#greysnatomy

“You really shouldn’t be standing there, Amelia, you look like you’re going to faint. Go to bed. And please, just make sure you don’t get anywhere near the children,” the general surgeon added with her typical lack of sympathy. “The last thing we need is for them to catch whatever plague you have.”

“Thanks,” Amelia replied, more bitterly than she would have liked. The neurosurgeon then glanced over at Maggie, seeing she was dressed in her work clothes and looked ready to leave the house.

“Maybe I can get someone to cover for me so I can stay with you,” Maggie suggested. Amelia really did not look fine and she was growing worried.

“Don’t worry about it, Maggie, I am fine,” Amelia insisted, making an extra effort to keep her confidence as she walked to the stairs but a sudden fit of lightheadedness nearly made her nearly lose balance. “You go to work, I will be fine. I just need some rest.”

“You sure?” Maggie squinted, visibly uncomfortable to leave Amelia in those circumstances in the company only of Meredith and three young children.

“Yeah, I will go take some aspirin and lie down,” Amelia forced herself to smile and made a herculean effort to climb the stairs.

Her legs felt as if they weighed twice their usual load and her head was bursting with a throbbing headache. Amelia didn’t know how, but she still managed to get a quick, hot shower before finally collapsing in bed with an empty stomach.

.

Owen got out of the attending’s lounge bathroom feeling reinvigorated. After a nasty trauma case in which a ruptured artery had soaked him in patient’s blood, he had finally had the time to go clean up and change.

He was still finishing drying his head with a towel, feeling readier than ever to go home when a short woman ran into him.

“Hey, Maggie.”

“Owen,” Pierce’s voice sounded distressed. There was no one else in the room, so she had obviously gone inside with the intention of finding him. Owen found the notion rather puzzling, considering he and Maggie hardly ever had any topic in common. Unless she wanted to talk to him about a patient. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, are you going home?” she asked and the trace of insecurity in her voice didn’t go unnoticed to Owen.

“I am, but I can stick around for a while if you need me for a consult or…”

“No, this is actually about Amelia,” Maggie explained, enlightening Owen about the reason for her restlessness.

“What’s wrong?” Owen asked with a heavy frown, immediately concerned. “What happened?”

“I left the house a while ago just as she arrived from work a couple of hours ago,” Maggie explained. “She didn’t look so fine to me, I think she has a cold or something,” the thoracic surgeon added, seeing the relief on Owen’s face when she explained it wasn’t anything serious. “But she isn’t picking up her phone or replying my messages and I am not sure she is fit to take care of herself. You know Amelia…” Maggie hesitated. “I was just wondering if you could…”

“I’ll stop by to check on her,” Owen answered before Maggie could even ask.

Both surgeons exchange a head nod of gratitude and mutual understanding. Satisfied with herself and relieved that her stubborn friend was now probably not going to escape properly taking care of herself, Maggie left the room, ready to resume work. Determined to make sure Amelia was fine, or at least as fine as it could be, Owen hung the wet towel back on the bathroom rack, not bothering changing back to his street clothes before he left the hospital.

.

Amelia was still oscillating between sleep and conscience when three gentle knocks made her open her eyes. Assuming it was Meredith, she rolled over with her back opposite to the door and mumbled, irritated:

“Go away.”

Amelia had already closed her eyes again, oblivious to the tall figure that had entered the room engulfed in darkness. It wasn’t until Owen gently lay next to her making Amelia’s body shift with his weight on the mattress that she finally took notice of his presence.

“I have to say, that’s not the welcome I expected,” his deep voice sounded like music to her ears. “But if you want me to, I can leave.”

“No!” Amelia growled, immediately regretting having said such unwelcoming words. She made the effort to turn around in his direction and pull his shirt, stopping Owen from getting up, but that only served to cause another fit of heavy coughing. Too embarrassed, both by her pitiful state and by the nasty way she’d retorted when she yet didn’t know it was him, Amelia buried her face on the crook of his neck, unconsciously seeking comfort. “I didn’t mean you,” she explained as soon as she was able to breathe properly again.

Her skin felt hot to his touch, even a little feverish, Owen noticed. He pulled apart just enough to look at her. At this point, Owen’s eyes had already adjusted to the nearly total darkness, so he could identify the indisposed expression on her face. Amelia looked drained. Her voice was merely a whisper, her eyes were swollen and puffy and even her nose looked like it had suffered enough with a lot of itching and sneezing.

“Did you take something to alleviate the symptoms?” he asked, kissing her forehead before gently pulling a few loose locks of hair from her face and smoothing them on the back of her shoulders. There was no magical cure for a common cold but bed rest, hydration and a couple of pills would probably help her feel better a lot faster.

Amelia nodded her head positively but Owen had a feeling she was lying.

“I swear you’re worse than a kid when you’re sick,” he commented, trying to come off strict but the trace of amusement was clear in his voice. “Come on,” Owen added with as much kindness as determination. “Let’s get you home.”

Amelia wasn’t feeling strong enough to refute him, but even if she were, she probably wouldn’t. The way Owen had deliberately implied he was taking her home had made her feel looked after, taken care of. At this point, she knew there was no one better than him at that, but it still made Amelia feel uneasy to let go completely and surrender to the very inviting idea of jumping in with both feet in their newly rediscovered relationship, considering they still had a lot to talk about regarding what they wanted and expected moving forward.

Amelia loved him. She had no doubt about that. Just as she knew Owen loved her back the same. But even though they had been clear about their mutual feelings, she had no idea if he was still willing to be a family with her. In fact, she had no idea where she stood on the matter.

Amelia could very well close her eyes and picture herself and Owen surrounded by children of their own in a few years time. On the long run, the idea seemed amazing, idyllic even. But truth was, in order to get there, she knew there was a lot she needed to deal with and Amelia just wasn’t sure when exactly she would be able to work on that.

And it was exactly her incapability of providing Owen – and herself – with an answer for those lingering questions that set her off the most.

Because if they decided to be together for real and pick up where they’d left off, it wasn’t fair to Owen that he stayed in a marriage where she knew she wanted to give him kids, but had no idea if she’d ever be able to. Just as it wasn’t fair to her to live with that lingering pressure hovering over her head. That was definitely something they would have to talk about at some point and Amelia had a feeling they couldn’t keep delaying it much longer.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Owen asked as he helped Amelia get up. He’d noticed the subtle changes in her expression as her eyebrows furrowed as if she was having a hard time making up her mind about something.

“It’s nothing, it’s just… My throat is a little sore, that’s all,” Amelia smiled at him at the same time she placed a hand on his cheek and affectionately rubbed it, touched by his concern.

Owen looked into her eyes at the same time he grabbed her slim wrist, giving her a kiss on the palm of her hand before pulling away.

“Stay right there, I will get an overnight bag for you. I think there are some of your clothes back at the house but we are yet to wash them.”

Amelia drew an excessively steadying breath, clearly mocking him.

“I really have to go for the whole weekend, don’t I?” she joked, sending him a flirtatious glance even though she felt awful. “You can barely manage to do your own laundry.”

“You’ve always been better at it than me,” Owen joked, turning on the lights in the bedroom to then grab a small duffel bag and opened Amelia’s closet.

“Why are you wearing scrubs?” Amelia asked with a puzzled expression, for the first time noticing it.

Owen suddenly remembered about the literal bloodbath he’d taken.

“Don’t ask,” he chuckled. “I will tell you that story later,” he settled for saying, focusing back on the shelves.

Owen gazed at the many pieces and frowned, wondering why on Earth had he ever thought of himself fit for the task of preparing an overnight bag, considering how little he knew about women’s clothes. With a shrug of shoulders, he grabbed a handful of the items on top, sorting out the ones he assumed were most comfortable.

Did people really fit in that size of clothes, he pondered, after grabbing what he discovered was a dark green low cut women’s tank top. Judging by the label, Amelia dressed a size S, but was that really an adult size? Owen was surprised at himself that he wasn’t sure. From now on, he was probably going to have to start paying more attention to these things.

After he’d covered tops, Owen moved onto bottoms, grabbing a few pajama pants and leggings from the hangers inside the closet. At last, he aimed for the small sliding drawers, figuring she’d probably need underwear too.

Amelia had just finished finally getting out of bed and was changing from her pajamas to a pair of dark fleece pants when she spotted Owen with the silliest look on his face.

“What are you doing?” she chuckled, watching as he grabbed a couple of her panties and added them to a bag.

“How come I never saw this before?” he picked out a red lacy piece of lingerie from the top drawer and exposed it to her, looking at Amelia as if he was personally offended for not having seen it.

Once again, Amelia’s delightful laughter mixed with a fit of coughing and sneezing.

“Maybe you just haven’t been paying enough attention,” she teased him.

“I very much doubt I’d miss this,” he said, pointing to the seductive object with his eyes. Owen could vividly imagine Amelia dressed in nothing but the sexy red lingerie, her white porcelain skin fiercely contrasting with the vibrant color as she moved on top of him, driving him crazy as… Well, he doubted he’d ever overlooked that. “When you’re feeling better, you owe it to me to put this on.”

“I’ll think about,” Amelia tried to keep a serious face but couldn’t hold her laughter. “What are you doing?” she repeated her question after noticing he had no intention of returning the piece of lingerie back to the drawer.

“Let’s take this with us, just in case,” Owen decided, adding the item to the overnight bag. Amelia smiled at him as she nodded her head in playful disapproval. The neurosurgeon was still busy changing her clothes, enough that she missed the exact moment when Owen finally closed her drawer.

But as he did so, something golden and shiny glimpsed with the movement, catching his attention. Intrigued by it, Owen pulled back the drawer just enough so he could see what it was.

There amidst Amelia’s most intimate belongings, he found the wedding band that had once been on his finger. Owen couldn’t quite figure out why, but the unexpected finding caught him completely off guard, giving him a mix of emotions he struggled to identify.

“Are you done playing with my panties or have you made a new stop at the bras?” Amelia joked, distracting him from his thoughts.

Owen turned his head over his shoulder, gazing at her with newfound affection and tenderness.

“I had totally forgotten about the bras,” he admitted, taking a step in her direction, unable to resist the urge to plant a kiss on the top of her head. “You women have way too many different pieces of clothes.”

“So, you’re saying you think I should wear fewer clothes?” Amelia laughed, raising her eyebrows in indication she felt otherwise.

“That’s exactly what I am saying,” Owen played along, touching his forehead to hers. “But only when it’s you and me, of course.”

“Of course,” Amelia rolled her eyes. “So it’s a private show?” she embarked on his silly game.

“The leads are you and that little red thingie,” Owen smiled shamelessly.

“Classy,” Amelia couldn’t contain her smile. “You don’t even know what it’s called.”

“I don’t need to know what it’s called,” Owen pointed out, his eyes sparkling with desire and affection. “I only need to see you in it,” he informed her with a mischievous grin. “You’re ready to go?” he asked, grabbing the duffel bag and helping her put on a jacket.

“Yes, I am ready,” Amelia smiled at him. It was nearly eleven pm on a Friday night and she was sick. Her body was sore, her throat was hurting and her head was throbbing but after being confronted with the prospect of not spending the evening alone in that bed anymore, but rather with Owen, enjoying his care and his company, she suddenly felt her disposition vastly improve.

“Let’s go, then,” he decided, opening the door before linking their hands as he led the way for them.

.

“Open up for a happy pill.”

Amelia unburied her face from the pillow, which was a sacrifice in itself, and opened her eyes to glare at Owen just as she did that.

“Back in the day,  happy pill meant something else entirely.”

Owen chose to ignore her wicked smile and the obvious reference to her addiction, but when their eyes met, he couldn't help smiling at how unbelievable she was. Once again handing over the ibuprofen tablet, he made another attempt:

“Don’t bite me,” Owen tilted his head slightly to the left, obviously making fun of her. “Take this.”

“I should bite you,” Amelia whispered because at this point it hurt too much to speak.

“You can barely form a sentence,” Owen reminded her, seeing that after the short drive from Meredith’s to his house, she seemed in even worse shape. “Take your medicine so your throat will feel better and you can eat something.”

“Are you going to stop giving me orders at any point?” Amelia rolled her eyes but did as told, reaching out for the pill and the glass of water he held.

“I will think about it,” Owen replied in a lighthearted tone, waiting until she was done with the medication to get back the empty glass of water. Amelia leaned back on the bed again, too tired to remain sitting up. “What do you want to eat? A sandwich or a-?”

“I am good, I think I am just going to go to sleep,” Amelia said, feeling drowsy.

“Not on an empty stomach,” Owen said, again with authority.

Amelia was too exhausted to fight him, so she settled for eating a sandwich he quickly prepared. At that moment, she didn’t know any better, so she simply assumed her nausea had everything to do with the annoying cold she had on.

Throughout the weekend, Amelia did nothing other than to enjoy Owen’s company. He spent the entire Saturday at home with her and most of Sunday too, leaving only for a couple of hours to go cover a colleague at work. When he returned, Owen came back with takeout from her favorite restaurant.

At this point, Amelia’s throat was feeling a lot better, same as her respiratory symptoms, but for some reason, her stomach was still struggling to hold anything down. At that particular moment, it didn’t feel weird to Amelia that she didn’t feel too excited about eating seafood, her usual favorite dish. Supposing her bothered stomach was probably a lingering trace of her viral infection, the neurosurgeon pushed through, eating a small portion mostly to please Owen than because she really felt like it.

Amelia didn’t let him know that she wasn’t feeling exactly hungry, just as she was trying her best to conceal the confusion she felt regarding her own emotions. For a few punctual moments throughout the weekend, she thought about talking to him and exposing her fears about that growing sentiment she had and wouldn’t pass. Something just felt different and even though rationally she knew it was unlikely and even absurd that her tumor might be growing back, Amelia just couldn’t convince herself that things were okay.

“What do you have there?” Owen asked when he came back from the kitchen after doing their dinner dishes.

Amelia was sitting on the couch in the living room with her feet propped up and crossed at the ankles. Her forehead had a heavy frown as she studied something on an iPad. As he came nearer, Owen noticed she was looking at a patient’s scans.

“Anything interesting?” he asked with curiosity. Amelia had spent the whole weekend without mentioning work once. Unless someone had contacted her about a case while he’d been busy in the kitchen, it didn’t make sense that she would randomly choose a Sunday night to study a file.

The neurosurgeon stopped looking at the screen when Owen sat beside her. She seemed to struggle for a while, but when Owen finally made himself comfortable, she finally took a long breath before saying.

“These are my scans.”

Owen assimilated the information, pondering what he should do with it. He looked at the files in her hands and checked the dates, frowning harder. According to the small letters on the screen, those scans were dated six weeks after Amelia’s surgery. Neuro wasn’t his field of study, but they looked alright to him.

“Hmm, these are your control scans, right?” he raised an eyebrow conspicuously as he gazed back and forth from the small screen to his wife, seeing she was nodding in agreement. “What is so interesting about them?”

Amelia made eye contact with him and Owen noticed how deeply she was staring at him. The realization alarmed him.

“I am trying to see if they are as clear as I thought.”

After a few seconds of carefully processing the meaning of her words, Owen scowled as if she was saying nonsense.

“If they’re as clear as…? What are you saying, of course they are.”

Then, as if Amelia needed factual proof, Owen took the iPad from her hands and zoomed in on the image, focusing on her frontal lobe. Weeks after the surgery, all the swelling had gone down. The only thing visible was the bone and soft tissue scars from the craniotomy, but her brain mass looked absolutely normal.

“Amelia, you had an encapsulated benign tumor which was completely removed,” he reminded her, frowning hard. Owen was sure she knew that better than he did. “You made a full recovery. Why would you for a second have any doubt that your scans aren’t as clear as you and your surgeon saw they were back then?”

Amelia felt tears building up on the back of her eyes at that exact moment. Damn it, why did she have to feel such an emotional mess all the time? That was it, she thought. She couldn’t hide it anymore. She couldn’t keep that to herself. It was consuming her too much and she had to share it with someone she knew wouldn’t judge or call her crazy for it.

“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” she confessed, biting her lower lip to prevent herself from breaking down in tears. “In one moment, when I am happy, I feel like I am the happiest. And then on the next, when I am sad, even if it’s for a silly reason, sometimes I feel like I could cry. But it’s not this black and white, you see, it’s subtler than that, I can’t explain it…” she sniffed, leaning over him seeking comfort. Owen wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head, encouraging her to talk more. “I feel like I don’t have as much control of my emotions as I did when I started recovering from my surgery. Even though I was confused, I knew I got a hold of myself. And now… I don’t know… I can’t explain it,” she felt the first tear rolling down her cheek.

“Try,” Owen suggested, gently wiping it from her cheek with his forefinger.

“It isn’t like when I had the tumor, I think,” she said with sincerity. “Back then, I was completely out of control and couldn’t understand why I acted so impulsively. It was like I just did things and then I felt guilty that I’d done them but couldn’t understand why I’d felt the urge to do them…” Amelia took a long breath, trying to process her own emotions. “Now, I feel like I can control my impulses, so that is not the issue, but I just feel like things that wouldn’t normally make me want to cry now kind of do… And the closest thing I’ve ever experienced that feels like that is that goddamn brain tumor… so I freaked out and I just got this insane idea in my head that somehow it could have grown back, even though I know that medically speaking it makes no sense. Does that make any sense?”

Owen blinked repeatedly, trying to keep up with her fast speech. He settled for tightening his grip around her and planting a kiss on her temple.

“You’re fine, Amelia. I can tell you, you’re fine,” he assured her. “You know, for the past year when you were sick, you weren’t acting like yourself,” Owen informed her with a sad smile. He didn’t want to reminisce about that because it was painful, but luckily, it was in the past. They had already gone through those feelings and apologize for the harm they’d invariably caused, even though none of them had meant to. “We’ve been together for weeks now and not once you’ve given me any reason to believe you’re slightly different.”

Amelia closed her eyes, taking a deep breath as she fully absorbed the meaning of his words. It felt like they had just taken a huge load off her back.

“God…” she sighed, feeling more relieved than she’d felt in days. Amelia laughed a little nervously, but only because she had never imagined how good it would do her to have that conversation with Owen. “You have no idea how happy I am to hear this…”

“How long have you been keeping this to yourself?” Owen asked with a censoring look at the same time his eyes were loaded with warmth.

“Too long,” Amelia confessed. “I know it’s probably crazy but… Do you think it would be too much if I got a new scan tomorrow, just in case?” she bit her lower lip, desperately in need of comprehension. “I know the new one isn’t scheduled for another few months but I just…”

“You probably won’t find anything in it but if it’s going to help you end this agonizing doubt once for all, then do it,” Owen said with an understanding smile.

 Amelia let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding and hugged him again, settling for spending the rest of the evening in his arms. There was something too comfortable and too secure about the way Owen held her that made Amelia think she wouldn’t be safer anywhere else. She should have gone to him sooner, she realized. The first moment that doubt had arisen, Amelia should have gone to him and shared her concerns. It was incredibly helpful to talk to someone who understood her because it really put things in a whole new perspective.

Feeling much calmer now, Amelia slowly dozed off, thankful not only for the heavy burden that had been taken off her shoulders and the cold symptoms that were almost gone now but mostly for the amazing man holding her in his arms.

.

On Monday, before she went to her department to start her activities at work, Amelia took the elevator straight to radiology. Owen had wanted to come with her but she had to repeatedly assure him there was absolutely no need to, considering they were both sure the scan would turn out to be negative.

After filling out a request for her own test, Amelia waited to be squeezed in the electives of the day and then she sat outside the MRI waiting area. A few minutes later, the neurosurgeon was given the standard form that every patient needed to fill out before being submitted to the exam, one that she’d filled out too many times before.

Amelia knew that unlike a CT, which contained radiation, an MRI machine worked with high magnetic fields, which could be hazardous for some kind of implantable devices, hence why everyone had to answer questions before it. As she crossed off the checkboxes with multiple questions about pacemakers, surgical history and medical diseases, her eyes distractedly scanned the familiar questions, automatically filling each one of them.

But it wasn’t until Amelia reached half the page that she suddenly furrowed her brows.

For female patients.

13. Date of last menstrual period.

14. Are you pregnant or is there any chance you could be pregnant?

15. Are you experiencing a late menstrual period?

More questions followed, but those were enough to make Amelia stop at her tracks and really feel her heart racing in a response that had nothing to do with the possibility of having a brain tumor.

Date of last menstrual period.

God, she couldn’t remember. It had probably been a couple of months ago? Amelia’s cycle was usually very reliable but ever since her tumor and the response her body had had to the trauma of surgery that had temporarily changed and she’d lost track. So she really didn’t remember.

Are you pregnant or is there any chance you could be pregnant?

No. There wasn’t, right? Or… Well…

Amelia felt her heart racing even faster.  Before their marriage, she and Owen had never really worried much about contraception because she’d had an IUD, which she’d gotten removed right after they’d decided to start trying for a baby. So basically, throughout their entire relationship, they had gotten used to having sex without having to worry about consequences. Right when the possibility of conception had become their goal, their marriage had collapsed, causing them to stop trying at all. But later, when they’d rekindled their romance, none of them had really stopped to reconsider that small detail, Amelia realized.

Oh God, she breathed out heavily. How could she have been so blind? She, who had always been so absolutely careful about contraception, especially after her first pregnancy?

Her palms were sweaty, her mouth dry and her vision became slightly blurry but Amelia forced herself to concentrate.

Could it be that, deep down, Amelia had sabotaged herself, she pondered? It was really hard to fathom that she would simply obliterate such an important detail like avoiding a pregnancy. And yet it had been exactly what had happened.

Perhaps if it had been anyone else, Amelia wouldn’t have done it. But Owen had his own special way of making Amelia feel so safe and looked after that maybe she had involuntarily risked it? Because deep down, she wanted it just as much as she knew he did and knew that if she’d simply waited for the right moment it might never come?

No, that didn’t make any sense, she thought.

Amelia dropped the form on the empty chair beside her and propped her elbows on her knees, burying her face in her hands. Her mind was boiling with a million thoughts per second. Her emotions were mixing and she only managed to get up and get herself together when she realized that she didn’t know if she was pregnant. The fact she had had unprotected sex did not mean she was pregnant.

Sure, she was experiencing some symptoms. But to go and say that a pregnancy was causing them was nearly as crazy as to say that a tumor was causing them… right?

But between and tumor and pregnancy…

Amelia was just getting cured of a cold. Surely that explained why she’d been relatively nauseous for the past week. It still didn’t explain why her emotions seemed to be shifting with more ease than ever, but still, that could be just an impression.

With a heavy sigh, Amelia cast those thoughts aside. She had to be practical. She had gone there to get a brain MRI to exclude the unlikely possibility of a brain tumor recurrence. She would get it. First things first.

But as she processed the situation and finished filling out her forms, proceeding to change her clothes to a patient gown to then be escorted to the exam room later, Amelia’s mind couldn’t help reminiscing.

Are you experiencing a late menstrual period?

As she lay on the table having her head positioned for the exam, Amelia tried not to panic thinking about the answer to that question.

Yes. Yes, she was experiencing a late menstrual period. In fact, considering all the craziness of post-surgical mayhem added to the effects the stress had had on her body, after a quick math she could assume her period was a couple of weeks late.

Even though the exam didn’t take more than fifteen minutes, for Amelia, it felt like two hours. Her palms were still sweaty and her heart rate accelerated when she went behind the computer screen to check the images. They were clear, as expected, but they weren’t the ones causing her fit of anxiety. Not anymore.

As she strode through the halls as if her own feet were guiding her, Amelia suddenly found herself in the ER floor, instead of the surgical wing. The neurosurgeon swallowed hard, trying to concentrate on what she had to do.

A tall, blonde man with broad shoulders and the most dazzling masculine smile was just laughing at something one of the residents had said when she took a few steps in his direction. But the lightheartedness quickly vanished from Owen’s face when he noticed the serious look on Amelia’s face as she walked in his direction.

Suddenly connecting her sudden appearance in the ER and mysterious expression to the result of the MRI he assumed she’d just had, Owen couldn’t help himself.

“What is it?” he asked, interrupting the residents, who all stopped talking all at once. “What happened?”

Amelia stopped at her feet, uncomfortable by the presence of the three virtual strangers who looked from Owen to her with a mix of apprehension and expectancy in their eyes. It was obvious her husband had just been teaching them something, but at that moment, she was too alarmed to care about the interruption.

“Can you come with me?”

Owen didn’t answer with words, instead, he followed her to the nearest empty exam room and closed the door after them. Amelia noticed the alarm on his face and instantly picked up on his assumption.

“My MRI is clean. It’s all good.”

The relief was visible on his face but only for a moment, since it was instantly replaced by a confused expression. Amelia kept staring at him, wanting to explain, but she had no idea where to start.

She needed to find out the truth soon. And this time around, for this particular exam, Amelia definitely needed Owen beside her as she waited for the results.