Chapter Text
Chapter 1: The One With the Big Words
Monica Geller watched as a teardrop created a smudge on the After Visit medical form she clutched in her hands. She was so focused on the large, fancy medical terms that now jumped off the page at her that she wasn't even focusing on her feet as she trudged at a stumble home towards her third-floor walk-up apartment.
Medical terms, big words like… endometriosis, and laparoscopy. Her fertility specialist had defined these words in layman's terms, of course, adding even more crushing weight with their meanings.
Endometriosis: a condition in which tissue similar to uterine tissue was growing outside Monica's uterus. Apparently, there were various Stages involved, similar to how cancer was measured… and Monica had been diagnosed with the worst stage, Stage IV.
Unlike the kind of Stage IV seen in most cancers, however, Stage IV endometriosis was treatable, provided that it was confronted quickly following diagnosis. Which is what brought Monica back to the second big medical word that now tolled through her head, echoing as it had in the examination room when her fertility specialist had first said it:
Laparoscopy: a procedure that could basically remove the scar tissue that was uterine-like out from where it was growing outside Monica's uterus.
Monica bumped into something, and she glanced up from the paper with a start: she had somehow managed to climb up and then come off the stairwell onto her floor without tripping, only to walk right into the wall. Shaking her head to clear it even as she already knew that was a hopeless proposition, she turned onto Floor 3 and stumbled in a daze down the hall to between Apartments 19 and 20.
The door to her apartment opened before she could let herself in and Joey emerged, pulling up short and breaking into a grin of relief when he saw her.
"There you are! Guys, she's home!" Taking Monica by the arm, her struggling actor friend and neighbor tugged her across the threshold into her home. Some of the others were beginning to rise from the table, relief coming over their faces. Over by the stove, Rachel stepped back and raised her hands to shoulder-height in surrender.
"OK, I was just about to start something if you had been any longer, but I wouldn't have cooked it badly, I swear…."
She watched, puzzled and then disturbed, when Monica merely shook her head at her roommate, instead of doing what would have been the most natural thing for the beautiful chef and that was chase anyone out of her kitchen, her primary domain.
"What took you so long, sis?" Ross peppered Monica with the question, as the rest of the group huddled around her and almost guided her to the table; Chandler even pulled out Monica's chair for her. "Did the doctor make you wait? What did she say?"
Monica sank into the chair, still in a sort of daze. The stapled stack of paper that constituted her After Visit form fluttered to the tabletop. Under the artificial light, the smudged ink from Monica's tears was clearly visible; she saw the moment when Chandler noticed this, then lifted his eyes to study her lovely face in concern. Peer into her bloodshot eyes. Her best friend immediately groped his way into the seat next to her, his impossibly blue orbs fixated on her.
"Mon? Is…. is everything OK?"
Lip trembling in a pout, Monica let out the slightest yip of a whimper and shook her head No.
Chandler took her hand. "What did your…. lady-bits doc….. say?" He asked the question haltingly, accompanied by some truly horrendous pantomime.
From where she stood hovering over the scene, Phoebe scoffed and rolled her eyes. "She went to see her fertility specialist, Chandler! God – 'lady bits'….." she huffed in outraged disbelief that even Chandler could be even this uncouth.
"Well, how should I know what it's called?!" Chandler spluttered.
"Well, now you know," Rachel halted an argument before it could even start. "And you will when you have to go in and have your boys checked out, Chandler." Chandler looked horrified. Circling the table, Rachel occupied the chair at Monica's other side and took her best friend's hand. "Go ahead, honey. What did she say? Was…" the fashion executive swallowed. "… was it bad?"
Monica gulped and nodded. She stared around at her circle of friends, drinking each face before she spoke. Her gaze ended up landing on her brother last, which could have been either a blessing or a curse. Perhaps it was both. Once he heard, Ross would be crushed on her behalf in a familial sense, but at least Monica could bear to handle his reaction… she thought. Certainly, she could bear it better than watching Rachel's or even Chandler's expression change first, upon hearing the news.
Despite this, Monica still felt the tears pooling. Sensed the first of these tears slip out and down her cheeks. "I have endometriosis," she whispered.
Considering he was credentialed, a professor, perhaps she had chosen to look at Ross when she broke the news thinking that he would know the definitions instantly and relay it to the others in plain English. So it disheartened Monica when Ross's expression didn't change.
"What…. what does that mean?"
"Yeah, what does it mean?" Joey demanded, his body primed with tension; he knelt at Monica's knee, beside the table, while making a grab for the After Visit document, flipping through the pages. It was less than ten seconds before the actor bawled, "Would it kill the clinic to write this up in an organized way?!" Monica patiently flipped over the top page and pointed to where she had hastily scrawled down a definition on the back, in the margins. Joey brightened considerably. "Oh, good!" His eyes scanned line by line, only for his brow to furrow deeper.
"Uterine… uterus…. What is all that?"
Chandler ran an exhausted hand over his face. "Oh, we have so much work to do…." he muttered. Smirking sardonically, he nudged his roommate. "In case you weren't aware, Joe, that's where babies come from."
At this, Rachel gasped and drew a hand to her mouth. Her eyes alone conveyed how she had pieced it together; even so, Chandler frowned at her. "Oh, come on, Rache! I can understand Joe not getting it, but you too? You have all the same parts!"
Phoebe let out a disbelieving snort. "Somebody's going to be a bachelor for a really long time…" she mumbled, not quite under her breath.
Rachel ignored her and Chandler, and barely refrained from hitting either one of them. Her eyes, terrified, were on Monica.
"Mon? Sweetie….?"
Monica swallowed again. She was visibly trembling. The tears were coming faster and harder now.
"Endometriosis means that uterine-like scar tissue is growing outside my uterus," she explained. "I have Stage IV – the worst there is." Rachel whimpered. Phoebe looked shocked and even scared. "If… if not removed soon, then there is a good chance that I will become infertile, and that I'll…. never have my own baby…." She broke down, dropping her face into her palms as she wept.
She could barely look at Chandler through her splayed fingers. Her best friend looked crushed on her behalf. True, everyone else did also, even Joey, who had needed the plain English explanation more than all of them, but it was Chandler's reaction that Monica valued, even feared the most. He knew better than anyone how her dearest dream was to start a family. Become a mother.
Monica's sobs quieted into sniffles. Joey appeared deeply pained. Ironically, it was he who spoke first, registering his shock and dismay verbally. "So…. if you don't get this tissue out from where it isn't supposed to be growing, you… you'll become infertile – infert – what you said?"
Monica stifled a moan and nodded.
"You had it right, Joe," Phoebe softly murmured encouragement.
"In other words, you're not infertile yet, but you will be soon unless something changes?" Joey pressed.
Monica wiped at her eyes. Ross cast about for a box of tissues, seized one over by the sink and pressed it into his sister's hands. From the look on his face, her paleontologist brother appeared to be floating somewhere outside of himself.
"The doctor says that I'm on the brink. Of infertility." Monica took a deep breath. "Basically, if I don't undergo an operation, and decide to have children soon, I probably won't have children at all!"
With that, her friends began all talking at once.
"How soon is soon?" Phoebe demanded to know.
"Have children with who?" Rachel gawked. "You're broken up with Richard. You're not seeing anyone new at the moment! And you decided to forgo going the sperm donor route!"
"Maybe the sperm donor idea goes back on the table?" Chandler guessed with a wince, searching his best friend's face. Monica shivered, and not just due to the draft in this apartment. She shook her head.
"To have the greatest chance of conception – and that's if the laparoscopy goes well…."
"Wait: what's that?" Joey interrupted.
Phoebe craned her neck to read Monica's handwritten notes on the back of the After Visit form. "A procedure used to check the organs in the abdomen," she recited off Monica's scrawl.
Joey's expression didn't change. "What's an abdomen?"
"The belly, Joe!" Chandler bellowed, glowering, his patience shot. "Learn what a fucking synonym is!" Joey wilted, feeling his best buddy's frustration and rage radiating from clear across the table. Listening to everyone fire questions at her, shout at each other, Monica hugged herself, dropping her chin on her chest like a bird. She began to sob quietly.
"QUIET! Let's be quiet!" Rachel hollered. "Mon: what were you about to say? About the greatest chance of conception?"
Monica exhaled shakily. "For the greatest chance of conception, provided the operation goes well…. sperm donation, IFV treatments aren't advised as the best routes."
Chandler lifted a concerned eyebrow. "So, what, you'd have to conceive naturally?" He looked appalled, even slightly sick. "With who? Do the docs really expect you to choose some random guy and….?"
Ross threw up his hands, prematurely convinced this was exactly what his sister, out of some desperation, intended to do. "She's lost her mind!"
"Well, then you got to HELP HER!" Chandler shouted, leaping to his feet with such force, his chair overturned.
Ross slapped the table. "Dang it, Chandler! – I'm a paleontologist, not a doctor! I mean, I am a doctor, but I'm not that kind of doctor – I have a doctorate; it's not the same thing! You can't help people with a doctorate! You just sit there and you're USELESS!" At the end of his self-loathing rant, he collapsed into the nearest chair, head in his arms. Rachel circled the table to stand behind him, rubbing his shoulder.
For a long moment, there was silence.
"Monica? Honey?" Phoebe murmured, prompting.
Lifting her head, tear tracks blazing rivulets down from her bloodshot eyes, Monica swallowed hard. When she finally spoke, her voice was hoarse, either from lack of use, crying, or both.
"I wouldn't choose some random guy to…. to impregnate me."
"Then who would you choose?" Rachel pressed. When no answer was immediately forthcoming, the blonde sucked in a breath. "Richard? Mon, no, don't…. don't get back together with Richard. The whole reason you broke it off with him was because he didn't want any more kids! You said so yourself!"
Still, Monica said nothing.
"Kip?!" Phoebe guessed, gasping. "Monica, you can't ask that of him! He's… he's married…" She glanced around at them all. "Isn't he?!"
Chandler shrugged. "Last that I heard…." Noticing Rachel and Joey's confused looks, he waved them off. "Don't worry about it. Just be grateful neither of you were here for that clusterfuck!"
"But… but…." Ross spluttered. "Then who? If she doesn't get back together with Richard, and she can't ask Kip, then….."
Monica took a deep breath before looking between the most important men in her life, two of them in particular.
"There are only a couple of men who I trust enough to…. to help me do this. It has to be one of you two." At their stunned looks, she steeled herself, even as her eyes conveyed terror. "One of you has to have sex with me. One of you has to impregnate me – immediately."