Chapter Text
I hear your voice on the phone
Now I'm no longer alone
Just how I feel
Could you tell me what's real anymore
'Cause I wouldn't know
i. after my picture fades // November 4, 2024
Becca’s galaxy projector bathes her bedroom in soft blue light, making her visible to Mel’s tired eyes. For three minutes now, she’s stared at her sister’s form in the center of the bed, still but for the gentle rise and fall of her chest—a far cry from Becca’s typical restless movement. She must be exhausted then. That makes two of them.
Despite her bone-deep weariness, Mel stands in the doorway—watching, waiting—until the shifting, swirling blue begins to make her queasy. For Becca’s sake, she tries to hold out, to ignore it, for as long as she can.
(Today, yes. But this isn’t just about today. Those same sentiments have held true for dangerously close to a month now, and time is running short.)
She makes it all of ninety seconds before she heaves. Mel’s palm finds her flat belly, her thumb stroking herself through a ratty t-shirt, as she retreats to the bathroom just in case. When nothing comes of it, she sits on the edge of the tub—never far, not this late at night; she’d learned that lesson two weeks ago when she’d had a series of near-misses—and reaches into a yellow, tin canister of cotton balls sitting on the vanity. Hidden beneath the white puffs is her stash of ginger candies, her constant companions lately. Mel unwraps one and pops it into her mouth, sucking carefully at the taste of strawberries and gentle heat.
Though she doesn’t replace the canister lid just yet, she deems it safe enough to scoot further from the toilet to rest her head against the cheap tile of the shower wall. The cool ceramic soothes her rapidly warming skin. Mel is grateful that she didn’t think to turn the heat back up when she and Becca came home earlier, her stubborn determination to keep the heating bill manageable suddenly paying off.
After a minute, Mel drifts. It’s difficult not to when she’s more exhausted than ever and has soothed no fewer than three of Becca’s meltdowns today. With the drop still lodged in the side of her cheek, she can’t have been dosing long. When she does come back to herself, she realizes she’d been unconsciously humming “Time After Time.” It’s only natural, of course; her mom always sang it to her and Becca when they felt poorly. Mel clutches the thin material of her shirt into a fist, suddenly overcome with a bone-deep need for her mother.
Eight years without Julia King, and Mel has learned how to navigate life without her in a lot of ways. That doesn’t stop her from missing her mom. Not even a little. She tried to keep herself from going there in the months after the funeral, tried to dam up the swell of memories and with them her tears. And when that failed, Mel tried to focus on the hard times, those when she’d felt invisible in light of Becca’s needs or when her mother was so burnt out that Mel tip-toed around her. Not everything in her childhood had been good, so if she could hold onto those things, maybe her mother’s absence would feel less like a mortal wound. But plenty of her childhood had been good—good enough, anyway—that eventually she gave that up too. Now, Mel just allows herself to ache for the woman she buried almost a decade ago. Her energy is so limited; why fight this?
Lately, Mel has missed her mom so much that she half-feels like she’s back in her dorm in Madison, packing up her room and, with it, her childhood and the future she once imagined for herself. This certainly wasn’t part of that future—alone and unexpectedly pregnant in the middle of her residency. Nowhere close to it, in fact. Maybe she once had some fleeting thought about bonding over motherhood with her mom when the time came. (And it would; Mel always imagined having children of her own). Now, Mel regrets not thinking about it harder at eighteen or nineteen or twenty when her mom had been alive. When she had the chance to ask.
She wants to know if it’d been like this for her too—bookending the day with pregnancy-related nausea. (To think of it as morning sickness just makes her grumpy; if only it contained itself to the morning). Mel wonders if there had been any particular food that her mother ate because it was the only thing she could keep down, if it was normal for King women to spend these early weeks surviving on toast, kiwi, and tater tots.
Did her mother have names for them this early? When did she realize that she loved them? Had she also seen that first sonogram photo every time she’d closed her eyes? What do those first movements feel like? Was what they say true: did things really start to improve in the second trimester? Would she crave things like peanut butter and pickles like in the movies? Would she be ready—
A wave of nausea washes over her. Mel’s face scrunches up, a pained squeak slipping past her lips. She holds her body rigid, takes shallow breaths, and waits until it passes.
And it’s for the best really, a visceral reminder of all the things she really should ask her mom: what was it like to do this alone? Had their father been a married man? Did she ever regret keeping them?
But no, even those questions don’t matter. None except the last one on the list. In some ways, Mel thinks it would be easier to learn that the answer to it was yes. It would give her peace of mind when she does what has to be done.
For another ten minutes, Mel sits in the bathroom and then shuffles down the hall to her bedroom. The small lamp illuminates her unmade bed and nightstand. Her eyes carefully avoid the phone that sits there charging, not only because its failing battery life today at the dentist served to remind her that it desperately needs to be replaced. Instead, she reaches blindly for the prenatals that have taken up residence next to it for the past three weeks. Their smell and taste put her off, but Mel swallows them anyway, grimacing.
She doesn’t need to—not really—but she feels like she owes it to Guppy to give them everything they need while they’re in there. Despite her desire for children, the idea has seemed increasingly laughable since her mom’s death. It’s not… it won’t be in the cards for her. How can it be? So, Mel supposes, this is it. This is her chance to be a good mother—the kind of mother she always wanted to be—for the short span of time that she will actually be one.
Not that she’s confident this even counts. When does being a mom start? But if this is the closest she will ever come, Mel can selfishly claim it for herself, right? Maybe never openly. People would judge her for that, worse than they already do. She would never do something as disrespectful like buying herself a cupcake or flowers on Mother’s Day, not when there are actual moms out there doing the hard work of raising a child.
But maybe… maybe privately? Maybe she can remind herself that, when it counted, she gave her baby—no, her fetus—what she could: vitamins, balanced meals (even if they stretched her budget too thin and came right back up), increased water intake, walking the block around PTMC two or three times before her shift for exercise. It wasn’t much, but it was everything she had.
Mel slides into bed and all but collapses on her back. Even though the sheets are slightly loose from the previous night, elastic long since worn out, energy to straighten them eludes her. These days, she all but passes out when her head hits the pillow.
That won’t happen tonight. It feels as if she’s reached the point of exhaustion where she’s wide awake with it. It’s uncomfortable, so much so that Mel writhes a bit, wincing in discomfort.
Typically, she would use her lava lamp or jellyfish livestream to self-regulate, but that would involve picking up her phone. And if she does, Mel will be met with a calendar notification, nondescript yet still so heavy: Clinic 11:15 AM. Her phone will let her know that she’s past due—an agenda item to be checked off and never was because Becca needed her. And alongside that notification, a voicemail from a kind receptionist, letting her know that they received her last minute cancellation and that she could call back if she needed to reschedule.
She does. She has to. The evidence lies next to the phone, tucked in a battered little notebook that she’s pored over every night for three weeks. In it, Mel recorded her monthly budget, adjusted to include the bare necessities an infant might need. The daycare costs alone had been staggering, doomed to eat away at the savings she’d started stashing away when she was in undergrad. And then the formula, because she couldn’t count on producing enough breastmilk or guarantee the baby would successfully feed. The diapers and wipes and accumulating laundry costs. The rise in her monthly insurance and grocery bill when the baby started on solids. And dozens of other things she hadn’t even considered.
The night she completed the budget, Mel left the apartment in a fog. She’d been careful not to wake Becca, her teeth lodged in her bottom lip until she reached her beat-up Honda. No sooner did the door shut than Mel let out a terrible sob—one that surely would have woken her sister—her hand curling towards her stomach but never quite making it. Mel didn’t stop until she’d fallen asleep against the wheel, all cried out.
Mel prides herself on her rational approach to things, examining the evidence and drawing reasoned conclusions. The budget should have been enough. She should have scheduled the termination the following day. Instead, Mel woke up to Mrs. Easley—Roberta in 2C—tapping on the car window, Percy leashed at her side, with a concerned frown on her lined face. Mel fumbled out of the car, wiping the dried patch of drool from the corner of her mouth, nausea and guilt swirling.
When Mrs. Easley asked, you didn’t sleep all night in your car, did you, honey? Everything okay?, Mel tried to hold it together. After all, Mrs. Easley had just had a heartattack, so she didn’t need to worry about Mel. Her emphatic, reassuring nod quickly turned into a childish cried confession though: she just really wanted her mom.
Mrs. Easley wrapped Mel up in her arms, Mel’s cries intensifying with the gentle rubbing on her back. Let it out, baby, Roberta soothed, but Mel thinks she probably would have anyway even if she didn’t receive permission. She couldn’t help it, not when she hadn’t felt a kind of maternal warmth enveloping her like this since her mom died.
After a minute or two, Mrs. Easley took her by the hand and led Mel upstairs to her apartment, sitting Mel at her kitchen table. Mel expected Roberta to sit down next to her and prompt Mel to tell her what was wrong. Instead, the aging woman took one look at her and began bustling around the kitchen, filling a pitcher with water and taking a container of Country Time mix from the cabinet.
Before she knew it, Mel had a plate of salty chips in front of her and a glass of lemonade. Something salty and sour always did the trick for me, Mrs. Easley explained. Only after Mel nibbled on a chip and took a sip of the drink did Mrs. Easley sit down. She didn’t understand how Roberta knew, but Mel figured it might have something to do with having four daughters and seven granddaughters—a family of women, intuition well-honed over the decades. Mel missed it—the way her mom could just look at her and Becca from the lawn chair in their postage stamp backyard and divine every thought the two of them had, good, bad, or otherwise.
Your man looking after you? Mrs Easley asked. Mel’s mind briefly drifted to the list written on the page before her budget in that little notebook: Things I Know About My Baby’s Father. Its contents were brief, its first (and nearly only) entry grim: he’s married.
She tried not to think of Dr. Langdon much, but her memories came unbidden—the way he ran around the ED with her that first day, how he reassured her that there was a place for her in this profession, the feel of his hands on her hips as he helped her into his car when her limbs turned shaky from her tears.
When she finally had command over her voice again, Mel told Mrs. Easley that he left. She didn’t bother to explain he was never really there to begin with, save for fifteen stolen hours on the best worst day of her life.
It’s strange how much she thought of him after he failed to show for his next shift—to the point of obsession at times—and how little she’s thought of him since taking those pregnancy tests. The opposite should be true; she’s carrying a piece of him inside of her, after all.
Almost unconsciously, her palm slips low on her belly as she lies awake in bed. Mel tries not to touch herself too much—for fear of revealing her secret in front of others, for fear of feeling anything for Guppy that she can’t allow herself to feel—and always manages to keep her shirt as a barrier between her skin. Tonight, maybe due to her shifting with discomfort, the hem of her shirt rides up a little higher, her pinky finger finding a thin strip of exposed skin beneath her bellybutton. A whine escapes her throat.
She needs to get rid of the baby—the fetus, damn it—but pipedreams of another postage stamp backyard and a small kitchen table with seating for three fill her mind. Mel imagines a baby girl with blonde braids, wearing a little swimsuit with starfish and ruffles, splashing in a kiddie pool while Becca reads the latest celebrity gossip from the lawn chair, her own pink-painted toes splashing next to her niece. She fantasizes about a full life for three King girls and not two—of tooth fairy visits, of Becca’s carefully planned themed birthdays for her favorite tiny person, of too-early Christmas mornings and wrapping paper strewn across their living room floor. She dreams of a second Julia King, a name she knows Becca will readily agree to, not just because of their mother but because she can easily quote every one of Julia Stiles’ lines from 10 Things I Hate About You.
It wouldn’t be an easy life, but it would be a good one. Or at least, a life full of love and laughter amidst the challenges. And how long had it been since she and Becca could say that they’ve had that?
Mel shuts her eyes tightly, mouth pulling into a grimace. She can’t. Love and laughter don’t provide maternity leave. They don’t put food on the table or pay for outrageously priced daycares. Maybe if this had happened in two years, after she finished her residency, Mel could justify choosing what she really wanted. But it’s happening now. Her ba—her fe—Guppy is growing beneath her skin, the size of a strawberry.
(Around 4 centimeters actually, but Mel likes the fruit and vegetable measurements even if they’re not scientifically accurate. She desperately wants to download the app—to look at it every day and memorize all the information—but won’t allow herself. Not when she’ll just have to delete it anyway).
Tears well in her eyes, but she keeps them focused on the ceiling. Mel’s fingers spread, her ring finger nestling beside her pinky.
“I want you,” she says, speaking aloud to her baby for the first time. “I do. More than anything.”
She owes Guppy this—the truth of the matter. If she’s going to go through with the abortion, Mel needs to explain. She doesn’t have the time to say everything. She can’t even name some of the emotions in her chest.
(One of Mel’s earliest memories is lying in her bed, getting kissed on the head by her mother at bedtime. Love you to the moon and back! she chirped. And her mother answered, stroking her hair, I love you more than words can say. A refrain her mother said for years, one that Mel thought was hyperbolic though no less real for it. Now, Mel realizes it hadn’t been hyperbolic at all).
“I love you more than words can say,” Mel whispers, knowing it to be true. Feeling her mother from across the years of absence as if she were right there, kissing her forehead once more.
Mel doesn’t want to do this. Part of her feared what might happen if she missed her appointment today, feared she might not be able to work up the courage again to be so selfless. Her life has been filled with sacrifices made for the greater good. She’s had so much practice; this should be no different. And yet for whatever reason, she wants to do the most selfish thing in the world.
Mel needs to call Dr. Langdon. She didn’t want it to come to this, but it may have to. If she can’t work up the courage, at least he’ll be able to apply pressure to make her do the right thing. After all, there’s no way he’s going to want this. He’s happily married with small children. What happened between them, it was a lapse of judgment borne of trauma. He wanted to look after her; she took his kindness and warped it into something more, something sexual, when she leaned forward to kiss him.
And maybe… maybe he would feel a responsibility to her—for a woman he doesn’t even know—because he’s a good man. That’s under normal circumstances, though. Dr. Robby said Dr. Langdon took a leave of absence to deal with a personal matter, and his return date was yet to be determined. If something is going on with his family—and it has to be that because Mel doesn’t want to believe any of the cruel rumors about him—he won’t want to support her through an accidental pregnancy. It’ll cause him too much stress and jeopardize his marriage to a woman he committed himself to forever. Who would risk all that for a nobody?
Mel looks to the left, her eyes falling heavy on the phone at the edge of her bedside table. She just has to pick it up—use the number she got from Dr. McKay under false pretenses—and all of this will be over. If he doesn’t answer, she can leave a voice message: Hello, Dr. Langdon. This is Melissa King. We met the day of the Pittfest shooting. I’m the new R2. Uh, I had a braid and glasses? You probably don’t remember me, but—
And there she goes, fumbling her way through it even in her imagination. Overexplaining like she always does. And what happens when she gets through all of that? She can’t very well announce her pregnancy via voicemail. Mel refuses to put his marriage at risk. Maybe: I was wondering if you had time to meet-up? Well… is that something she even wants? Possibly! Seeing the look of disappointment, or even horror, on his face might be all she needs to go through with it. It would hurt so much to see, to know, that Dr. Langdon, who by all accounts is a loving father, would reject Guppy outright like that. But, maybe she needs to be hurt.
If she reaches for the phone now—no matter how much she will hate herself for it, for her failure as a mother to protect the little life she loves—Mel will be able to do the selfless thing. It’s in her nature, written into her DNA almost as much as Becca, with her high support needs, was formed beside her. If she can just bring herself to press call, the hardest part will be over. Just a little nudge is all it will take. Mel stares the phone down and allows herself to imagine the relief she’ll feel when this is all over.
Mel’s palm slips lower, her thumb pushing the hem of her shirt out of the way, until her hand rests flush against her belly protectively. The relief never comes. Because who could hate Guppy, who is so tiny and doing their best to grow? Who is innocent in this whole mess, but who—along with Mel—will pay the biggest price for their parents’ mistake.
She blinks back her tears. Guppy is perfect and hers. If she calls Dr. Langdon now, she exposes her child to their father’s rejection.
That’s not what she wants; she and Becca have had to live with their own father’s absence since birth, a man whose name they don’t even know. What she wants more than anything is to hold her baby in her arms and promise them that they are so loved. That even if no one else is, Mommy and Aunt Becca will always be there because they can’t imagine their lives without them. But in order for that to happen, Mel has to continue alone on a difficult, maybe even impossible, road.
A moment later, she turns back to the ceiling, her bedside lamp making the stark white a warm cream. Her throat constricts as she swallows. Mel rolls onto her right side. On that bedside table sits a picture of her, Becca, and their mother at her and Becca’s third grade concert: Becca dressed as a cat and Mel as a bunny. Now, she can see the tiredness in her mother’s eyes in ways she hadn’t as a child, but her smile, identical to Mel’s, still outshines the rest of it. Mel remembers getting frozen yogurt after—a rare treat—and sitting next to their mom, kicking her feet as she shoveled the strawberry dessert into her mouth while listening to Becca perform a one-woman version of the whole concert, her spoon a makeshift microphone.
Next to the photo is a dish of trinkets: her mother’s watch, the key to her childhood home, her grandparents’ wedding rings, a tiny bottle filled with sand from four of the five Great Lakes, the friendship bracelet Becca made her before they dropped her off at UW, resin earrings in the shape of rabbits that hold forget-me-nots from their mom’s funeral arrangement.
Memories from a hard life, but a life worth living all the same.
And in the drawer beneath, a small chest that’s gone unopened, last closed by Julia King’s loving hands. Inside rests a thick stack of family photos, from black and white to color, of people gone but not forgotten, their names written in her mother’s frail hand. A collection of Mother’s Day cards from a time when the King sisters were less Mel and Becca and more mElanbBecA. Mel’s first pair of glasses and a square from Becca’s favorite blanket. At the very bottom lies folded two newborn sleepers, Mel’s pink and Becca’s yellow, that the girls wore when they came home from the hospital after their three-week stay.
Mel never thought she would have a use for them, not after she turned twenty. Not after they buried their mother and her long-term boyfriend abandoned her. But maybe she thinks, her hand still pressed firmly against her belly, maybe she has a reason after all.