Chapter Text
Kate’s POV
I'm having a miscarriage.
I know because it's happened before.
There's too much blood. I know that too. This isn't a normal amount, this is different from the last time.
I'm on the bathroom floor. The tile is cold through the robe and I can't seem to get warm and there's a part of my brain that is still running assessments. Noticing that I’m cold, that the pain is going in the wrong direction and I keep coming back to it’s too much blood, this isn’t right.
I'm struggling to breathe.
I reach for my phone and text Hal.
Hal, who I let fly out on Air Force II without me. Hal, who I told I wanted a private divorce and a public marriage, Hal who is thirty-six hours into his Vice Presidency and who I know, I know with complete certainty, I have no right to interrupt.
I text him anyway.
ARDEN
I know what that word will do when he sees it. We agreed to it in a hotel room, years ago, after the first time this happened. We prepared for this.
I put the phone on the tile beside me.
I wait.
He calls back in five minutes.
"Kate." Wary. Frustrated. I can’t blame him, the last time we spoke I was breaking up with him.
"I'm going to tell you something but I need you to not get on a plane and come over here."
"Okay?" He says cautiously.
"It's happening again, Hal." My voice sounds far away. Like someone else is speaking, someone standing slightly outside my body, observing. Weak. I sound weak.
"What's happening?"
"I'm having a miscarriage."
A silence.
"A miscarriage? I didn't even know you were pregnant." A pause. "Kate?"
The way he says my name. Concern and hurt and a warning all at once, three things layered together on top of each other and I’m not sure which one will win.
"Almost three months," I say. "I didn't tell you because there was so much going on and things were moving so quickly and the President died and then you became Vice President and I didn't want you to be disappointed if it didn't work out because it's never worked out before." The words are coming faster than I mean them to."I got so close to the twelve week mark this time, Hal. I really thought that maybe this time would be different and—"
"Kate—"
"But it's not." My voice breaks on it. "It's not, Hal, and there's so much blood and I'm so scared."
"Kate." His normally controlled voice isn’t controlled at all anymore, it’s shaky and afraid and angry all at once, "You broke up with me while knowing you were pregnant.” He stops. I can hear him trying to hold the two things at once, the anger and the fear, going back and forth between them.
I try to answer him.
The pain goes in the wrong direction, sharply. Not the pain I was expecting, not the pain I remember from before. It’s radiating into places that make the assessment-part of my brain set off flares and alarms.
My hands are very cold.
The phone is heavy. Heavier than it should be.
I can hear his voice through the speaker but it's coming from somewhere far away, the words not quite reaching me, and I think: I should tell him about the pain. I should tell him it's going the wrong way.
I think this and then the floor is the whole world and his voice is very far away, saying my name, saying it again and then everything goes black.
Hal’s POV
I had texted Kate's security detail the moment she said miscarriage.
Before she finished the sentence. Check on my wife immediately, sent while she was still talking, because ten years of knowing Kate Wyler means I know that she prefers to handle things alone and without asking for help until it is well past the point when she should have asked.
Nothing prepared me for the sound of her voice going silent.
Not fading, but suddenly cutting out mid sentence. The phone clattered on something hard, and then all I could hear was the alarmed voices of her detail followed shortly after by a siren.
And then the line went dead.
I stand in my office with the phone in my hand.
Thirty-six hours into this job.
I think about her voice. There's so much blood and I'm so scared. Kate who does not say I'm scared. Kate who has faced down kidnappers and militias and para-governmental organizations in negotiation rooms and found ways to make them all agree on point 2 of her 18 point plan. Kate saying I'm so scared in a voice that sounded like someone else, someone quiet and weak.
And underneath the fear, anger that I can’t face yet. Three months.
She was three months pregnant.
She asked for a divorce knowing she was pregnant.
I am not going to be able to process that right now, not until I know that Kate is okay. But I at least let myself acknowledge the anger that is there beneath the surface.
Nora appears in the doorway.
She has the address of the hospital, a single card, held out with the efficiency of someone who has already made several calls I didn't ask her to make. I remind myself to give her a raise.
"Sir. Kate's been taken to the hospital. I have the address." She pauses. "The Chinese Foreign Minister is waiting in the other room. What do you want to do?"
I look at the card.
I try to shift focus, compartmentalise, triage the situation.
"Get Carole Lengetti on the phone," I say.
Nora is already dialing.
Carole picks up on the first ring.
"Hal."
Not a question. She knows from the fact of my number that something is wrong. She has known me long enough to know that I don't call without reason.
"It's Kate," I say. "She's in the hospital in London and I'm in the middle of a meeting I can't leave and I can't get to her fast enough. Are you anywhere near her?"
"I'm in London." No hesitation. "Send me the address. Get me on the security clearance list."
"Thank you, Carole."
"Hal." A pause. "Do you know what's happening?"
I look at Nora's card. The hospital address. The floor. The room number they haven't told me yet.
"She had a miscarriage," I say. "Something has gone wrong. I don't know what yet."
Silence.
"I'm on my way," she says.
She hangs up.
I stand in the office for three seconds and switch modes. I have to turn on the mode I use in war zones, when there are multiple competing crises and I have to determine which one is the linch pin, and which one I can do something about and which one I have to delegate
I dig for the part of myself that can walk into a room with the Chinese Foreign Minister and be entirely present in the meeting. Carole will look after Kate for me. I'm delegating Kate.
I straighten my suit jacket.
I look at Nora.
"If the hospital calls," I say, keeping my voice even, "I want an immediate update. Not after the meeting. Not between agenda items." I hold her gaze. "Immediately."
She nods. Professional and steady and asking nothing.
I go back into the meeting.
I sit down across from the Foreign Minister and I am completely present and I am also on a bathroom floor in London and both of those things are true at once and I have no choice but to let them be.
The Foreign Minister begins to speak.
I listen.
Somewhere in London, Kate is in a hospital and Carole is on her way and I am here, which is where I have to be, which does not make it bearable, but I can’t get on a plane and be there in time to make any difference in the outcome, so I need to be here and do my job and just keep going until I find out what is happening with Kate.
The meeting continues.
My phone is in my jacket pocket.
I wait.
Hal’s POV
I last forty minutes.
Forty minutes of the next meeting, which is about domestic energy policy and which I am present for in the technical sense. I say the right things, I ask the right questions, I find ways for everyone to agree. I do all of this from somewhere slightly outside myself.
Forty minutes.
Then I tell Nora to get Carole back on the phone.
She answers on the second ring.
"I'm at the hospital," she says, before I can ask. "They've shut down a ward for her. She has a room. I'm still waiting to hear her status."
Nora is in the doorway. Watching me with the steady careful look of someone who has correctly assessed there is nothing useful she can do. I will tell her I appreciate this. Not tonight.
"Can you get a doctor on the line for me."
"I'll find one and call you back."
"Go," I say. "Call me the moment you know something."
The line goes quiet.
I sit back down at the desk.
The briefing is open in front of me. I look at it, but all the words are meaningless. I have been in this job for thirty-six hours and somewhere in London a hospital has shut down a ward and Kate is in a room in it and I am here, four thousand miles away, and she was pregnant for three months and I didn't know.
I think about what it means that she didn't tell me. For 3 months. Had things been so bad between us that she couldn't tell me?
Three months.
She was three months pregnant and she stood on the tarmac and watched me get on Air Force II and she didn't say anything. She made a series of quiet decisions without me and ended up on a bathroom floor and I am four thousand miles away and there is nothing I can do about any of it right now except sit in this chair.
I think about the first time she had a miscarriage. The way we sat together and there was silence and how it felt like the world had stopped but at least we were together, we had each other to hold onto.
She is alone this time.
My chest tightens in a way that makes my eyes water.
The phone lights up.
I pick up before the first ring finishes.
"Talk to me," I say.
Carole is quiet for a moment. I feel my heart racing.
"She's in sepsis," Carole says. "From the miscarriage. It had been developing for hours before anyone found her." A pause. The careful kind. "They're working on her, Hal. They're doing everything. But she's not..." Another pause. "She's unconscious."
I don't say anything.
"They don't know yet," Carole says. "That's what I'm telling you. They don't know if she's going to make it, Hal."
I put my hand over my eyes.
The office is very quiet.
I think about her on the floor tonight, alone, the detail a floor below with no reason to know, no alarm to trip, nothing to indicate anything was wrong because Kate Wyler has spent her entire life being the person who manages crises, not the one in crisis.
Except for me. I was the one person who used to get to do that, to look after her, be the one she let in. And when she actually needed it I wasn't there. I was four thousand miles away being Vice President of the United States, a job she knew about, a job she told me to take. Despite knowing she was pregnant.
"Hal." Carole's voice. Careful. "You need to get on a plane."
"Carole we broke up, she doesn't want me there. She specifically told me not to get on a plane."
"Hal, she wants you there, I don't care what she said."
"She specifically—"
"Hal. She is unconscious in a hospital in London and she is septic and they don't know yet if she's going to make it. What she told you on the phone was said by a person who thought she had more options than she turned out to have." A pause. "She doesn't get a vote right now."
I am already standing.
"Nora," I say. Not into the phone. She's in the doorway. She looks at me and I look at her and she nods once, already turning, already on her own phone.
"Did you know," I say to Carole.
A pause. "About the pregnancy?"
"Yes." I don't know which answer I'm hoping for.
"She told me when she found out." A silence. "I think she was too scared to get your hope up. She didn't want you to hurt again if she lost it. She knows how hard it was for you last time and she didn't want to put you through that again."
I stand in the middle of the office and I think about Kate knowing. Kate with the information and the fear of what my hope would cost both of us if it went wrong again, and deciding to carry it alone rather than put that on me, and I'm mad that I can't even just be angry about it, because I understand what drove her decisions.
She was trying to protect me.
"I'm getting on a plane," I say.
"I know," Carole says.
"Tell her—" I stop.
Carole waits.
I try to find the words. I have never in my life been unable to find words in a crisis and I am standing in my office at the end of the second day of my vice presidency and I cannot find the one that covers what I need Kate to know right now.
"Just stay with her," I say.
"I will," Carole says.
I believe her.
I hang up.
Nora appears in the doorway again. "I've made the call," she says. "There are protocols. For the Vice President traveling internationally on short notice, the security requirements alone..."
"How long."
She looks at me steadily. "I'm working on it."
I nod.
I pace. I am not a pacer. I have always considered pacing a waste of energy that could be directed toward solving the problem, and right now the problem cannot be solved from this office and so I pace, back and forth across the carpet, while Nora works and the building hums around me.
I pace. I have no idea how much time has passed.
Nora appears again. "The plane is ready."
I stop pacing.
I pick up my jacket and go.