[Milliways] OOM: Flat 007

Contradictory to her normal behaviour, Sarah Jane spends most of the days following her discovery hiding in her flat. She simply doesn’t want to face facts. She doesn’t want to accept the fact she’s pregnant, she doesn’t want to accept it at all. It’s like she’s four again and hiding in her parents’ room because of a nightmare. Except that it’s been years since that point. She’s not four, and she has no one to rely on but her self. There’s no one to cry to. Two days pass, and James still isn’t there.

What does she do instead? It’s a simple enough routine, all things considering. She sleeps. She eats. She works with the few pieces of information she has on the mystery woman case. But Sarah doesn’t make any further attempt to follow any leads or compare notes with Alex. There’s a reason to her avoidance of people: she’s too afraid of bursting into tears in front of the first familiar face she sees. And that, she has decided, is something to be avoided at all costs.

On Saturday, when her period still hasn’t come as expected, Sarah finds herself panicking all over again. It takes her a good part of the day to work up the nerve to go downstairs. When she does, it is a quick dash to Bar, where she asks for three pregnancy tests – safety in numbers. These are different than the one she used a couple of days ago. But she’s still certain that they should give her the facts she dreads to know.

When she returns to flat 007, Sarah immediately rushes to the bathroom. Three tests later and the results are all the same: Sarah Jane is pregnant. She’s going to have a child, whether she likes it or not. She shakes her head, very forlorn. James isn’t even here. He’s never come back. Then, unable to stand any more, she collapses on to the floor of the bathroom. She leans against the bathtub and cries.

This isn’t what she wants at all. She wants to keep travelling with the Doctor and she wants everything to work out with James. She wants her freedom to do as she pleases as much as she wants to take it slow and build up a proper relationship - one that, for once, might actually last more than two years. But a baby complicates all of that. A baby means more rushing and less travelling. She doesn’t want either. Sarah just wants to be happy.

For a moment, she considers abortion. There are doctors here who could do it, she bets. She can probably get it done before James ever returned. He wouldn’t ever have to know just how close he came to being a father. But the second that thought crosses her mind, it’s just as quickly dismissed. After all the death that she’s witnessed, the last thing she could ever do is cut off anyone’s chance of life, especially a person she’ll have helped to create. And she doubts that she could cut herself off from this child either. Sarah knows what it is like to grow up without proper parents.

There won’t be any sort of abortion or adoption, she decides. No matter how much it kills her, she’s stuck with this child now.

Sarah sighs, leaning her head back against the tub edge. She looks again at the pregnancy test in her hand and glares at the positive indication. She’s not prepared to be anybody’s mother. She highly doubts she’d ever make a good one. And then there’s James. Everything right now, it seems, revolves around him: what will James say when he gets back? When will he be back? She had honestly thought that he would have returned seconds after walking through that door. Now it is days later and he still isn’t here. He missed their designated weekly date.

Everything only adds to her worries. It’s not just the baby that bothers her right now, when it comes down to it. It’s the lack of having her lover in her life. A daft and bloody idiotic dependency she never would have allowed herself if only she had been smart. But she hadn’t been. Instead, she had allowed herself to be carried away in a silly romantic notion. Maybe he had forgotten her by now. Maybe he had been killed. Or maybe, just maybe, some cosmic force deemed it necessary for him never to return.

She hopes it’s not any of these scenarios.

She can’t go through this alone.

With another sigh, Sarah gets up from the bathroom floor and throws the stick in the rubbish bin. She isn’t going to help herself by worrying. And she certainly isn’t going to help this child. There are better things that she could be doing right now. Sarah Jane has an article to write. She has a doctor (not the; he can’t know, especially not now) to find so she can check on the health of her child. There are books to start reading as well, especially if James never returns. And if he does, at least she can face this prepared.

Her hand goes to her stomach again and she allows herself one more sigh. It’s only nine months – less even – until she gives birth. She can do this.

Everything, though, will start tomorrow. Right now, she needs her sleep.