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Apr 8

Sympathy Pains

Fandom: The Resident (2018) Summary: Conrad's father is in the hospital with a flare up of his Crohn's Disease and Conrad has convinced himself that he's having sympathy pains. Warnings: Mpreg, cryptic pregnancy, childbirth, and medical inaccuracies Word Count: 9,279 Ship(s): Conrad Hawkins/Devon Pravesh

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Having one’s parent in the hospital was never an easy thing to navigate, but it was even more complicated for one Conrad Hawkins.

His father had been about as distant as could be. He sent friends and other family members in his place when it came to things like school plays and Parent-Teacher Conferences. Sometimes he would even call Conrad moments before the game or other special event to apologize that something at work had come up and he wasn’t going to be able to make it. While he had appreciated it as a child and pretended that he had understood it, the abandonment for a business he didn’t care about or understand had hurt more than he would ever be able to say out loud. He had grown further and further away from his father until the divorce had happened, which had forced the two of them back into the same house. His teenage-hood had been spent sneaking out with older women to get to any kind of hijinks that he could, which resulted in him being shipped off to a military school when he was seventeen. After that, the two of them had barely spoken to each other and their relationship had become so frayed that Conrad wasn’t sure that his father had even remembered had a son outside of when someone in the press asked him about it.

That was, of course, until Marshall had decided that he needed to be involved with Conrad and found him in Georgia. The two of them had been doing a rather complicated dance to keep close to each other while also maintaining a distance that would result in neither of them having the ability tog et hurt again. The proximity of that dance was enough to reopen the wounds that Conrad had thought he had buried under miles and miles of scar tissue.

Then, his father had collapsed in more pain than he thought the rather heartless man was capable of. A cascade of events followed after that, in which he learned that his father had Crohn’s disease that he had been fighting with for most of his adult life and had just never bothered to mention. On top of learning that his father was disabled with something that could also disable him, he had to deal with the idea that he had resented the man for too long and might lose him without being able to rectify their relationship the way that he had always dreamed of.

The stress was starting to get to him. He was doing a very good job of managing the medical team that had been assigned to his father’s case, even if he wasn’t allowed to make any of the shots of treatment plans himself. It was probably the most time that he had spent in the same room as Marshall since that flight when he was in high school, the one that sent him so impossibly far away.

“Conrad? Are you sure that you’re okay?” Nic asked as she caught her shoulder under his hand.

She had done something very similar back when they were together, which seemed like a world away now. They had broken up after she had a miscarriage and he had been unable to keep his anger under control in a way that made her comfortable. They found that they worked better as friends anyway, which gave Conrad the space to go to therapy and start working on all the issues that his father and the military had left with him. During the time where he had her support to go to therapy and work through his issues, he had found a relationship that was a lot better for him than he expected it would be and could see that Nic was close to having the same thing with a certain female surgical resident.

“I don’t know,” he answered after a long moment of silence. “I feel like my stomach is in knots, it’s actually starting to fucking hurt.”

She looked at him for a long moment and then cocked her head to the side in curiosity. “Do you think that it could be sympathy pains or something? Doctors are known to experience those from time to time when they’re working very closely with a patient that means a lot to them,” she commented. She could read him like an open book, had been since they were first together after that night in the bar.

“I think that I would actually have to be attached to the patient for that to be the case,” he snarked back. He knew that her theory probably had some basis in reality for her to be suggesting that, she wasn’t the kind of person that would run around and babble whatever popped into her head first without thinking about it. A larger part of him that was panicking over everything concerning the situation wanted to deny anything that she said so vehemently that she never brought it up again. It wasn’t fair to either of them, but the pain in his gut was making him cranky.

Nic looked over at him for a long moment. “Fine. Let me know if it gets any worse and then we can check you out. Maybe you’ve given yourself an ulcer in one day. You were always so good at finding things that were almost impossible.”

Conrad rolled his eyes affectionately at her as she continued on her way down the hall to her next patient. He loitered outside of his father’s room for a bit longer before he decided that he really should get back to his patients.

Despite the mental block that he had tried to put up between himself and his stress, the pain in his gut continued to get worse. It had started out as some mild discomfort and pain, as if he were nearing the edge of his cycle, but then it got more intense very suddenly.

The pain had started at the very base of his hips and then crept up his spine. Once it had reached his waist, it spread around his stomach like a fist was grabbing every single muscle in his belly. It was intense enough that it knocked the air out of him and filled his thoughts with only the processing of what it felt like. He could feel tendrils of pain reaching down his legs and up into his chest like some sort of grotesque tumor was threatening to take over his body.

Conrad placed his hand on the edge of the wall so that he could stabilize himself for a moment before he pushed off and made his way as quickly down the hall as he could. Not only was his father in the hospital today, suddenly bringing the realization of how shit their relationship was to the forefront of his mind, but Devon was also having a very hard time. The other man’s parents had heard that he was seeing someone new and took one of their vacations to come see him in the hopes that they would get to meet said person.

Hinduism didn’t lend itself directly towards homophobia the way that Christianity did, seeing the gift of carriers as something that should be worshipped and appreciated instead of scorned as a curse of Satan. They had also lived in New York and worked with the public for long enough that they tolerance had grown to be rather impressive. The problem wasn’t that they wouldn’t accept Conrad and Devon’s relationship because they were two men, but because of the fundamental dynamic that they had with their son. This was stressful for them both because Devon often felt suffocated by his parents.

Conrad let out a breath and brushed his hand through his hair once he was sure that the pain had eased up enough that he would be able to breathe properly again. He stalked down the hall to the main floor where Devon was still helping Irving in the ER. The moment that he stepped over the designated zone where the department started, he felt some of his tension melt from his shoulders. It was easy to melt into the chaos of the space, the smell of cleaner and grime mixing together as an accentuation of the calmness of the routine and the panic of the unique. It was where Conrad had loved working when he was an intern and choosing his speciality, and where he felt most like himself now that he was a teacher.

Devon and Irving were both standing near the nurse’s station as they chatted with Ellen. There were a few of the other nurses and residents that had been assigned to help in the ER talking with patients and family in the waiting room and over by the examination tables. Conrad paused his movements and eased the weight off his bad knee once he had reached the trio. He slipped his arm around the Devon’s waist and pressed a subtle kiss to his cheek.

“Gross, you two,” Irving pretended to gag. He reached over the counter of the nurse’s station to make a grab for something, but he was unable to get it because Hundley smacked his hand and he withdrew it like a child.

“Ask, Feldman,” she chided.

“Please?” he pouted his bottom lip out and did something with his eyes that might have been considered puppy-dog ish, if he were the kind of dog that had barely any hair.

Ellen looked at him for a long while before she finally smiled at him, clear that she was giving in. “Fine, go ahead,” she removed her hand from the top of the jar to reveal that it was some kind of candy, likely given to her by a thankful patient. She sighed as Irving began to dig through the colors to find the one remaining blue candy. She then turned to Devon and Conrad with a bemused look on her face. “I thought for sure that I had left all my kids at home, but apparently one of them just lives here. Never bring your kids to work, you two.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be a huge problem for us. Chickens don’t like the hospital anyway,” Conrad laughed. He had managed to convince Devon to move them into an apartment outside of the city so that they could have some clearer natural air, which was better for his asthma. With a house that actually had a yard and a fence and no HOA breathing down their neck had come a chicken coop and birds raised from hatching.

Devon jerked like he had only just realized that Conrad was next to him and speaking like actual humans did. His face softened into an adoring smile as he leaned further into his boyfriend. “Hey, sweetie. How’s your dad doing?”

“About as well as can be expected from someone of his age who is having a Crohn’s flare up so bad that it landed him into the hospital. We’re still hoping that we can avoid surgery, though. He keeps asking to be transferred to Atlanta General,” Conrad brought a hand up to his back and began to rub the space between his hips. He could feel the same pressure-pain building up there as had in the hallway upstairs about ten minutes earlier.

“He probably just doesn’t want you or any of his employees to see him in a weakened state. Could always be worried about them not making the right call too, if they’re worried that they and their whole family could lose their jobs or something,” Devon shrugged.

“You’re so wise,” Conrad teased. He removed the hand from his back so that he could boop Devon on the nose, mostly to make Irving roll his eyes in play annoyance again, but then immediately regretted it. When he wasn’t massaging his back with his fist, the pain was so much more intense than it had been before.

His breath caught in his throat when the pain echoed up through his body and stole the air from his lungs once more. His fingers dug into the material of Devon’s scrubs since he had nothing else to cling to and his hearing whited out for a second. “Babe, you okay?” Devon asked once he had come back to himself enough to process what words were.

“Yeah. I think maybe I’m having sympathy pains from my dad or something. Nic said that psychosomatic symptoms are a thing for doctors or nurses that are really close to the patient that they’re trying to treat,” Conrad mumbled. “Fuck, that really hurt.”

“Would you let me check you out?” Devon asked. He was so quick to jump to that, always assuming that there was something bigger lurking under the surface than what Conrad had initially fessed up to. It was a valid thing to worry about given the amount of illnesses and injuries that Conrad had hid from him during the year or so that they had been together.

“Devon. I promise you that I’m fine. It’s all in my head,” Conrad shook his head to dismiss the request.

“It might not be, Conrad. Usually when something is psychosomatic there’s something underlying that makes the pain start even if the brain takes over and warps it into something else,” Devon argued. He was so good at pulling arguments out of his ass and presenting them as if they were the most obvious thing in the entire world.

Conrad pursed his lips as he looked over his partner for a long moment. He wanted nothing more than to wander through the beds of patients and help them the way that they needed. He wanted to lose himself in the problems of others and not have to deal with any of the shit that was plaguing his brain space. At this point, he would even take the most awkward conversation in the world with Devon’s parents instead of focusing on his own problems.

Their eyes met each other for a long while, the sounds of the ER fading out into nothing but buzzing around them. Conrad could see how dedicated his partner was to this idea and knew that he wouldn’t let it go until he had fulfilled the idea to his own standards. “Fine,” he sighed dramatically.

“Thank you,” Devon leaned forward and kissed his cheek affectionately. Conrad had removed his arm from around Devon’s waist when they had turned to face each other, which allowed Devon to thread their fingers together. He used the connection to bring them to one of the unused examination rooms, flicking the occupied sign into place and closing the door behind him.

“Do you think that you can lay down and pull your shirt up? I want to palpate your abdomen,” Devon asked after he had checked the basics out to make sure nothing was immediately wrong.

Conrad rolled his eyes, half affectionately, as he tugged his shirt up so that it revealed his abdomen. He hadn’t been shirtless in front of Devon very often in the last three months or so because he was feeling rather self conscious about the way that he was looking nowadays. He had always tried to work out two or three times a week, usually on the days when he was trying to sleep and rest after a shift, and it had kept him in peak physical form. He had good legs that helped him with his work, sculpted biceps that Devon basically worshipped, and most importantly he had washboard abs. Over the last couple of months, despite continuing on with his workouts as he had before, the skin of his stomach had softened noticeably and left him almost pudgy looking in his belly.

Devon, of course, did not comment on it. He rubbed his hands together after he had applied the sanitizing gel. Conrad smiled softly to himself as he saw his boyfriend go on for a little longer than he needed to so that his hands would heat after the cool liquid had dropped the temperature.

He averted his eyes up towards the ceiling for a moment and then let them fall shut when he felt Devon’s hands drop down onto his abdomen. He let out a low breath as he felt the pressure being applied to the spot under his ribs and then down, then over, and then up again. It felt the most uncomfortable when it was in the cradle of his hips, but he wasn’t sure if that was because the problem was located there or because he was feeling particularly self conscious about it.

“Conrad, when was the last time that you went to the bathroom? Are you feeling particularly backed up or anything?” Devon asked.

It was a weird question to have to answer, but he supposed that Devon was his doctor in the current moment instead of his boyfriend like he was used to. He still brought his hands up to his face and scrubbed over the beard there as he tried to work his mind through the complicated set of emotions that were rushing through him now. “Uh, I think that I went in the last day or so. I haven’t really been keeping track of that shit recently, but I know that I’m not constipated right now.”

“If you’re not constipated then I would like to get some imaging done, maybe an ultrasound. It feels like there’s something firm in your abdomen around your pelvis. I want to make sure that it’s nothing that we should be concerned about,” Devon explained. He was already tapping away on the tablet that he had grabbed from the nurse’s station before they had left to go to the examination room.

It took a great deal of effort for Conrad to resist the urge to groan or complain like some kind of child. He knew that Devon was listing him as a patient with all of the information that he already knew from the ankle incident the year before and their time dating each other. It made sense, so that their insurance could pay the hospital and none of the higher ups would have something to get mad at them about. Still, he didn’t like the idea that he was taking time and resources away from other patients. Even if those resources were upload and download speeds on the hospital’s robust Wi-Fi system.

“Okay, stay here. If I come back and you’ve made some kind of grand mistake, I will actually murder you in real life,” Devon said. He had turned the tablet off and was clutching it in his arm and against his chest like he was a high schooler asking Conrad out in a rom-com instead of an almost fully fledged doctor.

Conrad gave him a weak thumbs up. His resolve to get up and be stubborn was waning anyway, not that he wanted to tell his boyfriend that. In truth, he had felt like shit for months now and had been entirely unable to figure out why. He had a brief bout of stomach flu about seven months prior in which he could barely keep anything down for a week, and the nausea from that had never really left him even if his appetite had increased exponentially. He often felt like he had a cold or some kind of flu, his face plugged up with mucus and his skin feeling feverishly sensitive. His pants had stopped fitting around the time that he had noticed his abs disappearing, which had tanked his mental health and didn’t help in the slightest bit with the physical symptoms that he had been having.

A breath stuttered in his throat when he felt the pressure beginning to build up in the base of his spine and creep around his pelvis. It overwhelmed him with a sudden bout of shocking pain that knocked his hearing out for a long moment. All he could focus in was drawing in slow breath after slow breath, trying not to let his head swim in the ocean of pain that it was tipping closer and closer towards. He didn’t want to concern Devon more than he already was, even if the pains were getting so much more intense than they had been when he left his father’s room.

He was truly beginning to doubt Nic’s diagnosis, probably for the first time since they had met each other and subsequently began to work side by side. She was a wonderful nurse and more knowledgeable than half of the doctors that he had interacted with, but she was still only human. She was bound to have made mistakes at some point, really ones that didn’t involve patient murder, and this had to be one of them.

“Love, you okay?” Devon asked when he appeared in the doorway of the room with an ultrasound machine tugging behind him.

“Just having another one of those sympathy pains or whatever. Do you think that I could have Crone’s too? It’d be weird if it showed up the moment that my dad finally revealed that he’s been living with a chronic illness his whole life,” Conrad rambled. It was easier to let all the words spill from his lips to fill the silence of the room than to retreat back into his dangerous and terrifying thoughts. He didn’t know what they would bring him, what danger he would find there when he started putting his own symptoms together. It was one thing to have to treat another doctor that thought they knew what they were suffering with, but it was an entirely worse thing to be a specialized diagnostician that was trying to riddle out their own symptoms.

He had barely even realized that his own words had stopped before he felt Devon’s hand come down on his shoulder. His eyes snapped up from where they had been staring at the ripped parts of his cuticles and he saw the placid, comforting look that Devon had perfected when he was working with very worried patients. It was an important thing for a doctor that worked so often in the ER to have, but it disconcerted Conrad even more to have it pointed at him.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Do you think that it’s something worse than Crone’s or something?”

Devon shook his head immediately. “Hey, it’s going to be okay,” he assured his partner. “I’m not going to tell you what I felt or what I think that it might be because that’s only going to stress you out more than it already is. I’m going to finish performing my tests and then we’re going to figure out how to handle this together. We’re a team, that’s what we do,” he said it with such confidence that there was nothing that Conrad could do other than fully and wholeheartedly believe him.

He took in a deep breath that felt as though it barely filled his lungs and then gave a weak nod of his heads. “Okay. I trust you.”

That meant more to Conrad that saying that he loved Devon. He barely trusted anyone due to his father’s flakiness and his mother’s reliance on the bottle. The only person that he could trust when he was growing up was himself, Marshall was too invested in his business and image to be a parent and Georgianna had prioritized her relationship with their neighbor and the bottle over her own son. It was hard for him to put his faith or trust into anyone other than himself after learning such a hard lesson when he was only a child. He was glad that he had found people that had earned that kind of trust and reliance, especially since it was reciprocated just as fiercely from his partner.

Devon leaned forward and stole a quick kiss from him before he pushed Conrad properly back down into the examination table. That was enough to make them both smile, some of the worry and tension fading from the room.

The intern grabbed the gel that was attached to the portable ultrasound machine and squeezed a good portion of it onto Conrad’s stomach. He applied the plastic cover to the wand before he lathered more lube onto that as well. After making sure that everything was clean and the glide would be smooth, he placed the wand down on his partner’s abdomen. It concaved the skin there just enough to look uncomfortable, but not enough to be painful.

Conrad watched his boyfriend instead of the screen while Devon did the examination, as he had half promised to do with that kiss earlier. He knew that his partner had done more than his fair share of ultrasounds while trying to diagnose what was wrong with certain patients when they weren’t able to get a tech to come and look at it. He also knew, however, that Devon was still only a young resident and it was going to be hard on him to try and make sure that he got everything right when he was doing such a serious examination.

“Woah,” Devon breathed after a long moment of pressing the wand around Conrad’s stomach in search of what was wrong.

“What is it?” Conrad asked. His resolve snapped then and he tilted his head to the side so that he was staring at the black and white screen of the ultrasound. The shapes moved and tilted with each other when the wand shifted minutely, but it was evident what he was looking at. He could see the dark black shape of liquid in the shape of a uterus and inside was the obvious outline of a baby.

Fear and panic immediately rushed through him as he sat up on the table. It knocked the wand off of his stomach and dripped some of the excess gel down onto his scrub bottoms, but he couldn’t bring himself to care in that moment. His heart was in his throat and it felt like he was having the worst asthma attack of his entire life. “Is that in me?”

“Conrad,” Devon said. His voice was still level and patient, but it was also laced with affection and just a little bit of panic. In any other situation, Conrad would have been proud of what how well he had taught Devon and how much his partner had been able to pick up on those small lessons. Given that he was currently the patient and what he had seen would change their entire life, that thought only crossed his mind for a fraction of a second.

“Devon, was that a fucking baby?” Conrad asked. His hand flew out towards his partner and grasped at his arm, fingers wrapping around Devon’s wrist so that his partner wouldn’t be able to escape from him.

Having become used to this kind of panic response when he was helping Conrad with his PTSD late at night or after a particularly difficult patient, Devon twisting his hand to the side and escaped the hold. He placed his hands instead down onto Conrad’s shoulders for a moment and then forcefully tilted his partner’s face towards him so that they were staring at each other. “Conrad, I don’t want you to have an asthma attack right now. Can you breathe with me and try to calm down?”

“Calm down? You want me to calm down when I just fucking found out that I was pregnant?” Conrad asked. He knew that he was yelling, he hated that his anger problems came back full force when he was dealing with something that scared or upset him. Devon wasn’t Nic, though, and he didn’t flinch back at the raised volume or the harsh words that were spilling out of his mouth.

“Yes, I want you to calm down. You know that when patients get upset it usually makes the problems that they’re dealing with worse than when they came in,” Devon said seriously. He locked eyes with his boyfriend for a very long moment before they both began to take in deep breaths and then let them out slowly.

It took about four minutes before Conrad had successfully calmed down to the point where his inhaler could remain in his pocket instead of having to be administered. Devon dropped his hands down from his partner’s shoulders and then took his boyfriend’s hand. “I know that this is a lot to take in, but I think that you’ve had a cryptic pregnancy. Based on the size of the baby from the brief ultrasound you let me do, it looks like you’re well passed the point where you could get an abortion.”

“I wouldn’t want one anyway,” Conrad shook his head. “I don’t think that I could go through something like Nic’s miscarriage without it damaging me even more.”

“Okay, well thankfully that’s not something that we have to consider,” Devon gave a weak smile. “Do you think that you’re going to be okay to be admitted? I have a feeling that the cramps are something more than round ligament pain.”

“Fuck,” Conrad whispered. The realization of what was happening came crashing down on him all at once. The burst of energy that he’d had earlier in the morning when he came to work wasn’t just him being excited for the coming work day, it was a sign that he was going into labor. It explained some of the nausea that he’d had earlier in the day and the cramping that was plaguing him. It was a terrifying thought, the idea that the baby could be coming at any time and he had only just learned about their existence.

A steady hand on his back brought him back down to earth where he belonged and he felt his shoulders loosen. “We’re going to take this one step at a time, okay? Let’s get you admitted to the hospital and someone with more expertise than me can help figure out where we go from here.”

Conrad felt the urge to shake his head, to scream and hit things and try to force the world to do as he wanted so that he didn’t have to deal with any of this shit. Some of the words that his therapist had spoken to him back when he had been able to attend their sessions returned to him. He tried to let the anger just fester in his chest in the hopes that it would burn itself out instead of allowing it to flow through him and cause an explosion like it wanted to. He gave Devon a shaky nod once he had breathed in and out fully a few more times.

He took the paper towel that was offered to him and wiped off the lube that had stayed on his stomach when his scrub top had fallen back down over himself and the drips that had gotten onto his pants when the wand fell out of Devon’s hand. The pair would have to be washed sooner rather than later if they didn’t want it to stain, but they weren’t technically his so he couldn’t really bring himself to care.

He got off of the bed and wrapped his arm around Devon’s so that he felt more like he was walking down the halls of the hospital with a shield by his side instead of being completely and utterly exposed to anything that the world could throw at him. When they stepped out of the examination room and started towards the elevator that would lead them up to the OB floor, he felt as though every single person that they passed was turning their heads to stare at him. He knew, logically, that they were all continuing about their business.

Him and Devon walking while being close to each other wasn’t exactly abnormal since it was hard for either of them to keep their hands to themselves when they were together, even after their two-year anniversary had come and gone. No one was going to do more than glance at them as they passed to make sure that they were people who were supposed to be in the hospital. The only ones that knew something was wrong were their friends, and he trusted those people with the knowledge that his father was in the hospital so he would be able to trust them with the new discovery that the two of them had just made.

He was breathing shakily and could feel a knot of tears forming in his throat by the time that they finally got to the check in desk at the OB station. Devon handled all of the talking while Conrad let his mind run absolutely wild with everything that had just happened down in the examination room downstairs. He felt uncomfortable and out of his safety zone standing here, with people he barely knew. He felt as though everyone’s eyes had turned on him and were boring into his very being, seeing things that he hadn’t been able to see in himself. He had always prided himself in being able to identify what was wrong with someone by looking over them and getting a list of their symptoms alone, not even having to run that many tests, so it only made sense that his own mind would turn that against him in this way.

His breaths were coming out in short pants and his brain felt as though it had become full of static. He wasn’t in control of his body anymore, someone else was driving it and making his mouth speak as he answered questions. He wasn’t really aware of what was happening around him, simply focusing on the life that he was growing in his belly instead.

Devon helped him go back to the room that he had been checked into. He sat down on the edge of them patient bed and then answered all of the questions that the doctor asked. Most of them were about his previous medical history, some of them were about if he had noticed anything pregnancy-related in the past few months. He had felt Devon’s hand slip against his own palm during that part as he thought back to all the signs he had dismissed as stress from his father being around.

Guilt welled up in his chest and threatened to consume him. He had been a carrier for his entire life, had male partners before that activated his cycle and threatened to bring an unwanted pregnancy into his life. On top of all of that, he was also a doctor and a diagnostician. He should have been able to see what was wrong with his body before anyone else, should have realized that there was a tiny baby growing bigger and bigger inside of the depths of his abdomen. The fact that he had missed it all didn’t make sense to him. He knew about cryptic pregnancies, he knew that they were common with carriers than they were with AFAB people, and yet still it didn’t connect in his mind.

He barely paid attention to what was happening with his body when he was changed from his scrubs, stained with the lubrication from his earlier ultrasound, into one of the hospital gowns that he had heard so many patients complain about over the years. His legs were snuggled down into the thin blanket on the bed as the gown was brought up over his stomach so that it rested between his pectorals. Devon took his hand again and he turned his head slowly to the side.

Their eyes met, worry and support and a million other emotions transferring between the two of them with a simple short look. Conrad continued to take in the features of his boyfriend as the wand of the ultrasound came down on his belly again to check the baby from someone that was an expert in pregnancy. He trusted Devon to have recognized a pregnancy properly, but since he’d had no medical care throughout the actual process they were going to have to have someone that knew what they were doing check to make sure that things were alright.

“Looks like baby has gotten themself into a little bit of a mess,” the doctor said as they placed the wand back down on the holder beside the machine. The screen had frozen where they had been looking last, allowing them to have the space to show off what was happening since they had already taken in all the information that they needed. “You see this white mark here? That’s the umbilical cord. This is the baby’s neck, where the cord is wrapped around. Sometimes this happens and it’s not always emergent, but I’m not completely comfortable with how tight it is. Would you mind if I did an internal examination to see how far along you are?”

“How would that tell you my gestational time?” Conrad asked. His mind was so full of guilt and fog that he could barely even process what the doctor was trying to ask. He was sure that they would have explained further if he hadn’t been a doctor himself, most people assumed that he knew what they were talking about when something was medically wrong with him. No one other than Nic and Devon knew the extent of his dissociation when he was in some sort of pain or turmoil.

“Love, they meant that they wanted to see how far your labor has progressed. They mentioned earlier that the baby is about thirty seven weeks based on the thigh measurement,” Devon murmured against his hair.

Conrad gave a hazy nod. “You can do the examination. I want the baby to be okay,” he said.

The doctor nodded. Another few moments passed as Conrad moved his legs into the stirrups on either side of the bed so that his pelvis was open and the doctor was going to be able to do their work. He felt cold lube and gloved hands touch the cleft of his buttcheek before two fingers inserted through his anus to feel for the vaginal opening that connected to his rectum. He grunted and turned his face away when the pressure of the intrusion came to its peak as the doctor found his cervix, spreading fingers and turning the hand to make sure that things were okay.

A glove snapping off of a hand was the first noise that brought him back to himself. He gave a shaky breath as he looked towards the doctor and waited for the information. “It looks like you’re not quite effaced yet and about two centimeters dilated. I’m really not happy with the placement of the cord around baby’s neck, so I would like to proceed with a C-section for their safety.”

Conrad wanted to cry.

The last time that he had been in a serious surgery, more than numbing part of his skin so that shrapnel could be removed, was when he had busted his knee. He had been in and out of the hospital for months, the recovery and physical therapy of the whole ordeal lasting even longer. It was the most pain that he had ever been in and it had lasted for just enough time that he thought he would never be able to escape it. Sometimes when he was asleep, or supposed to be, he could still feel the burning heat spreading from the joint up his thigh and down the bone of his calf.

The idea of being put back into a surgical suite as the patient terrified him. He heard the heart monitor beside him pick up when the surgery was suggested, though it sounded far away and somehow underwater. He couldn’t be strapped down to the bed with other people walking around him and making decisions for him, unable to do anything to push them away if and when he became uncomfortable to the point of anger with what was happening.

He felt a familiar hand land down on his shoulder then and his eyes snapped up from where he was staring down into his lap. “Conrad, I want you to breathe for me while we talk about this. It’s just us in the room, I asked the nurse on shift to make sure that we weren’t disturbed unless it was an absolute emergency. Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” he replied weakly. He felt so entirely unlike himself, the fear and discomfort with what was happening pushing every facet of his being to the side in an attempt to protect him. “Devon, I don’t know if I can do this.”

Devon reached down and took his hand, brushing over his knuckles with the edge of his thumb. “Conrad,” he smiled at the mirror of how his boyfriend had started the conversation proper. “I know that you can do this. It’s scary and it’s face and it’s overwhelming, sure. But we had both talked about wanting to have kids in the future, so we both know that the other person isn’t going to bail. We’re going to do this together. We also have one Hell of a support system in the hospital and outside of it that can help us out. I’m sure that my mom is already getting a sixth sense tingle to come move in with us for a few months.”

Conrad let out a barking laugh at that. He loved Devon’s mom wholeheartedly, she was everything that he had wanted in his own neglectful mother and more. It did make him feel better to think of Himaya making them lunches and dinners while doting over the grandchild that had just surprised them. That brought him to the fact that the kid actually had to come out, though, which was what he was currently struggling with. “Do you… do you think that I can do the surgery?”

His boyfriend’s face was eternally soft and adoring as he gave his hand another reassuring squeeze. “Conrad, you have done more things than a single person should have ever been able to do. You were a war medic, you saved countless people with knowledge that no one else in the world has, you’ve carried people up flights of stairs after explosions, you managed to make me look like I could actually be a functional person, you’re amazing. I know that you can do the surgery, because you’re amazing at doing hard things. And you won’t be alone. I’ll be with you the entire time.”

Conrad sat there for a long moment as he took in the words that his partner was saying. He knew that Devon was right, he had always faced the challenges that the world had given him head on and then come out of the other side stronger than before. He could do this, he could stay strong through a surgery and then emerge through the other side as a father to a baby he hadn’t known he was going to have twenty four hours ago.

Now that was further into his own head, he began to feel the creeping pain of the contractions once more. They had taken his breath away from the constricting of the muscles alone when he was in his state of de-realization, but now the pain was all he could think about. He let his head fall forward as he sucked air in through his nose and held it in his throat and lungs while his entire body was crushed by the invisible hand wrapped around his abdomen.

Devon leaned over him and hit the call button for the nurse and doctor so that they could return to the hospital room. They discussed the treatment plan as a trio this time instead of Conrad being catatonically awake and Devon trying his best to respect the choices that he knew his partner would want made for him. The doctor talked them through what the procedure was going to be like and then things started.

They waited for twenty minutes, and worked through three contractions, for the anesthesiologist to come and apply the nerve block in Conrad’s spine. He was then transferred to a gurney that could bring him to the suite where C-sections were done as it had been prepped while they were waiting. Devon scrubbed himself and didn’t have to wear the stupid looking outfit that most non-birthing parents had to.

It felt like Conrad had blinked and then ended up on the operating table. There was a sheet draped over his head so that he couldn’t see where they were cutting into his stomach, but it was short enough that he would be able to see his baby once they were born. Devon was sitting on a stool beside him and holding his hand, both of which had been strapped down to the table so he couldn’t panic and grab at anything. He could hear the voices of the medical staff that was going to be helping with the procedure floating around him, distant and somehow under water.

He was stuck in his head until he felt things begin to happen to his body. He was entirely numb thanks to the spinal block that had been placed in his spine and was checked over and over to make sure that was the case, but his body could still feel the pressure of what was happening. His heart rate spiked just a bit with the stress of it all when the scalpel pressed down into the flesh of his belly and began to make the incision. It was intense and overwhelming to know that they were actively cutting into his body, but there was nothing that he could do about that.

He turned his head to the side as he let out a couple of panting breaths, the heat of his air turning the oxygen mask over his mouth and nose opaque. Devon brushed a hand over his hair, which was technically contained by a net, and then kissed his forehead. “We’re going to be okay, Conrad. I promise you that this isn’t the end of the world, it’s the beginning of a new one.”

“You’re such a fucking cheeseball,” Conrad laughed. Talking to his partner had distracted him from the intense feeling of having someone rummaging around in his guts, though, so it had the intended side effect. He loved the man next to him more than he knew that he would be capable of loving, and he was so glad that this whole thing had happened with Devon by his side.

An agonizing long minute passed before the OB that had been helping them with the entire process held up a squalling baby, just high enough that they could both see them over the blue tarp blocking Conrad’s lower half from view. “Congratulations, you both have a girl!”

“Holy shit,” Conrad whispered. He thought that he had already processed the fact that he was pregnant and dealt with the idea that he would be a parent within a couple of minutes, but it was hitting him harder than ever that this was actually real. He had created a child inside of his body without even knowing that he was pregnant and now they were in the world, screaming and supposedly healthy.

“Conrad,” Devon whispered. His eyes were swarming with tears that were already rushing down his face and wetting the material of the mask over his mouth and nose. “We made that.”

“Go with her, make sure that she’s okay and that the doctors are being nice to her,” Conrad said. It wasn’t really procedure when they were in an operating room instead of a delivery room where things didn’t have to be as sterile, but Devon was a doctor who had scrubbed in before. He knew that they got some special privileges because of that and he wanted to abuse it.

It felt like the entire world slowed down as Devon did as Conrad had requested and stepped away from him, leaving him alone on the operating table. Conrad gave small breaths in to try and soothe the anxiety that was beginning to tangle in his chest. He wanted to make sure that their daughter was okay and that at least one of her parents was with her to comfort her, but he also desperately wanted to have the presence of his partner close to him.

He turned his head to the side and watched the flurry of movement that was taking place around the baby, who had since been placed down into the warmer. It allowed him to be at least a little bit distracted from the feeling of his body being rummaged around in and stitched back together. The doctor that was working on him was efficient, wrapping up the end of the procedure at the same time as the baby was finished being checked over.

“Let’s get you back to a room so that you can meet baby properly. Dad, do you want to carry her back or would you prefer we use one of the cots?” the nurse in charge of Conrad’s care asked. Usually a parent wouldn’t be permitted to carry their newborn through the hospital out of fear that something would happen resulting in a dropped, very fragile human. Given that Devon was a doctor, though, they were being allowed to do quite a lot of things that weren’t standard.

“I think that a bassinet would be for the best. I don’t think that I’ve shook like this in a long time,” Devon joked weakly. He held his hand out in front of him to accentuate the point, which revealed that his palms were trembling dramatically.

“Sounds good,” the nurse chuckled.

Soon, both of the people involved in the surgery had been moved onto something that could transport them and they were whisked through the hospital. They were checked into a recovery room on the maternity floor, instead of the delivery room that Conrad had been in before the baby had come. He was propped up on the bed enough that he would be able to look around the room and do things without aggravating the new surgical wound on his belly. He kept his eyes on the clear bassinet the entire time that they were moving and situating the room around, watching the sleeping baby inside.

The flurry of medical workers left after the last of their checks and explanations had finished, allowing the little family to be on their own. Devon sat down on the edge of Conrad’s bed, making the mattress dip down enough to snap Conrad out of his staring. “Do you want to hold her?” he asked, voice soft and compassionate.

“I think so,” Conrad nodded. “I’ve been doing it for nine months already, haven’t I?”

“Not quite, but close enough,” Devon smiled back at him.

He placed his hands underneath the baby’s head and bum to carefully lift er from the bassinet that she had been resting on. She woke with the jostling movements that were no longer similar enough to rocking to soothe her, fussing softly. Conrad followed her movements as if she were the most important thing in the entire universe as Devon lowered her down into his arms. He leaned heavily back into the pillows, which he had pulled away from in preparation to receive the newborn, and let the breath be pulled from his lungs.

The baby was absolutely perfect. Her face was squashed and red as newborns often were, but he couldn’t see any deformities in her face from the outside and when he pressed his finger into her mouth he could already tell that her palate had closed properly inside as well. He found the thoughts of panic in his mind about being a parent fading as he launched into doctor mode and began to check over the baby to make sure that she was alright.

“Love, she’s fine. I watched the peds guy do all the checks and I know that he did them correctly. Just enjoy meeting her for the first time,” Devon chuckled.

Conrad flushed playfully and then curled around the baby properly. “Your daddy is lucky that I love him so much or I’d send him out of this room right now,” Conrad chuckled. He watched eyelids flutter and open to a squint, the best that they were going to get so soon after delivery, and it melted his heart. She was a surprise and he had quite a lot of feelings about not knowing that he was going to be a parent until about four hours ago, but he wouldn’t change anything about what had happened.

The duo cuddled up on the bed so that they could both watch their baby’s movements. After about five minutes, Devon helped Conrad remove his shirt and lay the newborn down against his bare skin. They had just finished getting the blankets arranged comfortably when they heard a knock on the door and looked up to see that it was Nic entering.

“Wow, when the nurses told me where you had gone I didn’t quite believe them,” she commented. “Is this the little girl that’s the newest rumor of the hospital?”

“Man, does HIPAA just not apply to me?” Conrad complained. He waved his best friend over despite his grumblings and then tilted himself to the side so that she was able to see the little one a bit easier. “I think I’m gonna name her after my mom, call her Georgie for short.”

“Thanks for my input on that, by the way,” Devon snorted. Based on the smile clinging to his face, Conrad had a feeling that he didn’t mind the name in the slightest.

“She’s beautiful, Conrad. Quite a surprise, but beautiful anyway,” Nic chuckled. “Hopefully Mina and I won’t fall into the same trap.”

“You’ve always been better at listening to your body than I was,” Conrad smiled back. He stifled a yawn behind his hand now that the adrenaline of the situation was beginning to fade from him, leaving him with the exhaustion of a body that had been wound too tight for too long.

Nic cleared her throat, looking a bit ashamed. “I wanted to apologize for dismissing your pain earlier as you having a sympathetic response to your father. I should have listened to you so that you could have gotten help sooner.”

“It’s fine, I don’t blame you. Your idea was the soundest out of all the ones that my brain was coming up with,” he laughed. “How is he, by the way? I’m not going to be able to check on him for a while, given the whole baby thing.”

“Well, he recovered from his surgery really well. Half of the surgical suites were taken up by your family today,” Nic sighed.

Conrad and Devon shared a wide-eyed look with each other before they began to pry into more details from Nic. She supplied them with everything that she could without violating her oath as a healthcare provider and then bonded a bit more with Georgie, before she left the duo alone. Conrad fell asleep not long after the door clicked shut for the last time, his baby securely in his boyfriend’s arms with a tummy full of milk he didn’t even know his body had been making. It was certainly a lot to wrap his mind around, but he was sure that he could do it a thousand times over so long as he had his boyfriend and best friend there to support him.

#fanfiction #fanfic #writing #ao3 #archive of our own #the resident #the resident 2018 #Conrad hawkins #Devon pravesh #nic nevin #nicolette nevin #Ellen hundley #Irving feldman #Marshall winthrope #mpreg #cryptic pregnancy #childbirth

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