Chapter Text
Getting married, then pregnant, then divorced, then giving birth – all that done in less than two years? In theory, it should be very chic. But Shiv isn't a movie star, and she isn't a supermodel, and it's been incredibly difficult to spin the dumpster fire that was her early thirties into something sexy. Or she could have gone for the Reba angle: empowered woman, single mom building a life for her kid against all odds – but then again, what fucking odds? She should never want for anything, what with the new apartment, two nannies, and an incredibly forgiving dog. As far as the public is concerned, Tom Wambsgans landed the American CEO job and his wife simply couldn't bear it, so she fucked off most expeditiously, out of the marriage, the company, and even the family, it seems. And for once, surprisingly, the people have the closest thing to the truth. No PR injections, no sweetener, just the image of Shiv Roy, princess of a soon-to-be-forgotten empire, probably done with the part of her life notable enough for Wikipedia.
Lizzie. That’s the name she gave the baby. Maybe, when kindergarten rolls around, she’ll resent being given something as clunky as Elizabeth, but then Shiv will tell her where it came from and hopefully the kid will approve. There’s not much to it, really – morning of the scheduled C-section, she grabs her phone with the intention of panic-Googling complications, the first headline on her Discover reads: London’s £19bn Elizabeth line brought to a halt due to swan on the tracks, and it’s the funniest goddamn thing Shiv’s ever seen in her life. And Swan was much too hippie, she thought, the only person who wouldn’t make fun of it was probably Connor (eurgh), so the choice was clear. In retrospect, Shiv did Lizzie a favor; the name holds neither history nor heavy expectation. It’s just a thank-you to a giggle fit that lasted two minutes, nothing more.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter that Lizzie has a trickle of the British monarchy in her; Shiv still can’t book a private fucking appointment at the gynecologist’s. The elevator ride coming up took forever, this ambient music is actually making her headache worse, and the patient inside has been sobbing for the past five minutes. It’s almost too much.
The door swings open and a flurry of charcoal gray glides in. “Hi. Karolina Novotney, for 10:30.”
Almost. Almost too much.
The blonde twentysomething behind the desk looks up with a jolt. “Miss Novotney. Good morning. Let me just— do a quick search in the— yeah,” she sputters, frantically typing on the keyboard.
Karolina whips off her giant sunglasses to squint at the poor thing. “Is there a problem?”
“Yeah, 10:30 is me, actually,” Shiv pipes up from behind her, pinching the bridge of her nose. Here we go.
“Siobhan. Hi.” Karolina doesn’t betray much surprise, but she does instinctively clutch her phone to her chest. What the fuck is she, five years old? Shiv doesn’t even work there anymore. The worst she could do with a confidential email is laugh at it.
“I’m really, really sorry about this, ladies, I must have made a mistake with the new booking app or something, I just…” the receptionist explains helplessly, trailing off into nothing.
Karolina gives up after five seconds of dead silence. “Well, what we’re not gonna do is just stand here, yeah? Do you have any idea of how you wanna resolve this, are you expecting me and her to Wrestlemania it out in front of you, or?”
Shiv reaches out to tap her elbow. “Karolina. Come on.”
“What?!” She doesn’t even seem to register her own outburst. It’s Karen Novotney today, then.
“She’s about to hurl. Or pass out,” Shiv mumbles, nodding her head towards the woman, who is now only 5% receptionist and 95% wretch. She gently guides Karolina to the far corner of the waiting room.
On second thought, Shiv realizes she doesn’t give a shit whether Dr. Ybañez sees her today or not, but she wants to poke the bear a little. Catching cool-collected-Karolina on an off day feels oddly lucky. “The thing is, I’m still pretty messed up from the delivering-a-whole-person thing. What are you here for?”
“Uh, I just had my ovary sliced out, actually. Not that it’s any of your business.”
Never mind. Jesus Christ. Shiv just thought there might be an early menopause joke in there for her to make. “As in, like, there was a… cyst on it?”
“No, Shiv, Bezos was begging me for my eggs,” Karolina snaps, pulling a face. “Of course there was a cyst on it.”
Shiv can’t stop the mild horror that spreads across her face, but that just draws Karolina’s into a deeper grimace.
"Oh, relax, it wasn't cancer. Just, you know, terribly inconvenient."
Shiv clears her throat. "Sure, but you're still feeling pretty antsy about it."
"Well… yeah." Karolina’s clearly taken aback by whatever this is. Some bizarre reverse psychology thing? Siobhan Collingwood Roy’s first-ever exercise in empathy?
Pressing restart on her life was undeniably bloody and brutal, but Shiv particularly appreciates this one perk: she can start games of her own now. Be faster with the comeback, think of something more crass to say, always pick the more shameless thing to do – that used to be the default. Now she can disarm people by just being nice. And that should be fun.
Shiv makes her way back to the desk and squints at the still-trembling receptionist’s nameplate. “Okay. Here’s what we’re gonna do... McKinli, right?” There’s half of a laugh in her voice at the end – that fucking spelling – and out of the corner of her eye she sees Karolina pressing her mouth shut, no doubt thinking the same.
“Yeah. I’m gonna give the slot to this lovely lady here. Does it look like you can fit me in sometime on Tuesday?”
“Of course! Of course, Miss Roy.” McKinli snaps out of her terror spell and starts scrambling with the computer. Shiv arranges a checkup for that afternoon then feels Karolina tugging on her sleeve.
“Hey. Thanks. And I’m sorry for being so shitty just now.”
Shiv scoffs. “You think that was shitty? Have you forgotten where I grew up?” She removes Karolina’s hand from her arm but finds herself holding on to it a little longer than she has to. “If you’re sorry, just come sit with me while I wait for my driver. I kinda hate it in here.”
They sit together for a while, excruciatingly quiet, before Karolina blurts out: “I have to be the fucking worst. How are you? The baby must be, what, three months now?”
“Yeah, almost four.”
Karolina scrunches up her face, seemingly exerting gargantuan effort to find another question. “And the… terror levels? Manageable?”
“I mean, sure. Fuckin’ angel. Much better conversationalist than her dad, too,” Shiv says lightly.
Karolina makes it a point to break eye contact. “You say that like it’s a hard thing to be,” she replies, amusement creeping into her voice.
“You wanna kill him yet? I’d say give it another year. More time to think of something elegant.”
“Oh, I’ve been plotting since he shit his pants in DC. You don’t even know.” Karolina visibly racks her brain again for something to circle back to politeness with. It’s cute. “Did you have an okay delivery?”
Shiv clicks her tongue, calibrating her answer. “I mean, I was pissed at her 'cause she didn't wanna flip and get her head in the right place? But they sliced her out pretty quick and we're good now,” she says. “Hard to stay mad.”
“I'm really happy to hear that, Shiv."
“Well, I'm really happy to hear that thing on your ovary didn't… kill you?” Shiv tests, raising an eyebrow.
Karolina offers a small smile in response. “Me too. I kinda like it here.”
On the car ride home, Shiv tries to catastrophize about her appointment being axed. There’s still no fucking feeling around her wound, but then again Dr. Ybañez told her last time not to worry about it too much, that the nerves would need time to regrow, et cetera. And she can’t find a reason to be angry about losing a chunk of her Saturday morning, not really. Shiv wanted to make a joke, tell Karolina of course the cyst was benign, she was too pretty to have cancer anyway, ask her if she knows Hugo is working for some teen popstar now, find out if she’s bored in the office, if she has anybody to bitch to there, just anything other than what she was able to come up with earlier.
She’s not entirely sure where all this belated desperation is coming from. Maybe her brain’s just having some trouble with memory storage, because now there’s all this weird shit coming back up to the surface. Karolina humming Hollaback Girl in the bathroom on the executive floor. Karolina using her blouse to help her open a particularly stuck bottle cap, exposing a few inches of her midsection. Karolina uttering a barely audible “I’m gonna kill myself” after accidentally spilling a bit of coffee on her binder.
So what if there was a crush buried somewhere in there? What-fucking-ever.
“Everything okay, Miss Roy?” Her driver Andy glances at her, concerned.
Shiv realizes she physically shook her head in her attempt to shake the idea. “Yeah. Just, uh, remembered something. Thanks.”
Normally, none of this would matter in real life, sure, but something feels different right now. Shiv went certifiably insane for a couple of years then just up and left, and is being (arguably) mellowed out by this having-a-kid business. Karolina, on the other hand, if Shiv’s guesses are any good, is waking up every day feeling crazier and crazier, what with Waystar being turned upside down and turning into Tom’s direct report, of all people. Maybe she’s two seconds away from realizing she’s way too smart to stay a suit forever. That she could be doing more, getting more, more eyes on her, more people taking note.
Maybe Shiv should tell her that. Maybe they're meeting in the middle for a reason.