𝓲sadora

She looks at it first in confusion, and then you watch understanding burst open behind those big brown eyes. "Are you—"

You nod before she even finishes, because you can't get the word out yet either, and that's all it takes. She's off the counter so fast the orange peel skids clean across the tile and splats onto the floor.

"Oh my goodness, eshgham!" She's got both arms around you, kissing your cheek, your jaw, the corner of your mouth, anywhere she can reach, fast and uncoordinated and entirely undone. "Eshgham, oh my god, are you serious?"

"You're gonna give yourself whiplash," you laugh, breathless, holding onto her while she's everywhere at once.

"Don't care." She pulls back only far enough to look at you properly, cupping your face, then kisses you again, slower, her thumbs tracing your cheekbones. "Y/N. We're having another baby."

"Technically it's one test."

"I don't care about technically," she says, grinning wide enough that it must ache, forehead dropping to rest against yours. "Science is science. There's chorionic gonadotropin in your pee."

You pull a face. "Gross, Baran."

"Don't 'gross' me, we're both doctors," she beams, grinning so hard she looks a little crazed, and you've never been more in love with anyone in your life than you are with your wife right now.

You laugh again, helpless at the intensity of it all, and let her fold you fully into her arms, rocking the two of you side to side against the counter like there's music only she can hear.

"We're gonna be second-time moms," she murmurs eventually, into your hair, still holding on.

"Yeah," you say, and feel her smile against your scalp like sunlight finding a window. "Second-time MILFs."

"Y/N."

"I've got it — SILFs."

"Y/N."

—

You're seven weeks along when the floor falls out from under you.

You'd agreed to wait until twelve weeks to tell anyone this time. Especially Kaveh, who's three and would announce it to the entire daycare, the mailman, possibly a stranger at the grocery store. It was meant to stay yours a little while longer. You just wanted to carry your baby, known to only you and Baran, for just a little longer. You wanted your little baby to be safe.

You're halfway through morning rounds when the cramp pins you in place. You make it five more minutes before they have you doubling over, and that’s when you know something is seriously wrong.

Your hands are shaking too hard to find Baran's name at first. Her cell goes straight to voicemail because it’s mid-shift, of course, so you call the ED desk and ask for her by name, and Dana says hang on, hon, and you wait.

You sink to the cold tile, back against the door, doing the breathing you've taught a hundred frightened people to do.

"Hey honey, what's up," Baran says, a little breathless, like she jogged to grab the phone.

You press the phone harder against your ear, blood slicking the side of your leg. “I'm bleeding,” you rasp, voice so thin it might snap. “It’ s everywhere, B. I—I think I'm having a miscarriage.”

There's a beat where you feel her go still through the phone, a stillness with weight to it. Then, evenly: "Okay. I'm coming, don't move. Where exactly?"

"Bathroom. Third floor, by radiology."

“I mean in the body, honey.”

"Oh, duh, vaginally. Sorry," you shake your head, embarassed and overwhelmed and wanting to sob. Your brain's gone somewhere else entirely that isn't up at all for taking calls.

"Don't apologize, it's fine, stay where you are," You can hear her moving already, a door, a hallway. "Don’t get up for anything. I'm on my way."

Ninety seconds later the bathroom door flies open. Baran’s in scrubs, eyes wide, and she’ s on her knees beside you in one smooth motion. She drops her phone to her scrub pocket and cups your face with one hand, the other steadying the back of your neck. “Oh azizam,” she breathes. “I’ve got you, honey, it’s okay. Let me take a look.”

You watch as she reaches inside the bag you didn’t realize she'd brought and starts pulling stuff out. Your sweet wife brought supplies. Your eyes burn harder.

"I'm going to get a pad on you," Baran looks up through her curls. "Can you shift your hips just a little?"

You do. She works quickly, eyes tender and hands gentle.

"Feet up." She guides your heels onto the lip of the cabinet under the sink, then rolls her own jacket and slides it under your hips without being asked.

“Thank you,” you rasp, and she kisses you firmly. 

“Don’t say thank you,” she breathes against your mouth. “I’ve got you honey, okay? I’m not goint to let anything happen to you.”

She reaches for her phone, thumb already moving before it's even at her ear, her other hand never leaving you. It rests at the back of your neck, steady and warm.

"Yeah, it's Baran, I need OB down to the third floor bathroom by radiology, my wife's having a miscarriage, I need someone good, not whoever's free." A pause. "No, get me Whitfield if she's in the building." 

Her hand moves in slow circles against your neck the entire time she's talking, cradling you gently. "Wheelchair too, she's not walking anywhere. Yeah. Now, please."

She hangs up and is back to you immediately, both hands on you again, pulling you completely into her.

"Whitfield's good," she says, low, close to your ear. "She's gentle. She'll take care of you."

"You didn't have to yell at anyone."

"I wasn't yelling." A small, tired almost-smile. "I was just being direct, honey. We need to get you help."

"Baran?

There’s so many things you want to say, but that's all you have. Just her name and the way your voice breaks clean in half around it as the first of your tears start to spill and spill and spill.

"Come here, come here,” Baran moves in close and gets both arms around you, one hand cradling the back of your head, and she brings her mouth to your temple and just stays there, breathing. "Delam baraat tang shode, you hear me? I'm right here, honey. I've got you, I’ve got you."

You press your face into her neck and she tightens her hold, and she is warm, and she is certain, and she rocks you just slightly, so slightly, like there is still music only the two of you can hear.

—

You work with ultrasounds enough to know your baby has no heartbeat before the tech confirms it. You don't look at the screen. You watch the sorrow shining openly in Baran’s eyes, her thumb still moving over your knuckles in slow, steady passes, the lip she’s biting worriedly.

Afterward she's waiting in the hallway with your coat already open in her hands, the way she does on the coldest mornings.

"I called Marisol, she's got Kaveh for the night," she says, easing your arm into the sleeve. "So we're not rushing anywhere. Take whatever you need."

You nod. You don't trust your voice not to break the second you use it.

"You want to just go home? Or sit in the car a bit first, your choice."

You hadn't known that was a choice. You start crying in the elevator, unplanned, and she doesn't say anything at all, just pulls you into her side and cups the back of your head.

—

You sit in the car for almost forty minutes, the engine running for the heat, her hand resting on your thigh the whole time as you two talk, and talk, and talk.

"I keep thinking about everything I did wrong," you finally say, eyes fixed on the concrete pillar through the windshield. "The shift I picked up Saturday. My back twinged getting Kaveh into the car seat and I just kept going. That stupid coffee, even though I knew I probably shouldn't—"

"Woah, no." Her hand presses down, grounding. "Definitely not. Look at me, Y/N."

You don't want to. You make yourself anyway.

Her eyes are wet too, which somehow makes it both worse and easier to sit in.

"None of that did this," she says, fierce and certain all at once. "Not the coffee, not your back, not one thing on that list. You know the numbers better than I do. Most of the time there's just no reason. No fault. Nothing anyone did or didn't do. It just… honey, it just happens."

"But it had to happen to me. I failed, Baran. I couldn’t do it." Your voice splits right down the middle. "I just– Why couldn’t it happen for me specifically?”

She's quiet a second, and when she talks again it's lower, rougher than before. "You wanted it so much, nafasam, and grief doesn't really care about logic." She picks up your hand and presses it flat against her own chest, like she's lending you her heartbeat instead. "But you didn't fail at anything, okay? Your body's not a thing that failed. You were so, so brave."

You cry properly then, and she unclips her own seatbelt so she can lean fully across the console, the gearshift digging into her ribs, and just holds you there in the worst possible position for it, because the only alternative is letting go. That isn't a thing Baran has ever known how to do.

—

Baran takes leave for the first time since she was recovering from birthing Kaveh.

She makes round after round of meals without being asked. She runs you baths and sits on the closed toilet lid doing the crossword, reading you a clue now and then because she knows you like the guessing. Her hands are always somewhere on you; your foot in her lap while you read, fingers combing slowly through your hair on the couch, a palm flat against your back at the sink. You know she knows you like it, but you suspect it helps her too. Her baby may be gone, but you’re still right here.

Kaveh is only three. He climbs into your lap with his dinosaur and tells you all about it. He draws you little pictures, stacks his blocks into a tour for you to knock down because that’s what he does when he’s upset. He kisses your cheek right back when you lean down to tuck him in. He hugs you around the neck and tells you he loves you, and you hold him so close to your chest on those nights you sometimes hear him squeak like a little mouse from the force.

After two weeks, you tell Baran you don’t know if you can do it again.

You’re tucked into her side, the TV on more for noise than for watching. "I don't know if I  can do this twice."

You wait for her to push, even gently, but you just feel her chin settling on top of your head.

"Then we don't,” she says easily. “You're enough. This family's whole already, Y/N. I just want you to feel whole again too, however long that takes."

"What if I never do?”

"My love for you doesn’t change," she says truthfully. "But maybe we can see if there’s someone else who can help you, not just me. I don’t want you just to ache always, azizam, not if there’s something we can try to do.”

You don't have an answer for that. You just turn your face into her neck and let her carry the weight of you for a little while longer.

—

It's two weeks before you go back to work. Baran walks you in that first morning even though her shift doesn't start for another hour. The winter air stings, but you feel the warmth of her anyway, her hand never quite leaving you. Your wife has always been so touchy.

"Call me," she says, hands around your ears for no real reason except her hands need something to do and she wants to make you a little more comfortable, shelter you a little bit longer. "Whatever I'm doing, I'll pick up. You know that by now."

“Of course I will,” you whisper. “But thank you, B.”

She kisses your forehead, then your temple, then, finally, properly, your mouth, lingering there a beat longer than a goodbye usually asks for.

"Love you," she murmurs against your lips. 

“I love you more.”

You watch her walk off toward the ED, that same brisk, sure stride that makes residents scatter out of her way, and you stand there a second longer than you need to, just to watch her go.

You check in with your first patient at nine, same as every Tuesday. Around noon your phone buzzes a gif of a little bear holding up a heart. At two, it’s a photo of you and Kaveh. At five, another corny gif of a sand timer and pink glitter letters screaming “TWO HOURS TO GO!”

That night she comes home and finds you on the couch, and instead of asking how you're doing, she just toes off her shoes, lies down, and puts her head in your lap. As you stroke your hair you hum that same, untraceable little song a half-beat behind how she usually does it, maybe a little off-pitch, but she joins it all the same.