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Notes:

Trigger warning: brief depictions of invasive medical procedures and mentions of miscarriage. It's in the 5th block of italics if this makes you uncomfortable.

The walls are overly cheerful.

Roseanne works at a hospital, she's supposed to be used to it. The endless, brightly colored posters, the detached atmosphere, that ever present smell of disinfectant, but now, on the other side, she can't help but find grievances everywhere she looks.

The walls are too bright. She's too scared.

"Mrs. Park-Manoban?"

"Yes?"

"Come with me, please."

She doesn't register her last name until they're halfway down the hallway. She guesses she should have felt shocked at being called by her married last name, but for some reason it's a comfort to Roseanne. Things used to be different back then, good.

She still corrects the nurse.

"It's Miss. Park now, by the way. Just Park."

"Oh, I see. We'll have to update your records, then." The nurse gives her a practiced, pleasant smile. "Please change, the doctor will be in shortly."

(January 28th, 2018.)

"Are we going to find out, for real?"

"We said we were going to find out," Roseanne says, squeezing Lisa's hand. Her wife is antsy, like she always is before an appointment, almost like she's the one who's pregnant and not Roseanne, who has started to show already.

"When we walk out we'll know if we're having a son or a daughter," Lisa says, and Roseanne grins.

"Not if you have a heart attack before that," she teases, but still presses a gentle kiss to Lisa's lips.

"Mrs. Park-Manoban?"

She pulls away, gives Lisa a shaky smile, and they get up.

Roseanne goes through the motions of getting ready, lifts her shirt and holds Lisa's hand, but her ears are buzzing. She's pregnant, noticeably so these days, and she knows it, she went through morning sickness and her period is gone, but now she gets to know a little bit more the person inside of her, gets to see it as a person instead of a blob of cells.

The technician frowns, trying to locate the baby's genitals, and Roseanne begs and pleads with her buddy on board to turn around.

"There we go," the man says. "Well, congratulations." Both of Lisa's hands squeeze one of her own. "You are about to become mothers to a lovely little girl."

"A girl," Roseanne hears Lisa say, in awe, and tears sting her own eyes.

They're having a baby girl.

Lisa hugs her, tight, leaning halfway over the examination table, and Roseanne laughs.

A girl.



Roseanne doesn't look at the doctor's face.

She stares at the posters on the walls, while the cold, slimy feel of the ultrasound machine rolls over her breast.

She tries not to flinch at the pain.

She doesn't look at the doctor's face, because even after years of working by herself, people can still read bad news from her expressions, and she doesn't want to know if her doctor has the same problem.

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