Jarod

"This might feel a bit cold at first", Dr. Burton was a friendly man in his late fifties and had also been in attendance when Miss Parker had last been admitted. It felt like a lifetime ago when I had found her doubled-over on the floor in our house and I took her hand, glad that at least she wasn't in pain this time.

Dr. Burton ran the ultrasound across Parker's bare stomach and I stared at the screen in concentration. Although we were here to get her checked out for a frightening reason, my heartbeat accelerated a little with joy at the sight of our baby. I squeezed Parker's hand but she didn't seem to notice. The tablets had already been sent to the lab for analysis and they had drawn her blood to get it checked out, too. So far all readings had been okay but we couldn't be sure until we received the lab results.

"He looks healthy enough…" The doctor mumbled and stepped closer to the screen to inspect the image more closely. "He's a little on the small side but that's nothing to worry about."

The tiny heart was beating rhythmically and the sound was quite reassuring. When he was finished with his examination, Dr. Burton gave a satisfied nod.

"Your baby looks perfectly healthy for now, Miss Parker, but we will have to wait for the results of the blood-tests. I'd appreciate it if you could stay the night."

Miss Parker didn't look entirely happy with that request but nodded obediently. No tantrum for once.

"I'll have someone prepare a room. You can wait here and rest until we're set up and ready for you." He leaned forward and gave her a warm smile. "Don't worry too much. And sleep well."

When he had left the room, I watched Parker remove the gel from her stomach with the tissue she had been given. When she was finished, she pulled her pullover down and looked at me uncertainly.

"You should go home and stay with Sammy," she said softly.

"She's with Sydney and Angelo. They'll be fine."

She nodded then stretched her arms out for me and I stepped into them and kissed her forehead while I held her.

"I won't leave you alone like this, Parker."

Thirty minutes later she was in the bed of the single room a friendly male nurse had led us into and I was sitting on a chair next to her.

"Remember back then we were making out in the hospital bed and that old spinster came in?" she asked, smiling at the memory and I knew at once what she was referring to.

"I do. She then told you that I knew about your ulcers and you stormed out of there. Damn the old bat."

She smiled. "God, I hated you that evening."

"You must have hated me even more when you learned that I had knocked you up." I grinned back and she reached for my hand. "Don't sit there like that. I want you in my bed."

"Is that an offer to do something dirty and inappropriate?"

"No. I just want to be in your arms. It feels safer that way."

"You're getting all sorts of soft," I told her jokingly.

"Don't tell anyone. I'll be back to normal before you know it."

I climbed in bed behind her and wrapped my arms around her, my hands on hers that were covering her stomach. "Have you thought about a name, yet?"

"Not Cuthbert."

"Apparently that's one of my uncles. I can only apologize for my mother bringing it up."

She chuckled and turned around in my arms to face me. "I can't come up with anything before I've seen him." She hesitated for a moment then suddenly became serious. "Do you think I will?"

The sad look in her eyes should have told me what she was talking about, but I asked anyway: "Why wouldn't you?"

"What if those pills hurt him?"

I stroked her back gently because I knew it to be relaxing for her.

"We don't know yet what is up with those pills, Parker. So far he seems fine. We will just have to wait."

"You're right, Jarod. I have become a sappy scared little housewife," she said bitterly. "I used to not let things get to me like that."

"It's okay. You're a mother, now. They always worry."

"And how would you know," she said sarcastically, but I let it slip and instead placed my hand over her stomach and lightly pressed down on it.

"I'll keep you safe, I promise." I knew that she wasn't the type who wanted to be kept safe. She wanted to be independent, to save herself, but this time she would have to let me chaperone her for a while. A pained moan snapped me out of my reminiscence.

"Are you okay?"

"Let me just…" she sat up and rubbed her stomach just below her ribcage. "It's that damn ulcer I think. Right on time to make my life even more of a misery."

I tried not to show my relief too much. Thank god it wasn't the baby.

"Maybe that's where your symptoms came from," I offered.

"Then what about those pills?"

"I don't know. Do you have your medication with you?"

The question had been more of a rhetorical one because I knew that she had been so afraid of another ulcer-related problem that she had been carrying medication at all times even during the last five years when she hadn't had any symptoms at all. I grabbed her handbag from the chair in the corner and went through it in the half-darkness of them room. After coming up with lipstick, car-keys, a note from Val ("Hey Skinny, I miss the drinking. Let's go to a bar tonight and pretend to get badass-drunk, Val.") and forty dollars in cash I finally found what I had been looking for. She accepted the medication thankfully and swallowed some of it. Then she lay back on the bed and sighed.

"Does it hurt much?" I asked stupidly.

"Like when your insides are twisted into knots. Oh, and add some nasty action involving a knife."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"Actually, there is." She popped herself up on her arms but seemed to quickly regret it, as she let herself fall back on the bed immediately.

"I could use hot milk with honey… or bourbon," she added dreamily.

"I'll go for the former," I promised and kissed the top of her head. "Try to relax, okay?"

Miss Parker

I must have drifted off to sleep besides myself because sounds of a commotion snapped out of a dream I couldn't remember. There were footsteps in front of my room, followed by something shattering on the floor and an angry voice- Jarod's voice. I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed, my heart already beating faster. What I was experiencing during the short moment I needed to race towards the door was less a sense of foreboding and more of a vision. Someone was shocked, someone else was eerily calm. I pulled the door open and a startled group of men turned towards me.

"What is it?" I snapped, as usual masking my worry with annoyance.

"Miss Parker, we need you to go lay back down," one of the two men said. He was wearing a cheap suit and a hideous tie and there was something in his left hand that looked an awful lot like a police badge to me. Next to him stood an uneasy-looking young man wearing the local police uniform. I could feel a knot in my stomach that was not ulcer-related.

"What is it?" I demanded.

"Ma'am, we really can't…"

I cut him off sharply. "I work for the district attorney's office. And not as some sort of secretary if you get my drift… so if you could please tell me what the hell is going on?"

I knew that the absence of a suit and a proper hairdo, let alone heels, had taken a huge part of my natural authority away but it was still enough to make the man talk.

"I'm sorry. We've got to arrest your husband on suspicion of kidnapping and murder."

My first reaction was to mock him. "My husband? Are you insane?"

The plain-clothes detective took me by the arm and led me back into my hospital-room while the other snapped handcuffs around Jarod's wrists and began to monotonously read him his rights. This was insane! While being pushed back inside the room, I tried to catch Jarod's gaze but he avoided mine, his eyes fixed gloomily onto the cop in front of him. By his feet the remains of a cup lay broken and hot milk seeped into the floor.

Before I could protest any further, the detective closed the door and motioned for me to sit down on the bed. I didn't feel like it but I suspected that I would faint if I had to stay on my feet much longer. A horrible sense of dread was making its way up to my throat and I knew that this time it was no one's but my very own.

"This has to be some kind of misunderstanding!" I said the first thing that entered my mind and then realized that it was just what every wife in my position would say, no matter how guilty her husband really was.

"I'm sorry, Miss Parker. Someone called anonymously and we investigated. Truth is we've found some of the clothes Donald was wearing when he went missing in your husband's office."

My throat constricted and suddenly I felt very small and very tired.

"But that's not possible…" I weakly protested. "Jarod wouldn't hurt anyone."

"Miss Parker, are you aware of the fact that none of your husband's information checks out? Although he claims otherwise, he never studied human medicine in Yale. His whole CV seems to be pure fiction."

Of course it was. I had helped him draw it up. He was a pretender after all and didn't need to study medicine in order to be one of the best doctor's in the country. And of course he had never worked where he claimed he had since he had been wrongfully incarcerated most of his life and spent the next years as a fugitive. Of course, I could tell the detective none of that.

"I am very sorry that you had to witness this in your state and that we had to come here to arrest him."

"I'm not in a state. I'm pregnant for god's sake!" I snapped.

He placed his hand on top of mine to calm me. "As I said, I am very sorry to have disturbed you. I would like you to lay back down now and relax. We will get your husband to the station and…"

I cut him off. "Get out of here."

"Excuse me…?"

I shook my head and grabbed my jacket. "Contrary to what you believe is appropriate, I am not going to sit back and watch my husband being charged with something he didn't commit!"

The man looked tired, I realized- There were dark circles under his grey eyes and his hair look flat, as if he'd slept on it. The glasses were slightly awry and the suit was crumpled. His next words were like a blow to my head and I could do all but stagger.

"Does your husband have an alibi for the night of the fifteenth?"

The fifteenth. I knew instantly what night that had been. The one after the afternoon I had had my first ultrasound on. The night I had waited up for Jarod to come home and he had only returned late at night. He had believed me to be asleep when he had crept into the bathroom, a bag of clothes in his hands. Upon initially thinking that he was having an affair, I had later put it down to his having met up with Zoe to discuss his impending reunion with his family.

I suddenly felt sick. If they wanted to pin this on him, they would. I was a prosecutor, after all. I knew how it was done. And suddenly I knew exactly where I had to go.

Val

"What the bloody hell is going on?" I stumbled towards the front-door in my favorite checkered flannel pajamas and blinked into the porch-light, still drowsy with sleep. Then it registered with me. "Skinny! What are you doing here?" Her face looked almost white and the make-up was smudged around her eyes. She was shivering although she was wearing a coat and scarf. "Come on in, will you! Before you freeze to death out there!" I grabbed her arm and pulled her into the house, barely resisting the urge to rub her upper arms to get some warmth back into her shaking form.

"Jarod's been arrested," she said softly and I could hear her voice breaking.

I am really not the type to make sweet tea and put a blanket around a person's shoulders but since I couldn't possibly serve a pregnant woman scotch, I did just that, murmuring meaningless words of comfort while I put the kettle on, scooped three spoons of sugar into the brew and wrapped her cold hands around the mug.

"Now tell me once again what exactly went wrong!"

I listened intently as she told me what had happened and couldn't help but smile sadly as she told me how she had pushed the detective aside and marched out. Her bravado, however, faded quickly and the trembling returned. For the first time in my life I was a witness to Skinny looking really vulnerable.

"Drink your tea," I told her and thought of my mother who had always forced sickeningly sweet tea on me when I had been in shock or heartbroken once again. I had always found it utterly annoying but somehow it had worked every time.

"It's fine," I told her, rubbing her hand between mine in a totally irrational need to keep her warm. "I'll call Clifford." Clifford Denton, my law school crush and best criminal defense attorney in the country would be able to help. After I'd made the call and he had promised to meet me at the police station, I wondered what to do with Skinny. I couldn't possibly leave her alone and Christine was on a weekend trip with her new lover in Chicago. Since Sydney was obviously already taking care of Sammy, I couldn't come up with anyone but her doctor. She would know what to do and I had met her around town when we had both visited a bazaar at the church where I had been forced to go due to reelection issues. She seemed nice enough and she would know what to do about Skinny's ulcer problems. I walked back into the living-room, ready to tell her the news when I found her slumped on the couch, having fallen asleep, or rather passed out, considering the circumstances.

I decided to call Dr Summers to watch her anyway.

TBC