The whole procedure felt agonizingly slow, though in reality it probably only took a couple of minutes, but when the doctor turned the monitor off Natasha was filled with both relief and regret. Part of her didn’t think she could handle seeing whatever had been on that screen, while another part wished she would have looked for reasons she couldn’t quite grasp. No good could have come of it, yet part of her felt she should have looked, just once, that she should have seen it before it was gone and she never got another chance.
Shaking off these thoughts she wiped off her stomach and pushed herself up to sit. She somehow managed to steady herself in the face of company and button her shirt without issue, and for a long moment there was only silence as Tomasini organized his notes and Clint reclaimed his seat beside Natasha.
When he spoke she stopped breathing.
Everything looked normal. She was ten weeks along and everything looked normal. Ten weeks, more than two months, but everything looked normal. Difficult to conceive but not impossible, and not everything looked normal. Now that she had conceived there was no more danger than with other pregnancies, normal pregnancies. This could be a normal pregnancy.
She couldn’t process it. She had spent more than a decade believing she would never again conceive, and even if it somehow happened she could never carry to term. More than a decade believing her body would reject it. More than a decade... and that wasn’t something she would get over quickly nor easily. “I was told...” she started, her voice sounding faraway, shocked. “I had a miscarriage, a long time ago, and I was told I’d never carry to term.” She could never carry the baby, it would always die, so they had ‘fixed’ her, fixed her so she couldn’t conceive either. That’s what they had said.
They said a lot of things.
She felt ill again, lightheaded, and this time it was Clint she couldn’t bring herself to look at so she kept her eyes fixed on the doctor and tried to understand.
no subject
Shaking off these thoughts she wiped off her stomach and pushed herself up to sit. She somehow managed to steady herself in the face of company and button her shirt without issue, and for a long moment there was only silence as Tomasini organized his notes and Clint reclaimed his seat beside Natasha.
When he spoke she stopped breathing.
Everything looked normal. She was ten weeks along and everything looked normal. Ten weeks, more than two months, but everything looked normal. Difficult to conceive but not impossible, and not everything looked normal. Now that she had conceived there was no more danger than with other pregnancies, normal pregnancies. This could be a normal pregnancy.
She couldn’t process it. She had spent more than a decade believing she would never again conceive, and even if it somehow happened she could never carry to term. More than a decade believing her body would reject it. More than a decade... and that wasn’t something she would get over quickly nor easily. “I was told...” she started, her voice sounding faraway, shocked. “I had a miscarriage, a long time ago, and I was told I’d never carry to term.” She could never carry the baby, it would always die, so they had ‘fixed’ her, fixed her so she couldn’t conceive either. That’s what they had said.
They said a lot of things.
She felt ill again, lightheaded, and this time it was Clint she couldn’t bring herself to look at so she kept her eyes fixed on the doctor and tried to understand.