A/N: You all know Maggie keeps the baby. Please keep your judgment and political opinions on Twitter and not in the comments of my story. Thx.

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Cheshire stands next to me as I lie half-naked on the exam table. The nurse rolls the condom thingy onto the penis-shaped wand and Cheshire offers me her hand. She's being nice because she knows I'm scared, but she must hate my fucking guts right now. We were right at the beginning of something good, and now her almost-girlfriend is knocked up. That is some next-level bullshit right there.

"You might feel a bit of discomfort," the nurse says, and then pushes the penis-wand into me.

I wait anxiously. For what, I don't know. There is nothing but silence at first, but when the whirring sound of a heartbeat starts, I start freaking the absolute fuck out.

"And there is your little pea!" she says with glee. 

My eyes fix onto the little spot on the screen, my heart starts beating rapidly as if trying to match the sound.

"I'm sorry," Cheshire says. She lets go of my hand and leaves the room. I honestly don't blame her.

"Was that your girlfriend?" the nurse asks.

"'Was' is probably correct."

She looks at me with a small frown but turns back to the screen without a word. I appreciate the lack of judgment. It's the last thing I need right now. "Well, everything looks viable. This could be a very healthy baby."

A baby. I have no idea what to think about that. "Can you tell me how far along I am?"

"Let's see." She takes measurements, moves to different angles, all the while my heart threatens to beat right out of my chest. "Baby looks to be a good size, but still a little pea. With a heartbeat, that would put you between six and seven weeks."

The room starts to feel smaller as I do the math. It can't be Daniel's if it is much more than six, same with Deven. Remy is right at seven. My chest starts to ache. "Can you tell me which one it's closer to?"

"Between six and seven?" she asks. I nod. "If I had to guess ..." she looks between the measurements. "At about four millimeters, that would put you right at six weeks."

Dammit.

The pain in my chest grows stronger, and as I deny the reason why it only worsens. Not that I want to be pregnant by any of them, but Daniel is a fucking sociopath. Deven wouldn't be the worst, but he's halfway around the world right now and is supposed to marry a nice Indian girl. I don't know what to do about any of this, I just know the only person who could calm me down right now is the same person I insisted on pushing out of my life.

Remy ... No matter how much it hurts to think about him, this would be so much less frightening if it were his.

"Sweetheart," the nurse starts to say in a soft voice. I snap out of my thoughts and look at her. "You still have options if you want to discuss those. Is that why you are so upset?"

"No, I ..." I start to tell her. "I just really hate myself right now." I cover my face in my hands and continue to cry.

I hear her sigh and move closer to me. When I drop my hands to look at her, she takes one and holds it between both of hers. "I know this is hard. I've been where you are," she says. I want to laugh, but only a weird sob comes out. "If I could give you one word of advice, it would be that you may not have gotten here alone, but you need to do what is best for you; the person sitting here right now, and the person you will be tomorrow," she says. I stare at her in my confusion, wiping my tears away with my free hand. "You need to remember that there will be a tomorrow for you, no matter what you decide," she says with polite ambiguity.

The thought makes me cry harder, though I don't know why. "I'm such a fucking mess. How the hell am I supposed to take care of a baby?"

"Sweetheart." She smiles and grips my hand. "Every woman in the history of womanhood has thought that at some point." She lets go of my hand. "You already know what you want to do. Listen to your gut. Trust what you feel."

I don't feel anything but pain.

♡♡♡

My A&P final looks like it's written in kanji. All of the answers are wrong because none of them are the answers I need right now.

Fucked barely begins to describe my situation. Cheshire already told the girls at work, and word took about two seconds to get around. They called me before my shift was supposed to start two days ago and reminded me that I couldn't work while pregnant. I wasn't interested in hearing excuses as to how they found out. I also wasn't interested in the job anymore. Cheshire called to apologize for freaking out, but in the process, asked me not to be at Dev's when she got back. Now, I'm sitting in my final unshowered and with a bag of dirty laundry and toiletries by my feet.

I'm not mad. Though it sucks to find out she is just as gossipy as the bitches she pretended to hate, I don't feel betrayed. She was filling a void, a welcome distraction. But there is no distraction strong enough to pull me from my reality right now. 

I stare at the page through my tears until the prompter calls out, "Ten minutes left!"

Flipping through the remaining questions I realize there is nowhere near enough time for me to finish. What is the point anyway?

I gather papers and make my way to the front of the lecture hall to turn in the papers. When I make it to the table, the prompter looks up at me and his brow creases. "Are you okay?" he asks me.

I give him a confused look until I realize I've been crying for nearly two hours. Without responding, I turn to leave, casting my eyes down as I climb the stairs, grab my bag, and exit the room.

Once outside, I lean back against the wall of the hallway, trying to calm myself enough to look like a functioning human. I hear the footsteps, but think nothing of it until someone says, "You did that bad, huh?"

I open my eyes and find my rich, prick classmate.

"It's a lot harder when you can't blow your professor for another A, huh?" he says with a malicious grin. I don't even have the energy to glare at him. "See you at the strip club, Moxie."

With a wink, he walks away. I feel the last shred of my self-confidence walk out with him.

♡♡♡

After failing my final, I didn't know what to do. I went back to my apartment for the first time in nearly a month. I knew Remy had been sleeping here some nights. Every time I came back to grab clothes, I would find my bed unmade and empty liquor bottles filling the kitchen trash. Our distance a painful remnant of Remy's anger and my own stubbornness.

I've been sitting alone on the bed for so long, gnawing on Z's bracelet while trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do. 

Pulling out the printed ultrasound, the tears return to my eyes. I wonder if Z ever felt like this when she found out she was pregnant with me. Lost, conflicted, out of options. I wonder if she felt anything different when she found out she was pregnant with my brother ...

The one thing I've always known was that I didn't want to be like her, though I am -- more than is convenient for anyone -- and this proves it. 

That scares the shit out of me.

In my stupor, I pick up my phone and make a call I know I'll regret. I continue to mash the links of the bracelet between my teeth as the line rings. 

"Dr. Richards' office," the perky receptionist answers.

"Uh ... hi. This is ... Maggie," I stammer. "Maggie Abbatelli."

"Hello, Maggie. How may I help you?"

"I really need to speak to Dr. Richards. Is there a way I could do that over the phone sometime soon?"

A short pause is filled by the sound of tapping keys. "She isn't scheduled with patients for the rest of this afternoon. Let me see if she is available to speak with you. One moment please."  My heartbeat quickens.

I'm so anxious as I wait. The bitch never puts me in a good mood, but I'm desperate.

"This is Dr. Richards," she answers finally.

"Hi," I squeak in the most pitiful voice. 

"Hello, Maggie. You're crying."

"Yeah ..." Nice observation, genius. "I know I've flaked on my last couple appointments, but I really need help right now."

"I'm here for you. Tell me what is going on."

"Oh, man, where to start?" I say with a shaky breath. "Well ... my mom almost got herself killed, which honestly would have made things better. In the hospital, she told me my sister had a fucking baby, but after I wrecked my car while freaking out about that, I found out that, no -- my sister didn't have a baby, she had two babies -- one of them being me." I start laughing because saying it sounds as ridiculous as it feels. "Then, in my complete mental breakdown, I had sex with Remy, told him I was in love with him, and subsequently fucked anything and everything else to pretend like I wasn't."

"Okay. That's ..."

"Oh, and I'm fucking pregnant."

"Oh." She stays quiet for a moment. I curl my knees up to my chest in a futile attempt to stop my shaking. "How do you feel about that?" she asks.

Bursting into tears seems like a good enough answer to that question.

"Does Remy know?"

"No," I cry. "I haven't talked to him in weeks."

"Weeks? Why is that?"

"Because I'm obviously making great decisions right now." Why did I call this bitch again?

"You mentioned you told Remy you were in love with him," she prompts. "Did you reveal your feelings to him before or after you had sex?"

I cringe with the memory. "After."

"And what do you think was your motivation for saying that?"

"Because you fucking told me I was! Everyone did!" I scream at her I start crying through my anger. "I was in a really, really bad place and I was fucking broken into pieces. But there he was, ready to fuck me back together again. And now ... I can't even look at my best friend anymore!" My breath comes as a choked sob. "I knew he was important to me, I knew that I loved him in some way, but I fucked everything up by listening to you and pretending I knew what the fuck I was supposed to be feeling!"

"You believe you felt this way because of my influence?"

"Yep." Nope.

"And can you remind me what it was that I wanted you to work on each week?"

I sigh heavily. "Assessing my feelings prior ... to ..." sex. I realize just how much of a fuck up I really am. "Goddammit."

"Maggie," she says the way she always does before my lecture. "What I always wanted you to understand is not that you needed to feel anything specific for any specific person, but that you needed to recognize what you were feeling," she says. "I was not telling you to assess how you felt about people so you could find love. I was telling you to focus on you; I was telling you to love yourself."

Fuck my whole fucking life.

I sit in silence for a moment realizing the endless implications. She breaks it by asking, "Do you think you have been caring for yourself?"

"I don't know ..." I sigh heavily. "I really thought I was, but now I think I was more focused on distracting myself from the ... pain and emotions and shit."

"Whether you want to admit the severity of your abuse and trauma, you have survived by shutting yourself away from your emotions and coping in ways that convince you the source of your pain didn't affect you. That was only masking the pain, not helping you heal," she responds. "Coping is very important, but if we cannot recognize what is hurting us, we cannot cope in the correct ways. Regardless of whether you acknowledge your emotions or not, whether you distract yourself from them with sex, the feelings will still be there when the metaphorical high ultimately fades," she explains. I think I've figured that out. "That is why I wanted you to assess your emotions prior to coping and allow yourself to feel."

For the first time, she's actually making some sense. I take a deep breath, letting the pain wash over me, but all it makes me do is want it to stop. "I have no idea how to do that," I cry.

"Something you said earlier -- that you felt broken and needed to be put back together -- that is a statement to build on," she insists. "What do you think would help put you back together?"

I don't respond at first, the thoughts floating through my head. Remy pops in first. He annoys the shit out of me, but he takes care of me better than anyone ever has. I want what we used to have before I fucked everything up. But at this point, I'm not sure if I fucked it up or if it was fucked up from the beginning. 

I'm still in Zipporah's shadow, living with her loss and her lingering presence. I never wanted to live without her, but I can't get my shit together in any aspect when she's involved. "I want a chance at my own life," I say finally. "I want to start over. Start everything over. But that's the one thing I can't do."

"Why not?" she asks me. "We constantly grow, evolve, adapt. We cannot help who we are born to, who comes into and out of our lives. The only thing we control is how we move forward and who we allow to stay."

I look down and place my hand over my stomach, and as I do, I feel my heart flutter.

"So, tell me this," she says. "How do you feel about this baby?"

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A/N: Thank you for reading! Don't forget to vote, comment, and add to your library if you want more!