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"I hear that you're concerned about the risks associated with geriatric pregnancies—"
Robby said, "You think that's what I'm really hung up on here?"
The consultant let out a brief, genial chuckle. It was a noise that Robby associated with a certain kind of physician, one who saw patients as an inconvenience to be placated while the professional got on with the important work of figuring out some abstract biological puzzle. "I appreciate that the unanticipated side-effects of an experimental protocol can be, well, unanticipated—"
Robby turned to look at Heather. "Is this the kind of dismissive condescension I should be bracing myself for for the next few months?"
Heather was an old pro at controlling her facial expressions, but Robby could read her pretty well by now. The angle of her head suggested that she was going to kick his ass as soon as they got back to the car, but her face was so perfectly serene that Robby knew the answer to his question was yes.
"Right," Robby said, tossing all of the glossy pamphlets and legal releases back onto the guy's desk. "Well, thanks for everything, we'll see ourselves out."
The consultant looked alarmed now at the dawning realisation that maybe he wouldn't get that guaranteed publication in The Lancet or JAMA after all. He held up his hands in a way that you might to calm a skittish horse. "I hope you're not leaving, Dr Robinavitch? For the purposes of the longitudinal study, we'll need blood draws and regular ultrasounds, and your—"
Robby was already through the office door by the time he said, "Bite me."
It was Schrödinger's pregnancy: planned and unplanned at the same time. When they'd talked about getting back together, Heather had made it clear that being a mom was non-negotiable for her, and while fatherhood wasn't something that Robby had ever actively sought out, it was never something he'd definitively decided against, either. And if Heather wanted it—if it would make her happy—then he wanted it, too.
So Robby had left the condoms in the bathroom medicine cabinet, and revelled in every time he had Heather in his bed—and even the one time, when they'd been late leaving a friend's house but the app on her phone had been very insistent that she was ovulating now, that they'd had sex in the back seat of her very sensible sedan at a rest stop on I-76. The two of them had giggled the whole time, Robby protesting that he had nowhere to put his legs and Heather laughing and urging him to hurry up and Robby, wheezing, saying, "Way to give a guy a complex."
It was wonderful, being in this thing with her: together.
But the months ticked by with nothing to show for it beyond one two-week-long period of hope and Robby's growing awareness that Heather wasn't going to want to celebrate her impending birthday. They'd moved in together, which was good, but that meant he got to observe even more closely as Heather grew quieter, more withdrawn, which was bad. It made him worry.
Robby got himself surreptitiously tested and was told that his sperm count was "respectable" for a man of his age, which Robby tried not to feel either too good or too bad about. He looked into how much he'd get if he cashed out one of his 401(k) accounts, how many rounds of IVF that might buy, and plotted how he'd get Heather to take the money from him.
Robby was seriously contemplating just handing her an envelope stuffed with cash when Heather pulled him into the break room one morning and showed him an email on her phone. Robby scrolled through it: an invitation to participate in a clinical trial being run by a couple of people over at UPHS, a collaboration between some endocrinologists and some bioengineers who were trying to pioneer new ways of using CRISPR to make it even more time and cost efficient than current methods.
Robby's eyebrows went up as he read. "These guys are promising a hell of a lot."
"It's experimental, there are no promises yet about success rates," Heather said, eyes shining. "And the hormonal delivery methods are novel, but there's nothing to indicate any adverse side effects, they're targeting some of the very things my OB-GYN suspected might be issues, and if this actually works—"
Robby stooped to kiss her. "If you're on board, I'm on board."
So, Schrödinger's pregnancy: planned and unplanned. They went into this hoping for a pregnancy, and four months later they had a positive pregnancy test sitting on their bathroom counter.
It was just that they'd presumed that Heather would be the one who'd end up pregnant.
"Honestly, man, not sure what to tell you," the grad student said, scratching at his belly through the faded cotton of a t-shirt that featured a print of Darth Vader holding a very large coffee mug. "Spontaneous growth of a uterus with complete vaginal and cervical agenesis but also a viable pregnancy is kind of a new one for us. Like, wow!" He blew out his cheeks. "Our best guess, it's kind of like that case a few years ago where that one kid went into precocious puberty because their dad was using a testosterone cream and was passing the hormone on through skin to skin contact?"
The grad student switched to scratching at his patchy stubble. "Though now I come to think about it, maybe what I'm remembering is an episode of House. You know that show? My grandma used to love it when I was a kid."
Robby felt both very old and very irritated, which wasn't ideal—but it did distract from the morning sickness.
That conversation was irritating. The ones with Heather were terrifying.
Robby liked to think he was doing pretty well at therapy by now—and was self-aware enough to understand that thinking he was doing well at therapy was one more compelling reason to keep going to therapy—but voluntarily talking about feelings wasn't something that came naturally to him.
Reflexive listening was a process he'd been trained in as a physician. He understood its professional value and tried to actively model it for his students. Articulating emotional honesty in personal relationships? Not so much. That was what back pats and thumbs up were for.
But now he had to talk: in the car on the way back from the clinic, sitting side by side on the living room couch, curled around one another in the quiet of their bedroom. And it couldn't just be about the usual practicalities of impending childbirth, about whether to use a doula or what colour to paint the baby's room or exactly how to colour code the birth plan spreadsheets that both of them had separately started.
It couldn't be, because Robby was giving Heather exactly what she'd wanted—but he was taking it away from her too.
"I'm not angry with you," Heather said. Their heads were resting on the same pillow, and even in the half light that was filtering in through the blinds, she was the most beautiful woman Robby knew.
"What are you angry with?" Robby was skilled enough at the carefully-phrased response game to recognise when someone else was playing it.
Heather hitched a shoulder. "I'm not even sure. Fate?"
"I think that's reasonable."
"But it makes me feel... ungrateful," she said after a pause. "You're putting your body through something you didn't ask for, couldn't even have expected, all because of me—"
"Not because of you," Robby said firmly. "Though in retrospect I think we could both have asked more questions about whether the trial was being run by incompetents."
Heather shifted a little closer, rested her hand gently on Robby's upper arm. The feel of her thumb stroking back and forth against the bare skin there had Robby's eyes drifting closed.
"Angry with myself, maybe," Heather said quietly.
"What have you got to be angry with yourself about?"
"If any other friend of mine had told me about an unexpected late-life pregnancy—"
Robby snorted gently.
"—I would have wondered if they were considering all their options. I might even have asked them if they had. But with you, I never once—"
Robby opened his eyes. "Hey, hey, come on."
"Our best estimate is 16 weeks, there's still time. And Mike, I'd understand. I would. This isn't something you have to do just for my sake. That's not right, I couldn't ask that of you."
"You're not asking anything of me," Robby said. "Any more than you were of me the last time around."
"That was different. You didn't know about it."
It was Robby's turn to shrug. "So? In the grand scheme of things, it all comes down to the same thing. You did what you thought was right. I'm doing what I think is right. And yeah, so it's a bit, you know, fucking weird—"
Heather let out a watery laugh and brushed away the tears from her cheeks.
"But pretty much anything that the human body does is weird if you describe it the right way."
"You're the first known case of cis male pregnancy in recorded history."
"Yeah, and yesterday I removed an entire G.I. Joe action figure from someone's rectum," Robby said, closing his eyes again. "So what? First time for everything."
The conversations with the clinical trial folks were irritating, the ones with Heather were terrifying, and the ones with his co-workers Robby didn't want to have at all.
On a good day, the gossip networks in the Pitt spread the word of births, engagements, marriages and break-ups as quickly as measles. Robby once heard what colour the Langdons were going to repaint their living room before Frank knew himself. News that their chief attending was knocked up would probably break the sound barrier—even without the weird science aspect.
Robby's plan was just not to say anything. It was getting towards winter, and the Pitt was never warm at the best of times, and Robby had a wide selection of oversized hoodies. As soon as he started to show, well, he had an awful lot of annual leave days accrued and a lot of people who'd be very glad to see him take them.
He'd have the baby at UPHS, which had agreed to look after all the pregnancy-related costs as part of their "whoops, our bad, pretty please don't sue us" response to what had happened, so nothing would even show up on his employer-provided insurance. And no one expected a cis man to get pregnant, so no one would be looking at him with suspicion. At 16 weeks, Robby looked like he'd had an extra-large burrito for lunch. No big gossip there.
He just hadn't factored in Dr Jack Abbot.
He and Jack weren't often on shift together, but when they were and when they experienced one of their rare lulls, Robby was guaranteed to feel the nape of his neck tingle in a way that meant he was being watched. He'd turn around and it was like playing a game of Where's Waldo: find the one attending in scrubs among all the other people bustling around in scrubs. Was Jack watching him from an exam room or from the nurse's station or through the window in the break room door? Nine times out of ten, Jack's clinical observation skills were a thing that Robby admired, respected, and valued.
One time out of ten, though.
This shift had been blessedly quiet, the rain heavy enough to keep most people at home but not so heavy that it was causing car crashes or flooding. Robby decided to give himself the rare chief attending gift of leaving a half hour early. He went to fetch his backpack and coat, debating with himself whether getting a cab to go several blocks was justified given how tired he was and how much his feet hurt, and closed his locker door to find Jack right there, staring at him.
"Jesus Christ," Robby yelped, and felt justified in doing so, because Jack hadn't been there a moment ago and Robby hadn't heard him approach. "We should put a bell on you."
Jack said nothing, just continued to stare at Robby with his arms folded and a look on his face like a prairie dog with a suspicious mind.
"Jack? Are you—"
Jack's eyes got narrower.
"Didn't you—"
Jack cut him off with the wave of one impatient hand. "Are you pregnant?"
Robby let out what he thought was a very convincing bark of laughter. "Jack, how the hell could I be pregnant?"
"Thought so," Jack said with a nod. "What are you, nineteen weeks? Twenty?"
He was completely serious. Robby crowded close to him and hiss-whispered, "How the fuck do you know?"
"I've got eyes, don't I?" Then, when he saw the expression on Robby's face, he sighed like Robby was being unreasonable and went on, "Brother, I served in the United States Army for more than a decade. You think there's shit I haven't seen?"
Robby blinked at him. "In this case... Yes?"
"It's a big world out there, I've been places," he said with a shrug so nonchalant that Robby was fascinated. "You good?"
Robby said, " Yeah. I mean, a surprise but... yeah. Yes."
"Awesome. Let me know if you need any help, okay?" Jack said, clapping Robby on the shoulder. "Hooah."
Over dinner, Robby said, "Jack figured it out."
Heather paused with a forkful of pasta halfway to her mouth. "Not Dana?"
"I don't know what to tell you," Robby said with a shrug.
Heather stared at the far wall for a moment and then said, "Well, I suppose it actually tracks."
"He won't say anything," Robby said. He had no doubts on that score. Whatever fears Robby had about all of this—and there were definitely times he lay awake at night, turning over in his mind the statistical likelihood of someone in their fifties developing gestational diabetes or preeclampsia—not one of them was about Jack Abbot being a blabbermouth.
"No, I know he wouldn't." Heather reached out and covered one of his hands with hers. "But if he's worked it out, it won't be long before other people start wondering about things. And even if they don't arrive at the right answer..."
"Yeah, you're right," Robby said. He turned his hand over so that he could lace their fingers together, squeezed gently. "Guess it's time to start taking those sick days, huh?"
As far as the hospital administrative staff knew, Robby had gone out of town to help take care of a cousin in Washington State who'd been in a bad car accident and had no other family to help them recuperate. No one asked too many questions, either happy to see Robby finally use up some of that huge amount of accrued leave which made HR uneasy or, like Gloria, too smart to do so.
Dana called him once she heard, but Robby made sure to answer the call with his camera turned off, claiming that the signal out here was too bad for video calls.
"I'm fine, I'm good, honestly," he said, as A League of Their Own played on mute on his TV for the umpteenth time, and rubbed absently at his swelling belly. "My, uh, cousin Jimmy just needed my help. Guy doesn't have a lot of—what? Yeah, well, we're not particularly close but family's family, I guess."
Robby didn't actually go anywhere. With the exception of weekly check-ups at UPHS, when he was surreptitiously smuggled from parking structure to parking structure in Heather's car, he stayed in the condo. (And the check-ups were good. Amniocentesis good, ultrasounds good, NIPP confirmed that both Robby and Heather had a biological relationship to the foetus. Every test they ran confirmed that it was a textbook pregnancy, except for the obvious.) It was like being under house arrest, except for how Robby didn't mind it all that much. Staying in one place seemed to be what his body wanted. He moved, sure—watched old ball games and older movies on the TV in his office while walking on the treadmill—but he could feel himself turning inward, expectant, all his spare energy going towards the awesome task of nurturing life where there should be no life. He spent a lot of time napping on the couch, waking sometimes to find that Heather had managed to come home and shower and change and nestle his head in her lap without disturbing him.
"Sorry," he'd say, knuckling at his eyes and clearing his throat. "Tired, I guess."
"Shh," Heather would say, "you're doing so well", stroking his hair gently until he drifted back to sleep.
The only other person he still saw in the flesh was Jack, who'd taken to dropping by on a kind of carefully irregular schedule that told Robby he'd run it all by Heather first.
"Well, which of the two of us is she going to trust to use the painter's tape properly?" Jack said, when he showed up at midday with a bag in each hand: Thai food in one and all kinds of decorating supplies in the other. "Because I know it's not you."
"I have excellent hand-eye coordination," Robby protested, already opening a container of tom kha gai and taking a first, greedy slurp. "I know what I'm doing."
"You're a rank amateur," Jack said. "Don't annoy me when I'm holding a fork."
With Jack's help, it didn't take long for the second bedroom to start its transformation into a nursery. The flat grey walls were covered over with a wash of pale green, and then a series of farm-themed decals that Jack smoothed on with an exacting hand.
"Can't have an air bubble in Old MacDonald's pig," Jack said.
"It's the sheep I'm worried about," Robby said as he slid the new curtains onto the pole. "Those beady eyes."
"Well, you know what they say about sheep, they..." Jack said. "Actually, no, I got nothing, I'm from Fresno."
They were picking up the drop cloths by the time Heather got back with what looked like half of Pottery Barn Kids in tow. "The rest of it gets here tomorrow," she said ruefully, setting the bags down in the centre of the room and then going to press a kiss to Robby's cheek. "Apologies for what I did to your credit card."
"Eh," Robby said, leaning into her warmth. "That's what it's there for."
Getting out of the shower that evening, Robby caught sight of his body in the mirror. It felt like his belly had expanded exponentially in the last few days alone, the kid going through some kind of growth spurt. There was no way now to disguise what he was experiencing as mere middle-aged spread, not with the skin stretching tight over his bump, the linea nigra a darkening streak running down from his belly button, his breast tissue starting to swell and soften. Robby ran a considering hand over his bump, turned to see himself reflected sideways. He looked pregnant. He was pregnant.
Objectively, it was strange. It was the most sustained and noticeable change Robby's body had gone through since puberty, when he'd shot up so quickly his body had been confused about where its centre of gravity was for months. It was also the most unexpected change he'd ever had. He'd had friends who'd been pregnant over the years, knew how much some of them had struggled with feeling like their body wasn't fully theirs anymore, with the stretch marks and the colostrum leaks and the swollen ankles. Some had glowed while pregnant, skin luminous and hair lush; some had puked and sweated their way through a nine-month ordeal and sworn vehemently they would be one and done.
So maybe the stranger thing was that Robby could stand naked in front of a mirror, in his fifties and pregnant and a guy, and be neither weirded out nor particularly gratified by it. It was just a thing that was, that meant that for now he couldn't wear jeans or bend over easily anymore, but that also meant that in a few months they'd have a kid.
He towelled off and pulled on his most threadbare and disreputable pair of sweatpants, and went to climb into bed next to Heather. She was sitting up, reading one of those cheesy airport thrillers that she loved and that Robby loved to tease her about.
"Do you think," Robby said, as he wrestled to get the pillow lined up properly between his legs so that he'd be able to sleep without his back killing him in the morning, "that maybe I'm being too well-adjusted about this whole being a pregnant guy thing?"
Heather looked at him levelly for a few moments before leaning over to kiss the tip of his nose. "I think it's good that you have therapy tomorrow, honey."
Robby had switched his therapy sessions to telehealth ones, and if his self of eighteen months ago could hear that particular sentence he'd have choked on his coffee.
God, he missed coffee.
In the aftermath of Pittfest, Robby had wavered, but Heather, Dana, and Jack had been persistent. He needed time off, and he needed to talk to someone, and facing down that particular trio was like trying to go to war with the proverbial immovable object and unstoppable force. Robby was learning how to pick his battles.
Maybe.
Jack's clinic wasn't taking new patients, but made some recommendations. Robby swiftly found himself enjoying better living via SSRIs prescribed by his new psychiatrist, and with not just one but a series of appointments with a therapist.
"No way out but through, good buddy," Jack had said, dropping a haggard Robby off at his first session. "I'll be back to pick you up, okay? Call me if you need anything."
"Jesus, my first day at high school was less embarrassing," Robby had said as he climbed out of Jack's car.
"Oh, just you wait and see," Jack had said, sliding on his sunglasses.
Brenda Chu had turned out to be the kind of cheerfully, doggedly in-charge person that Robby could see getting along like a house on fire with Dana, except for how he could never, ever let the two of them meet. She was a few years older than Robby, her bobbed hair mostly grey, and she had a knack for getting an answer out of Robby that she'd circle back to a half an hour, or three sessions, later, in a way that always left him winded and frequently sobbing. It was kind of like being at a comedy gig where an old pro was deft at setting up the punchline, only instead of trying to make Robby laugh, she was helping him to figure out why it felt like he hadn't properly laughed in years.
"I feel like I should be buying you some replacements," Robby said once as he reached the end of another box of Kleenex.
Brenda shrugged. "I write 'em off on my taxes."
He hadn't been going through tissues at such a fast rate in their sessions for a while, at least, although given that he'd been meeting with Brenda online-only for the past few weeks, the ones he was using were on his own dime.
This particular session, though, had Robby wishing he had an old-fashioned handkerchief to wipe his forehead with, because he figured it was about time to tell Brenda that he was pregnant. It had been made pretty clear to him that lying to his therapist was a bad idea, and a lie of omission was still a lie. He wasn't just going to have a baby—he was going to have a baby.
So he told her, and spent a good chunk of their session convincing her that no, he wasn't having a psychotic break, which involved him standing up and lifting his shirt to show this licensed medical professional that no, he didn't have a pillow shoved up there. Clinical trial, unexpected results: boom, pregnant cis guy.
"Well," Brenda said eventually. She took her glasses off. She cleaned them. She put her glasses back on again. "Huh."
"I know it's a lot to just drop on you," Robby said. "I thought it was a lot—"
"Oh, no," Brenda said. "I mean, it's very interesting. And I have to say, I didn't think this would be something I'd encounter in my practice for, oh, another good five to ten years or so."
Robby blinked. "You.... were? Five to ten years? Why?"
Brenda shrugged. "That's not important right now, Michael. What is important is why you've finally decided that you want to tell me this today."
"Oh, well." Robby worried at a hangnail for a moment. "I know this is every cliché in the book about doctors making the worst patients, but I only, um. Got some new parts, not a full new set?" He could feel his cheeks heat. This felt even more awkward than the time his bubbe had sat him down to explain the birds and bees, but in reverse.
"So on top of everything else," he went on, "I'm going to need a C-section. And for all the times I've cut other people open, I've never actually had surgery myself so I guess I'm kind of anxious about it. Scared, actually."
Robby shifted in his chair. He could die. The baby could die. He could live, but the baby could die, and how could he face Heather after that? He could feel his breathing start to get faster, more shallow, and he fought against that. "But this is, this is a silly thing to complain about, I should just—"
Brenda held up a quelling hand. "Take a moment. Breathe. And then tell me about it."
Robby finished his session feeling weirdly like his knees were watery but also that the ground beneath his feet was firmer. Brenda reassured him that both he and the UPHS clinicians were correct in thinking that the meds he was on weren't contraindicated during pregnancy, told him that he was doing well, asked him to reflect on why he thought he wasn't allowed to be afraid. He tried his best to think about it, standing over the kitchen sink and eating a bagel with whitefish salad, but then decided to take a nap instead.
When Robby woke it was early evening and Heather was back from her swing shift. He could hear her moving around in the kitchen, the faint strains of her Motown playlist drifting in to him. Something delicious was cooking, with base notes of tomato and onion and garlic. Robby's stomach growled. The kid was clearly into it too, because Robby's insides were getting a good kicking. "Your mom's a good cook," he said, rubbing his bump, "but it's gonna be a while before you're on solids. Sorry about that."
The next jab was aimed firmly at his bladder.
Robby groaned and hauled himself upright and went to pee, before washing his hands and face and brushing his teeth—Heather had made her stance on post-whitefish salad kisses very clear. Then he shuffled into the kitchen, where Heather was on the phone. If Robby had to make a guess based on the set of her shoulders, she was talking to her mother, who was one of the coldest women he had ever met. It wasn't so much that Robby feared that she disliked him as a quasi-son-in-law as it was that he was convinced she disapproved of everyone on principle. "Ice shaped like a person," as he'd told Jack and would never, ever say to Heather.
Robby dropped a kiss on Heather's shoulder and stole a piece of bell pepper from the chopping board before heaving himself up to sit on a stool. Give him another little while and he didn't think he'd be able to sit at the counter like this. He chewed contemplatively on his strip of pepper until Heather finally said, "Okay, bye," ended the call, and said through clenched teeth as she resumed chopping vegetables, "Irene's younger daughter bought a house. In Arlington Heights."
"Ohhh," Robby said, with great sympathy and as if the intricacies of the Portland real estate market meant anything to him. He had no clue who Irene was—probably a longstanding church frenemy, knowing Heather's mother—and he had absolutely no intention to ask. "Still not the right time to tell her, then?"
Heather let out a sigh that clearly came all the way up from the soles of her feet. "Would it be so terrible of me if I just tell her she's a grandmother after the fact? I mean, it doesn't matter what way I choose, she'll find a way to imply that it was the wrong one."
Robby shrugged. It wasn't like he had a great track record of parent-child communication to draw on for advice. He'd once gone more than a decade without talking to his own mother—or more to the point, that vicious little part of his brain pointed out, without her caring enough to talk to him. "You can do whatever you like. I'll support you."
"Ha," Heather said. "That's a dangerous promise." Her shoulders were starting to come down a bit from around her ears though, and she rubbed at her forehead. "I don't know what I want to do. I don't even know where to start from."
"So tell me about work instead," Robby said. "How are my med students doing?"
"Ohhh, long story," Heather said, dumping the last of the vegetables into the pot and seasoning them all liberally. "Mostly okay, but today there was an issue involving Whitaker. Again. We're going to have to get Dana another gift card for that really nice hotel spa for the holidays." She unfolded the story of what had ensued when a patient had shown up in the ER having accidentally sewn their own finger onto a curtain hem, and Robby sat, contented, and listened.
After dinner, they sat on the couch and Heather painted her toenails while some kind of bland spy movie passed in front of Robby's eyeballs. A triple agent had just been outed as a quadruple agent in Prague. Robby thought. He wasn't sure. Maybe they were in Warsaw? He'd lost track of the plot a while ago. It was the kind of movie that Jake loved, where everyone looked very cool while doing spy stuff with top-secret files and explosions.
And Robby didn't particularly want to think about Jake, who was now a sophomore chemistry major at Drexel and, as an apologetic Janey made clear, still unwilling to speak to Robby, so he muted the TV and turned to Heather and said, "So I was thinking about names."
Heather put the last swipe of purple on her big toenail and then recapped the bottle of polish. "I'm fine with the baby being a Robinavitch. You're the only child of an only son, and there are a lot of Collinses in the world."
"Oh." Robby hadn't really thought about last names at all. If he had, he'd have assumed that he was carrying a Baby Collins. This kid was hers as much as his, was theirs, and Robby had at least a dozen different reasons to look askance at the concept of lineage.
Heather looked over at him. "That's not what you were going to ask."
"I was thinking more about middle names. Montgomery." Robby picked at the couch cushion. "Too much first name for a little kid, maybe, but I thought, you know, middle names. It's there but it's not..."
Heather reached over and covered his hand with her warm one, squeezing gently. "I think that's a lovely idea. He would have been so honoured."
Robby cleared his throat. "Have you thought at all about first names? Because if it's going to be Baby Robinavitch, then I think you get rights over the first name."
"Oh," Heather said, "I've thought about it a little."
Robby (21:37): H has a whole spreadsheet with possible baby names
Robby (21:37): Colour coded
Jack (22:01): You're just jealous you didn't make one first
Robby (22:02): Libel
Jack (22:02): Truth is an absolute defence against libel, Michael
Robby (22:04): If it's a boy she likes Silas or Chester
Robby (22:05): And if it's a girl she likes Millicent or Alma
Jack (22:05): Chester Robinavitch
Jack (22:05): Has a ring to it
Robby (22:06): Don't you start
Jack (22:10): But have either of you considered Jacketta?
Jack (01:04): Jackelina. Jackelle. Jackiy.
Jack (01:04): With a y
Spreadsheets got added to and reordered, shared and merged. Some things got ticked off and many others got added. It was like establishing an MCI protocol, except that this was all about making room for something good in the world, not trying to put a system in place to mitigate some of the worst of it.
"You know, if Dana finds out that there is actually a way to get you to do administrative work quickly..." Heather said as she laced up her shoes.
Robby looked at her over the top of his glasses. "Is that a threat, Dr Collins?"
"Just an observation," Heather said airily. "Like I'm observing how you're really going through the pregnancy food cravings right now."
"No, I'm not."
Heather raised an eyebrow. "You're working your way through a plate of dill pickles, pickled tomatoes, sauerkraut and... what even is that?"
"Pickled herring with cream sauce and onions. This isn't a pregnancy craving—welcome to life with a Jewish guy." Robby smiled brightly at her and popped another piece of pickle into his mouth.
There were other things that Robby did find himself craving as the pregnancy got into its home stretch. Well, a thing. Sex.
Robby had never had any problems being attracted to Heather. From the very first time he'd seen her—at a charity gala that Gloria had strong-armed him into attending—she'd caught his eye. He'd pretended to sip from a champagne flute and to pay attention to what the wealthy crowd of usual suspects were saying, but found his gaze repeatedly slipping over to the beautiful Black woman in the blue dress. Gloria would have been pissed if she'd realised how distracted Robby was, but mollified if she'd known that Robby's distraction meant he was far less likely to tell their prospective donors that if they just paid their fair share in taxes, none of them would have to go through the motions like this and Robby could be home on his couch with a beer and the Panthers game on TV.
But now, heading into the last stage of the pregnancy, he found himself with a libido that would have put his twenty-year-old self to shame. Robby found himself jerking off in the shower, aimlessly horny while making lunch, getting hard just from the sight of Heather's bare legs in her pyjama shorts as she washed her face at night.
"Can I?" Robby asked as she joined him in bed, reaching for her. "Will you let me?" He'd have been embarrassed by how raspy his voice already was if it wasn't for how gratified he was by the smile on Heather's face.
She leaned in and kissed him, slow and lush, and then said, "Your mouth?"
Robby nodded eagerly. He was too big now for penetration to be comfortable, even with Heather riding him, but this, this he could still do. This he loved. He put a pillow on the floor to kneel on while Heather pulled off her shorts and then arranged herself to lie on the edge of the bed, her legs over his shoulders.
Heather reached down and stroked his hair. "You think you can get there for me without touching yourself?"
That had Robby shuddering and all the way to hard, turning his face into the soft skin of her inner thigh to ground himself before he could nod a yes. He huffed out a shaky laugh. "Pretty, uh, optimistic about that."
"And you know how much I respect your diagnostic skills," Heather said and then she was coaxing him forward, her hips canting up in anticipation of him. Robby wrapped his hands around her thighs and moved. She was gasping from the first swipe of his tongue, already wet for him but he knew he could get her wetter. He pressed closer, licked and licked, relishing the taste and feel of her beneath him. The noises she made. The way she dug one heel into his back as the tension built.
"Good?" he asked her, hoarse, when he couldn't deny the need to breathe any longer.
"Mmm," she said, reaching underneath her pyjama top to play with her nipple. "Fingers?"
"Ma'am, yes, ma'am," Robby said and gave her two at once, sliding them into her in one easy thrust before circling his tongue around her clit and then sucking. That pulled the most satisfying sound out of her, a wail of pleasure that had him grinning against her.
"Stop showboating," Heather said, a reprimand that would have been a bit more convincing if she hadn't been rubbing herself off against his nose at the time, so Robby felt entirely justified in crooking his fingers just the way he knew she liked it and holding on as she shook her way through her first orgasm. He loved being like this: beard wet from her, hair sticking damp to his forehead with sweat, looking up to see the way her face went slack and peaceful.
"Good?" Robby asked her again.
Heather hummed, lolling back against the sheets.
"Just, I hate to push you on this," Robby said. "But patient satisfaction scores are important to help me improve future care—"
"Fishing for compliments now?"
"Well it's—" His words cut off abruptly because Heather was running her fingers through his hair, tugging on it gently. Robby swallowed hard.
"You want me to tell you how good you are for me?" Heather said. Robby's cock twitched in his sweats. "How well you take care of me? I guess you do. Look at how you're blushing."
Robby turned his head to see what they looked like in the mirror: him on his knees, a flush spreading down his chest; Heather with one hand in his hair and the other between her legs. His body, changed by all the things he was willing to do for her; him, made different through the force of how much he loved her. A mitzvah made flesh. He cleared his throat. "Yeah. I see it."
And then it was time.
Heather held Robby's hand as the epidural was administered, and he alternated between watching her face and staring up at the ceiling, fighting back the sudden impulse to cry panicked tears. Everything was going fine so far, he knew that. What felt like half of the UPHS staff was here, keen to be able to say they had taken part in the first documented delivery of a cis male pregnancy and subsequent hysterectomy.
And more importantly as far as Robby was concerned, Heather was there and able to see the monitors. She'd let him know if something went wrong.
Still.
"Remember," he said, as the surgeon cut into him, working to keep his breathing steady. "If anything happens, I'm not the priority."
"Hush," Heather said, and squeezed his hand.
"I mean it," Robby said, trying not to flinch at the weird sensation of numbed pressure and tugging below his waist.
"I will call Brenda," Heather said. "I will call Jack."
"You think you can threaten me, just because I'm lying here with an incision in my uterus—"
"I will call Dana."
"Ouch," Robby said.
When the baby's first cries rent the air, Heather stooped to kiss the tears from Robby's cheek.
"Thank you," Robby said to her, voice shaking. "Thank you."
Heather laughed through her own tears and said, "Shouldn't it be the other way around?"
But then their child was placed into their arms—their child, their own—and there was more than enough gratitude to go around.
"You know, one of these days, you're going to have to bring the kiddo by the ER," Jack said. He was currently engaged in what he said was a very scientific means of testing infant reflexes, but which to Robby looked an awful lot like blowing raspberries against the baby's belly. "All the photos of the first bath and the bris and stuff are great, but they're only going to satisfy people for so long. A secret surprise surrogacy kid is the best gossip they've had in years. Even beats the time Lena found out that that one guy in ortho is a furry."
"You want me to bring my infant only offspring to that wretched hive of scum and villainy and campylobacter?" Robby said as he sat down, thankful that he'd healed enough that he was able to do so without a twinge.
"An awful lot of people want to meet the Heir of Robinavitch," Jack said, handing a squirming, gurgling baby over to Heather.
"You want to rethink that description?" Heather asked.
"The Heir of Robinavitch and also of the Dread Attending Physician Collins, First of Her Name?"
"Better," Heather said primly as she took a seat next to Robby on the sofa, nestling the baby onto her lap. Robby held out a hand and Adam grasped at it. His grip on Robby's pinky finger was tenacious and he shook it up and down, gurgling with the joy of discovery. His kid, Robby thought; his son.
"Just saying, you've got a surprise belated baby shower in your near future. King's going to bake something and Santos is in charge of the baby shower games, God help us all," Jack said. "Prepare yourself, but just remember: this is all a surprise."
"Eh," Robby said, "I do okay with surprises."