything that crosses her mind when it crosses it because she always forgets when she’s sitting across from them, like she’s blanking now. Luckily she’d done this before. She knows what to expect. If she hadn’t been she’d be scared shitless. “What made you want to go into OBGYN?” It's a question he's fielded time and time again. He's never blamed anyone for it, when it's asked out of genuine curiosity and not meant to make fun. "I guess I thought it was one of the only times people go to the hospital and they're actually happy to be there, you know? I know not every pregnancy is something people want to celebrate, but." He shrugs as he puts the stethoscope around his neck. "Most of the time it's something they're really looking forward to. And it's cool to know you're bringing life into the world." “How long have you been practicing?” It seems like another good question to give as he gets ready for the initial vitals check. Teagan’s not here for herself, she’s here for the baby. She can do anything if it just means that the life inside her will be taken care of, that she or he will be safe. She has to be in her second trimester now. Her stomach is big and the activity that goes on underneath is more than Sarah ever gave her. "I graduated three years before the zombies started walking around, and spent the rest of the time doing my residency before I wound up at the UMCB." Pete steps closer and begins to move around Teagan, taking her temperature and listening through the stethoscope. He doesn't speak again until he's writing down her vitals on a form he snagged from the hospital before he left. It's time to make sure he's aware of her history now. "Is this your first pregnancy?" “No.’ She loses her nerve then and looks down at her hands. They’ve left her belly and she can imagine them holding Sarah. Sarah had been so small. She’d fit perfectly from thumb to thumb. She had been such a quiet baby. Everyone said she was a ‘good’ baby but Teagan had loved when she cried, when she let her feelings out. She loved her no matter what she was doing. She loved her now. Even when Sarah had died. “I had a daughter. She would have been…” Teagan is about to say five but that is wrong. She was five when Teagan put her down. “Seven. She would have been Seven by now. If she had made it.” 2011 -- how odd to think of that year and how easy it'd been to take everything for granted back then. Not that anyone had any way of knowing how things would turn out. Pete makes a note of this on the form and, despite the resistance he still feels towards her because of what she is, he finds it's easier now to look back at her. "And you're how old, now?" he adds, gesturing for her to move back, but not lie down yet. "Whenever you're ready, lie down and I'll take a look at what's going on in the abdominal region." When he asks how old she is Teagan has to do the math in her head as she moves back and lays down. “I’m thirty one...no wait. I am thirty two. Yes. Thirty Two.” The doctors have never been some place she feels comfortable. She knows in a moment he’ll put his hands on her. That’s not what’s troubling. It’s the potential for bad news. Though, she feels the baby inside her. Some nights she thinks she can hear the heartbeat. She’s not the healthiest she’s ever been. After all, she’s living in a tunnel and eating canned food. Jo’s found her some prenatal vitamins, makes her special potions to help her sleep or ease the aches that happen when your joints start to move around. It doesn’t matter though how much she thinks they might be healthy. SHe’s scared of more bad news. “No chance finding out the sex.” She smiles. “It’s positively medieval.” "I'm afraid not today." He returns the smile, though, aware of all they could be doing if she could just come into the hospital to meet with him. They still have everything they had before the zombies came and he's never had to consider the fact that before, the only barrier to medical care was money. Nothing was ever flat out refused. Pete waits until she's lying down and comfortable before he begins the real examination. It's visual at first, just observing the size and shape of her abdomen, before he looks up at her. "Sorry if my hands are cold," he says, reaching out to press his palms gently against the swell of her unborn child. "But so far, so good." His hands move across her navel. He wants to ask about the father, whether he's in the picture, before he remembers where she lives. "Do you recall the approximate day or month in which you conceived your child?" Teagan tries not to tense up at his touch. She’s trying to just accept it, accept that he is helping. She takes a deep breath and lets go of all her apprehension. She sinks into the table and closes her eyes. The day or month… “I had sex in July... regularly after. I started recognizing symptoms in October. I thought it was a flu or something til it wouldn’t go away. Then I got to thinkin…” A sigh heaves out of her, “Missin’ a period aint uncommon for me." "You last missed your period in October?" She's vague, but it's better than nothing, and he'll take a vague notion to supplement the just-as-vague guessing he's doing as he surveys her size. But two months doesn't make sense, not with the way she's presenting. Pete walks his hand vertically, up and down her abdomen, then changed direction to move horizontally. "You're sure of the month?" “No.” She said.” I don’t know. I haven’t had a period since the summer. Symptoms started coming on september and october. She puts a hand on her face. She was definitely starting to show. If she had to make an intelligent guess she’d say she got pregnant in August.” "Two months at the very least, then, if we're going by October, but all things considered from what you're telling me and what I'm seeing, we'd probably need to back that up by a month or two." He hates just guessing -- they may be living in the apocalypse, but they're not in the medieval ages -- and it's frustrating to not have the equipment that would tell him instantly whether they're anywhere close to reality. "Anything specific you could give me would really help me pinpoint the potential gestational age we're dealing with, here." And whether the size of her abdomen was larger or smaller than expected. That in particular could make a big difference. "Do you remember the symptoms you experienced in September?" A sigh. Teagan knew she was unhelpful. So many things had been happening then, so many stresses - the rat business, the cat business, Willa, Adelaide jailed - this including her regular duties. It just hadn’t occurred to her that she could be pregnant, that she could ever be pregnant again after the loss she had endured. When she took that test, the morning of the Hellhounds capture, it had been a shock. It had been a shock she wasn’t prepared to deal with and hadn’t wanted to deal with until she was home, with Bishop. It hadn’t worked out that way. “If I had to use my gut, I’d say I got pregnant in July or August. I was nauseous….worn down. I thought it was stress. I had so much on my plate. So many things that were happening around me. I…” she holds in her breath again, keeps it there, lets the oxygen knock around in her system before she releases it in a long, trembling breath. “Looking back I can’t understand how I missed it, how I could have been so into my own head.” Pete pulls his hands back to write this all down on his clipboard. The look he gives her when he looks back up, though, is sympathetic, and he's almost surprised once he realizes that it's not at all forced. Affiliations or not, he's never been able to say no -- nor would he ever consider saying no -- to a woman and child in need. "All right," he says simply, indicating the line of questioning's over for now and that he'll be getting to the real reason why he's been so insistent. "I ask because you're showing more than I would've expected for a September conception. Even more than August, too." “ ‘Kay…”She says skeptically. “What’s that mean?” The nerves are starting to kick in. If it’s her health she don’t usually give a shit but now it aint just about her. Everything she does now is for her child. “You didn’t want to do this right? We Hellhounds do something to yours?” she asks all at once. Caution don’t make sense. It’s more important to get down to it, to mend bridges, make friends - especially with the Doctor who might be taking care of you. He looks up at her sharply, meeting her gaze. As an officer, she likely was one of the frontrunners of the operations that hit the UMCB's supply trucks, and Pete's cordial, sympathetic expression shifts into something more defensive. "I could go to jail for this," is all he says. It's not a lie, either; that was his biggest concern. "You want to keep talking politics or you want to talk about my current hypothesis?" “I wasn’t being a burr.” She promises but it’s a fair enough reaction so her own face softens from the contagious defensive one that his has evoked to something more lenient. “A hypothesis…”she concedes. It doesn’t sound good. "Well, there's no way to prove it. Not without imaging." He can't help but continue looking at her like something he can't quite trust, but it doesn't stop him from continuing. "But I'm wondering what the chance is of you carrying multiple children. Twins, I mean." The only response is laughter. It’s starts out big and bright. The type of laughter that explodes at a good joke, something that was ridiculous and well timed but as she looks at his face, studies him most of the laughter dies down until she’s nervously chuckling. He’s not joking. she knows it too when she really reflects on what he’s told her. The morning sickness, the SIZE of her, how sore her joints are. “Fuck….”she closes her eyes. Teagan can’t take the way he’s looking at her. Can’t take the fact that she’s an outsider. Someone who’s behind the glass. Before she can face looking at him again she rubs her eyes, tries to pretend that there’s nothing hopeless there and steadies herself for what’s to come. “Now what?” "I don't know." Pete's voice is on its way back to its previous calmness again, the tightness leaving it, and his eyes are still watching her carefully even as she still keeps hers closed. He reminds himself that she's not just a Hellhound, not just an Officer, but a woman and a mother. And that should be -- and it is -- more important to him. "If we could get you into the hospital, it'd be a different story. We'd run the tests, do the imaging, make sure you get everything you need." Pete smiles then, and there's a bitterness there for a moment that's unusual for him. "But we can't. So I think we're just going to have to do this like it's the 1600s or something. Keep an eye on everything as best as we can -- we're going to have to keep doing these checkups -- and keep you as healthy as we can. And if it turns out it's not twins, then at least we know we did everything we could nonetheless." He shrugs. "I mean, midwives could do that shit back then. Like in the Bible and everything. Why not us?" There is nothing else she can do but agree. There’s no sense becoming needlessly worried about it. Teagan will move forward and do what she can to insure the baby or babies that they’ll come into this world safe and sound. Trouble is, if things are medieval she’ll have to make sure there’s someone that can care for them. Twins are notoriously difficult when they’re coming out...especially when there isn’t modern medicine helping along the way. “So when do I see you again Doc?” "Once a month, at the least. Given the way things are, without consistent access to real nutrition… If you're feeling like you'd need to be seen, even if it hasn't been a month yet, you can contact me and we'll see about arranging something." Pete already knows he'll do the best he can to make sure he can keep those appointments, even if it means continuing to break the law. "Everything seems fine now, though, so I wouldn't worry." “I’ll find some way to screw it up but I’ll try Doc.” She can’t promise. Her life isn’t stable. Her life is a ticking time bomb. “and just let me know when and where and i’ll be there.” |