Open Mouth, Insert Foot
Angel sped Max to the emergency room in his car. She was laying in the back seat, her head cradled in Connor’s lap. Luckily, the boy was so worried about his friend, that he never noticed that he couldn’t see Angel’s worried countenance glancing back frequently in the rearview mirror. They pulled up to the nearest emergency room, thankfully a different hospital than the one that had treated Max and before her, Giles. Angel scooped her out of the car and with Connor hot on his heels, ran into the hospital. A nurse ran out to meet him in the waiting room. She called for a gurney and a doctor ran up. Angel and Connor both explained as best they could where she had been hurt. And with that, they professionals whisked her off to a cubicle where they could examine her further.
Angel took in Connor’s pale face and trembling hands. Without a word, he led the teen to the plastic chairs that littered the walls of the waiting room. He pushed gently on his son’s shoulder and Connor’s body obeyed automatically.
"Is she going to be okay?" Connor whispered up to him. Angel’s heart felt a small burst of pride, seeing how concerned his son was for his friend. But Max’s situation overwhelmed that feeling in moments.
"I don’t know," he admitted honestly. "I hope so. We got her here as fast as we could." Carefully, he eased himself into the seat next to Connor’s. "You said that that thing hit her in the stomach?"
"Yeah," Connor nodded slowly. "Knocked her down and kicked her a couple times." He glanced up at Angel, confusion on his face. "What the hell was that thing?"
"I don’t know," Angel shook his head, for he wasn’t sure about the breed of demon that it had been. Connor just continued to stare at the floor under his feet.
"Thank you," he finally mumbled. "For helping Max. I, uh, I guess it’s obvious that I know her. It’s just, she asked me not to tell anyone that I knew where she was if they came looking."
"Hey," Angel smiled softly, waiting until Connor looked at him. "I understand. You were being a good friend. I just wanted to make sure that she was okay. Whatever she wants from me, I’ll respect her wishes." Connor seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Angel gestured to the hallway. "I’m going to call my friends and let them know what happened. I’ll be back in a few minutes." Connor nodded and Angel roe up and headed for the pay phones.
Before he reached them however, he saw Max’s doctor enter the room she’d been placed in, a chart in his hands. Angel followed after him, unsurprised to see the doctor draw close a curtain, giving them a measure of privacy. He couldn’t resist though, pushing open the swinging door a few inches. He just wanted to reassure himself that she would be well. Then he could pass along the news to her distraught ex-roommate. The doctor’s voice drifted back to his sensitive ears.
"…seven weeks pregnant then," the doctor spoke impassively. "We’ll run some tests, patch up your cuts and scrapes and I’ll have the nurse bring back the ultrasound machine. Want to make sure the fetus is well." Angel pulled back, the stunning information finally sinking in. Max was pregnant? He thought back to their night together. She’d been pregnant then. And he’d nearly killed her. The thought sickened him so deeply that he fought to control his game face. The doctor slid by him, barely noticing the seething figure.
Angel burst into the room and tore the curtain back. Max glanced up at him, her eyes wide when she realized that he’d heard what the doctor had said. "You’re pregnant?" he demanded, needing her to confirm it. She gulped once, then nodded. "You were pregnant that night?"
"Angel," she whispered, her face full of guilt, but not for the reason he believed. "Can we please talk about this later?"
"No damn it!" he snarled. "We’ll talk about it now. My God Max, I bit you that night. Drank your blood. I could’ve hurt the baby. I could’ve killed you. What the hell kind of an idiot are you? And tonight, facing off against a demon? What the hell were you thinking?"
"I was thinking that I didn’t want to let my friend be torn apart by some vicious demon," Max shot back, angered now.
"Why didn’t you run?" he demanded. He knew that he should back off. Knew that Max wouldn’t stand idly by when someone had been threatened. But the lid he’d kept over his emotions had dissolved as if dropped in a vat of acid. The surging emotions were bubbling over. Fear was at the forefront. He began to pace at the foot of her bed. She tried to sit up, but groaned and grasped her stomach. "Damn it Max, of all the stupid things I’ve seen in my life…"
"Don’t," she warned, her voice low and trembling. "I can’t do this right now Angel." She grimaced in pain. There’d been too much pain recently. She needed it to all go away. Her head was spinning from the constancy of turnarounds in her new life. "I can’t do this now. Please, leave me alone."
"You want me to leave you alone?" Angel growled. "Fine Max. I’ll leave you alone. Just don’t ever expect me to show up and rescue you anymore. I wouldn’t want to make life difficult for you by trying to do as you asked and be your friend."
"That was cheap," she gasped.
"No," he shook his head, his anger settling bout him like a gauntlet. "Cheap implies that something has at least a little value. But with you and me, there’s nothing." Before she could reply, he turned and strode rapidly from her room. He could hear her tears, but he was beyond the need to comfort her. His own pain was great. She’d betrayed him even before they had something to betray. Had been with another man while she’d been seeing him. Had endangered her child’s life just to try a taste of a Vampire. He didn’t let himself consider any possibility but that.
Without a word to Connor, he burst from the emergency room and made his way to his car. The trip back to the Hotel was swift. He slammed through the hotel, not caring that his team was waiting for news. Cordelia saw immediately his anger and felt the pain radiating from him. She hurried to follow him, desperate to know what happened. The others followed, a little more reluctantly. They were loath to confront the Vampire when he was like this, but didn’t want Cordy to bear the brunt of his wrath.
Angel?" Cordy called as she followed him into his apartment. He was searching through his kitchen cupboards. At last he found the object of his search. He pulled from the shelves, a bottle of whiskey and a small glass tumbler. He twisted off the cap and poured himself a generous shot. "Angel?" she tried again. "What happened? Is Max okay?"
"Oh yeah," he snarled. "She’s fine. Great even." The group shared a puzzled glance. Great did not equal pissed off Vampire. Unless they’d argued.
"Again I say, what happened?" Cordy demanded. She was feeling mildly frustrated as Angel opted to pour himself another shot instead of answering her. "Okay, fine, where is she?"
"At the hospital," he grunted.
"Is she okay?" Fred demanded. They all knew of Max’s vehement hatred of hospitals and doctors.
"She’s fine," Angel shrugged, seemingly disinterested. "Of course, the baby might not be."
"Baby?" Wes gasped. He glanced at Cordelia.
"Oh God, I didn’t even see a baby in my vision," Cordy moaned. There was a fluttering in her stomach. She felt ill. If she’d only paid more attention to the others in the situation instead of focusing on Max. She began to silently berate herself, until she caught the angry look on her employer’s face. "There wasn’t a baby," she reasoned out slowly. "Is Max…pregnant?" The deepening anger in his face told her yes.
"Dear lord," Wes whispered. "I never thought it possible. Vampires aren’t able to have children." He of course, jumped to the obvious conclusion. Angel didn’t bother to correct them. He could hardly use Connor as an example.
"It’s not mine," Angel spat out. "She’s seven weeks pregnant." The entire group was stunned into silence. Now they understood where the anger was really coming from. Angel felt betrayed. Suddenly Cordy cocked her head to the side.
"But that doesn’t make any sense," she muttered. She began to count silently, ticking numbers off on her fingers. She turned to Fred. "Do you have a calendar handy?"
"In my day planner," Fred shrugged. "Why?"
"Roommate syndrome," was Cordy’s cryptic reply. Fred nodded immediately.
"What’s roommate syndrome?" Gunn demanded. He watched as the petite Texan withdrew her small day planner from her back jean pocket and flipped it open. She laid it on the counter for her and Cordy to peruse.
"Okay," Cordy muttered, her finger skimming over the small printed monthly calendar. "That’s seven weeks. I was there, so Max would have been there. That makes no sense. The doctor’s wrong," she announced.
"Wrong about what?" Angel demanded the drink still in his hand.
"Actually, doctors always are when it comes to this," Fred grinned wryly. She and Cordy shared a look of understanding, while the males looked on, perplexed.
"Would someone kindly explain just what is going on here?" Wes demanded. Cordy sighed.
"Max couldn’t be seven weeks pregnant," she explained lowly. "That was the week she had her monthly visitor." She raised her eyebrows suggestively until the males caught on to her usage of terms.
"And how would you know that?" Gunn asked. He was by nature, a fairly earthy man, but this was a delicate subject, even for him.
"Like I said," Cordy rolled her eyes, "roommate syndrome. See, when women live together, or work together, they develop a pattern."
"Oh yes!" Wes exclaimed, one hand shooting up into the air, as if he were an excited schoolboy, intent on sharing newfound knowledge among his lesser peers. "I recall reading a little about this subject. When many women work together, their pheromone levels determine which among them is the alpha female. She sets the pattern for the monthly cycles." He dropped his lecturing tone and turned to face Cordy. "I didn’t realize that it was common among roommates." Cordy shrugged.
"That’s actually just the way it happened to work out. And besides, duh! Max was in heat that night Angel. Why on earth would she be in heat if she were already pregnant?" Angel’s hand slumped back to the counter, the whiskey sloshing over onto his hand.
"A good point," Wesley nodded. All attention was back on the supposed father to be.
"But…but," he stammered for a moment. Then he resolved himself again. "The doctor clearly said that she was seven weeks pregnant." Cordy scoffed. She stabbed her finger onto the still open day planner.
"Hello!" she trilled. "Physical evidence suggests otherwise."
"And like I said," Fred smirked, " the doctors are always wrong on that score."
"What do you mean?" Angel asked quietly, a sense of dread over what he’d said and done beginning to creep up on him.
"See, doctors always figure a pregnancy from the first day of a woman’s menstrual cycle," she smirked with Cordy at the males jittery nervousness at the topic. "Every woman is different in the time it takes to be ready to conceive. Most women are ready fourteen to seventeen days after that first day. But doctors don’t want to have to sit and figure that out, so they just count forty weeks from the first day. Which makes absolutely no sense. It wouldn’t happen that way. I mean, what the heck do they think menstruation is about?" She shared a teasing grin with Cordelia. "It’s the body's natural way of disposing of-!"
"Too much information!" Wes shouted suddenly, his face very red.
"Oh, grow up Wes," Cordy giggled. "It’s a natural part of life. The only unnatural thing about this, it would seem, is that Angel, Vampire Master extraordinaire and King of the Brood, is going to be a daddy." The entire group turned to look at the suddenly paler than usual Angel.
"Oh God," he whispered.
Second Chances
No comments:
Post a Comment