IT WASN'T LONG before Kurt was walking out of Lindy's apartment, telling her goodbye and shrugging his arms into his corduroy jacket. He had been babbling about Lollapalooza as he crossed through the front door, talking about how Nirvana was supposed to headline, but how he planned to outright refuse the offer.

Lindy had been barely listening. She was more concentrated on praying that she would see Kurt again, but not as any other version except his living self.

With a shift at work that wasn't due to start until later in the evening, Lindy was left alone while Kurt grudgingly returned to his and Courtney's house where she awaited him. It would not be a day in which Lindy would spend by her lonesome, though. She was going to the hospital for plans that didn't involve donning a pair of scrubs and her new stethoscope.

Beth met her there, smiling ear to ear with her hands clasped in prayer under her chin as Lindy got out of her car and walked over to where she stood.

"I'm so happy you asked me to come!"

Lindy smiled, taking Beth's hand so that she could feel the warmth of human contact, a brief assurance that she indeed was not alone. Today, she would have her first ultrasound and prenatal checkup.

She approached the appointment with a twinge of regret, wishing more than anything that it could have been Kurt alongside her, or even Trae. But Lindy was not quite ready to tell even her brother the news of her future baby. Knowing him, he would have worried so much about it that he'd spontaneously combust.

Jack had done the actual setting up of the appointment and had become a kind of mentor to Lindy as she faced the early beginnings of pregnancy. It had been Jack who had recommended her doctor, even though she'd known all of them already from work. He had also found her prenatal vitamins and a book about babies; Lindy had happily accepted these things, but couldn't help but laugh. She herself was a nurse and could have done the research alone, but Jack was already invested.

It all pointed to the not so hidden secret that he would always carry a soft spot for Lindy.

"I wish you were far along enough so we could find out the gender," Beth sighed longingly as she and Lindy entered the waiting room of their usual ward. It felt funny to be on the opposite side of things for once, playing patient for the day while everyone else bustled around.

"I don't," Lindy said. She hadn't meant to sound so churlish, but it came out that way. "I want Kurt to be there when we find out."

Beth flinched, wounded by the remark, but Lindy grabbed her hand once again as she had done in the parking lot and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

"I'm happy that you're here, Beth. It's special to me."

This seemed to placate Beth into smiling again, something Lindy felt relief over. She was already concerned enough with Kurt's downwards spiral of emotions and didn't think she had the energy to tend to anyone else's, no matter how much she adored her friend.

"Lindsey?"

A nurse poked her head out into the waiting room, her brown hair hanging in curly tendrils around her face. Lindy recognized the woman, and apparently, she recognized her too. Her name was Angela.

"Hey Angela," Lindy smiled politely, standing up and taking Angela's sudden appearance to mean that she was ready to go back.

"I saw your name and I had to do a double-take! I had no idea you were pregnant!" Angela exclaimed with a squeal of delight.

"We're not exactly advertising it yet," Beth interjected, swooping in to shield Lindy from the assault of questions Angela would no doubt have for her.

Angela's penciled-in eyebrows raised, and understanding her look of apprehension, Lindy waved both hands in the air.

"Oh, no, no, no! It's not . . . me and Beth aren't . . . the baby isn't ours . . ."

Beth spluttered so loudly that Angela jumped a few inches off the ground, her white nursing shoes squeaking against the tile.

"Of course not," Angela said with good-nature, though Lindy knew the young nurse had assumed for a brief second that her coworkers had turned out to be secret lesbians. To everyone in the hospital, they might as well have been. No one ever saw them apart unless they'd been assigned different duties.

Lindy and Beth were led to one of the checkup rooms they'd both frequented in the past while on the job. Lindy sat on the thin white paper covering the seat, listening to its familiar rustle beneath her legs. It felt strange to sit on it rather than to rip it off and toss it away as she had done so many times at work.

Angela went through the usual series of questions a nurse might ask a newly pregnant woman, including one that involved Lindy's date of conception and when she thought she may have become pregnant. 

"Can you recall the exact date in which you may have conceived?"

"Oh, good luck," Beth snorted from her seat in the corner, making a hideous innuendo towards Kurt and Lindy's sex life.

Lindy shot her an ominous look before turning her attention back to Angela.

"That's hard to say. My guess is anywhere between early to late January. It had to have been then."

"I'd tell you not to worry about it since we'll be able to find the precise date, but you already know that," Angela chuckled.

She waved goodbye to both of them and announced that Lindy's doctor, Doctor Jin, would be in shortly.

"Well, that went well!" Beth said happily.

"What do you mean? We haven't even gotten to the ultrasound yet!"

"I mean, Angela didn't ask any questions. So maybe you won't actually have to admit that your baby father is a rock god."

Lindy, bewildered but still amused, laughed at Beth's observation. She appreciated her humor now more than ever, though she pretended to wear a mask of disgust.

"Rock god? Please don't ever use those two words around me again," she said with a roll of her eyes.

There was a gentle knock at the door before Doctor Jin entered, a warm and friendly smile on her face.

"Lindy? I'm Doctor Jin. I know you work on this floor, but I don't think that we've ever had a formal introduction."

Doctor Jin was a petite, beautiful Asian-American and known as a well-respected fetal medicine doctor on their floor. Lindy had closely with many of the doctors that she knew, but Doctor Jin was right. They had never properly met.

She shook her doctor's hand, smiling back. "Yes I do. It's really nice to meet you."

"Doctor Turner came straight to me as soon as he found out you'd be needing a prenatal doctor. He said he would have done it himself if you two weren't so close," Doctor Jin said conversationally.

Lindy was exceptionally grateful that Jack had been smart enough not to assume the role of her doctor. It would have been too odd for him to perform procedures on her, minding over a baby with a woman that he had once been intimate with.

Doctor Jin entertained Lindy with another series of questions before the ultrasound technician and another nurse entered the room, rolling in more equipment along the way.

"So we don't know when exactly this little one was conceived, correct?" Doctor Jin clarified as the technician pulled back Lindy's shirt and squirted a clear jelly on her abdomen. The lights were off now and Lindy could still feel Beth leaning in closer for a better look.

"I don't have an exact date in mind," Lindy explained.

"We can fix that. Then we'll know your due date," the ultrasound tech said kindly, beginning to move a long probe around Lindy's stomach. Nearby on a computer, the grainy image of Lindy's insides were flashing around in black and white.

Lindy found herself holding her breath.

"I see a baby," the tech sing-songed, pressing the probe more firmly against Lindy's skin and into the gel. Sure enough, Lindy's tactical training in medicine allowed her to identify what was on the screen quickly, though the little thing inside her was hardly a fully developed baby at that point.

Cocooned in her uterus was a figure that looked no bigger than a cherry. There were no distinct body parts on the fetus and if anything, it could have easily passed as a blob, or even a kidney bean. No wonder Kurt had taken to calling Frances by the nickname.

Nonetheless, Lindy felt warm, wet tears in her eyes as she stared at her little bean of a baby. Seeing it made it all the more real. No longer was the baby an imaginary thing. She and Kurt really had made the tiny creature on the screen, living and developing inside of her at that very moment.

"Oh, Lindy," Beth whispered. Lindy turned her head to see Beth crying, using the sleeve of her shirt to dab at her tears. Lindy reached for her hand, finding it and feeling another wave of instant gratitude knowing that she was not alone.

The happy occasion was interrupted when a knock sounded at the door, distracting them all. Doctor Jin appeared confused, but turned to her nurse who voluntarily stepped forward to answer the visitor. She slid out of the room and shut the door with click.

Lindy was not preoccupied with the disturbance, as she was too consumed by the picture of her baby that she was watching, but when the nurse shuffled back into the room looking nervous, Lindy's attention was snagged.

"Doctor Jin — er, well Lindy? That was Doctor Turner outside. He said that he's received a call from your brother saying that there's been a family emergency. Your brother wasn't able to reach you."

Lindy didn't have to ask the anxious nurse any questions as to what emergency could have possibly broken the perfect moment between her and her growing child.

She knew exactly what was going on.

Lee was in trouble.