Chapter Text
When he finally makes it back to his apartment with his new girlfriend (!!!), the first thing he does is switch out his accidentally slept-in contacts for glasses.
He learns that Lizzie really, really likes his glasses. So much so, that he doesn’t even get a chance to change into normal clothes after he takes off his hospital scrubs.
When they finally manage to disentangle themselves from each other, he insists on cooking her lunch instead of ordering takeout, because she deserves for him to put in some effort.
She offers to help him with the dishes after, but he just loads the dishwasher.
“An efficient dishwasher uses less water than hand washing. I only do the dishes by hand if I need time to think. Or,” he admits, blushing as he meets her eyes, “if I had a certain someone helping me, say, on a specific Friday night about a month ago, and I wanted her to stay longer so I could spend more time with her.”
After that confession, she doesn’t let him out of bed until it’s time to get ready for dinner.
He learns that their height difference, plus the inherent dangers of the shower setup, makes having two people in the shower together highly impractical for just about everything except helping each other wash their backs.
There’s no appeal in constantly being on the verge of slipping and cracking your head open, he grumbles. It just makes more unnecessary work for the emergency department. And what’s the point, he adds as Lizzie laughs hysterically into his chest, when there’s only one showerhead, so one person is always half-drowning while the other is freezing to death?
No, he much prefers leaving the shower for foreplay and relocating those other activities to, say, the kitchen counters, which are perfectly at hip-level for him to bend Lizzie over on her tiptoes.
He takes his time that night after their dinner date, savoring her sighs and gasps and ticklish giggles, caressing every last inch of exposed skin with his lips and tongue as he peels her out of the gray and orange dress with the diamond-shaped cutout in the back.
Jane accidentally catches them coming out of the shower together less than a week later. Nobody shrieks or hides behind anyone else, but there’s no denying their intentions when he only has a towel slung over his hips and Jane discovered them just as he was about to unwrap Lizzie’s from around her.
Jane recovers quickly and offers to find them a spare toothbrush for Darcy, but she retreats back to her own room as swiftly as possible.
Lizzie is highly amused at his stammered apologies and excuses to Jane’s now firmly closed bedroom door. It’s not like her sister doesn’t know what they’re up to, she points out, considering Jane had been at home when they’d first gotten together.
(She also points out that he’s absolutely adorable when he blushes—but she’s careful later, while on her elbows and knees, to muffle her moans into a pillow.)
He awkwardly hovers around the kitchen the next morning as Jane sets the table while Lizzie’s still in the shower. (Separately. Without him. Because Jane’s here.)
Jane had set out a third placemat for breakfast, and she’d baked blueberry scones and laid out an assortment of fruit. There are also leftover cupcakes from Lizzie’s birthday. He wonders whether he should offer to make breakfast some days, if he and Lizzie are going to be sleeping over together regularly, as penance for any discomfort his presence causes and to take the pressure of cooking for three off Jane.
The third time he accidentally makes eye contact with her across the table and has to look down to hide his blush—as hard as they tried to be considerate and discreet, there’s no doubt as to what they were up to last night—Jane assures him that she doesn’t begrudge him and Lizzie their happiness, and what consenting adults get up to in the privacy of their own room is none of her business.
He tries to apologize again for causing her so much pain in her own relationship, especially after hearing Lizzie mention that Jane has started going to therapy in the wake of Bing’s most recent attempts at reconciliation going up in flames.
But she shakes her head firmly, insisting that she should be thanking him. For setting her on the path to realizing how wrong she and Bing were for each other. For helping to illuminate her own maladaptive coping methods. For helping her recognize her need for therapy. She’s been trying to figure out who she wants to be, and if this is the unintended outcome of his interference, which was done with good intentions, then she has nothing to blame him for.
The cupcakes are very good. Apparently Lydia had done the frosting job, but the recipe is Jane’s tried-and-true and her sisters’ go-to request for their birthdays. Darcy comments that he still has some of his mother’s old dessert recipes, some of which were allegedly passed down from his great-grandmother, but he’s more experienced with stovetop cooking than with baking, especially when it comes to recipes that were written before the widespread use of convection ovens. He supposes it would be a good bonding experience with his sister, though, to try and decipher one of the older ones with her, but he would have to get comfortable with baking terminology and techniques beforehand.
He imagines it would also be a good bonding experience with his girlfriend’s sister and his future sister-in-law, so he texts her a photograph of the recipes in question.
On Friday, the sight of her brother grinning from ear to ear holding an equally gleeful redhead in his lap earns them a piercing scream from Gigi and more follow-up questions about Lizzie’s birthday gift and silly euphemisms from Lydia.
When she returns from New York, Lydia is every bit as smug as she’d sounded that first day on the phone.
Actually, she’s gotten even worse since she’d broken into Lizzie’s room and discovered the box of condoms had gone untouched. When she slips a note under the door advising them to “feel free to go to town” because she has invested in noise-canceling headphones, Lizzie decides enough is enough and takes Darcy up on his offer to stay over at his place, even if it means she’ll no longer be able to walk to work from there.
A few weeks later, Lizzie is on-call for the weekend, so Jane invites him to meet up and try out one of his family recipes.
If he stops by the grocery store for the strawberries, she bargains, she’ll provide the hand mixer and other equipment.
Their weekend baking adventure turns into Lizzie coming home to find him and Jane at the kitchen table, tears streaming down his face as he tastes his mother’s strawberry shortcake for the first time in over a decade.
Jane decides maybe they should make snickerdoodles next time.
He also meets her father.
(Okay, technically, he first met Tom Bennet the night Lizzie’s mother went to the ICU, but the circumstances were less than conducive to a proper first meeting.)
He’s not sure what to expect, given the exceedingly different accounts he’s heard from each of the Bennet daughters, the most critical coming, surprisingly, from the favorite. It’s also been ten years since Darcy’s last relationship, and even longer since he’d last met a girlfriend’s parents and felt the need to impress anyone.
So he plays it safe and tries to be as polite and formal as possible, offering his hand to shake and remembering his pleases and thank-yous and sirs.
Addressing the man as “Dr. Bennet,” though, earns him a “Please, Dr. Bennet was my father. And my daughters. Call me Tom.”
He watches Lizzie beat her father at a round of chess before Tom shoos her off to check on how his bonsais upstairs are doing while he shows her young man his model trains in the basement. She rolls her eyes but does as she’s asked, pressing a kiss to the back of Darcy’s head and reminding her father to behave himself before she leaves.
Darcy wonders if being shown his girlfriend’s father’s model trains is supposed to be code for receiving the Talk about oiling up the shotgun. But it turns out there are model trains, and the two of them actually spend a majority of their time geeking out over Tom’s to-scale Gettysburg battlefield replica, and Tom is pleased to find that Lizzie’s new boyfriend is a history buff whose sister is an even bigger history nerd.
Towards the end of the visit, Darcy ventures to ask if Tom would like to know his intentions toward his daughter. And that’s when he finds out that Lizzie has already told him about the donation money and his subsequent efforts to remain anonymous, and, Tom adds with a smirk, she’d actually specifically asked him not to offer to pay Darcy back so as not to make him uncomfortable. Besides, Lydia’s last young man—the one who shall not be named and who’d gotten Fran into that sorry mess in the first place—had declined to meet her father on three separate occasions, always with some excuse at the ready to avoid him, so he is inclined to think well of any man who is good enough to catch Lizzie’s eye, especially if he has heard of Tom Bennet’s reputation for destroying Meryton U pre-meds’ dreams but braves the first meeting anyway.
Overall, Darcy thinks the interview went well, as long as he doesn’t think too hard about how the man may have just been toying with him and keeping him off-balance the whole time. He’s still not entirely sure what to make of someone who would undermine his own wife (no matter how horrible she is) in front of their young daughters, encourage his children to disrespect their mother, play favorites with his daughters, mock his eldest daughter’s inability to keep a man, or write off his youngest daughter as a vapid party girl. But at least one parent seems to have opened their eyes to the damage they caused and is trying to do better now, and it’s not the one who did a stint in rehab.
(Also, he does eventually get Tom to autograph his old organic chemistry textbook from undergrad.)
With the close of the current academic year and the start of the new one in the summer, Will gets voluntold to be one of the new EM chief residents.
It’s not a position he has ever eyed for himself, and he doubts he would have gotten the job if the EM residency were to hold an election among the residents, the way Lizzie’s FM program apparently chooses their chiefs. But he’s organized and led the staff of the Darcy Foundation for ten years, so he supposes he can add one more item to the list of things he has to manage.
At least Becca Reynolds was selected to be his co-chief. They figure she can play the good cop with her amiable and charismatic personality, and he can play the bad cop and get things done.
Being chief sucks, like he expects, but at least he has Lizzie to come home to.
They’ve been spending the majority of their nights at his place, since Lydia seems to have permanently moved out of her father’s house and is now (probably) illegally squatting in her sisters’ apartment.
He washes up in the morning and sees Lizzie’s toothbrush hanging next to his, her makeup scattered across the bathroom counter. He opens his closet and sees her clothes hanging on the side opposite his. He glances up on quiet evenings to find her tapping away at her laptop, just across their joined desks, or sitting cross-legged in his—their—bed. The right side of the bed has permanently become his side, and the left side hers, and he finds that her red hair looks really good when it’s splayed out against the blue plaid of his sheets.
He can hardly recall the last time he’s had dirty dishes in his sink, since Lizzie always washes them and has them neatly lined up on the drying rack. When he’s stressing over scheduling changes and other chiefly duties, she’s there to fetch him tea, and remind him to take regular breaks, and tempt him into bed with more diverting activities and a promise that everything will seem less insurmountable with a clear mind after a good night’s rest. When he nods off over his board exam prep materials, Lizzie drapes a blanket over him, trailing her fingers across his shoulders and kissing him on the head.
It’s all very domestic, especially when her face next to his is the only thing he can see with clarity first thing in the morning before he reaches for his glasses. So, with her lease coming up for renewal in September, he asks her to move in with him, officially.
A few weeks after Darcy and Lizzie officially stop pretending they don’t already live together move in together, Bing approaches him at work.
He’s quitting residency, he announces.
Well, not quitting entirely. But he’s switching specialties. To pediatrics.
In hindsight, Darcy supposes he shouldn’t have been so blindsided by Bing’s wanting to leave the emergency medicine program. He has been calling out sick a lot lately. Probably at least once a week, if Darcy’s or Reynolds’s phone call logs are anything to go by.
Bing comes clean and confesses that he’s been going to the bookstore on his “sick” days. Mostly to stare into a cup of coffee for hours on end, trying to figure out how he’s gotten this dissatisfied with where his life has gone. And finally, he had to ask himself what his heart honestly wants to do, and he found himself opening up a browser tab on his laptop and going to ResidencySwap.org.
He just isn’t cut out for emergency medicine. He’s not assertive or level-headed enough in an acute crisis to work effectively in the ED, and he’s unable to keep from internalizing the hurtful things that patients say when they’re frustrated or in pain, and he gets yelled at twice a day at minimum for taking too long to complete a task, and he’d barely passed Step 3 because he couldn’t muster the motivation to study, and he knows the other residents don’t trust him to be able to train any of the new EM interns, and the attendings will want him put on academic probation to remediate his intern year if he continues to disappoint them as a second-year.
Darcy tries to get his friend to take some deep breaths and stop catastrophizing. Maybe he just needs to take a short break, like a medical leave of absence for his mental health, and use the time off to do some soul searching before he commits to something so drastic. But Bing’s mind is made up. He’s burned out and unhappy, and he wants out. He knows that historically, he hasn’t exactly been the most decisive person around, but he’s been feeling the burnout for a long time now, probably since as early as halfway through his intern year, when he had been too wrapped up in his breakup with Jane to realize there may be another cause for his depression and poor work performance.
He’s not choosing pediatrics for her, he insists, though. He wouldn’t throw away his entire EM career and future job security for a woman he has no chance with and who has asked him to leave her alone. He’s doing this because he likes seeing pediatric patients. He enjoys building relationships with families and working as a team with parents to promote their kids’ well-being. He likes bringing a smile to children’s faces and comforting them through the scariest times in their lives. And he wants to do that at the pace of a pediatric hospitalist and enjoy the continuity of an outpatient primary care pediatrician. Not rush multiple patients at a time through the ED-to-wards pipeline and never find out if they ended up making it out okay.
He does, however, admit that he is applying to the MCMC pediatrics program as his top choice. He wants to stay here at MCMC because he likes this hospital and is already familiar with the patient demographics of the area, and it would be more convenient if he didn’t have to move, and he’s enjoying the distance from his family, since Caroline would rather swim naked with piranhas than attend Meryton Med. While he does wish things between him and Jane had ended more amicably, he won’t prioritize avoiding his ex over working in a specialty that excites him, at a program that will offer him the best training and opportunities for career advancement.
It’s starting to feel too much like a teenager preparing a slideshow and notecards to convince his parents that he’s ready to buy a car, even if the reasoning is sound, so Darcy has to remind himself to distance himself emotionally and step into chief mode. Because that’s what the job demands of him. He can either be Bing’s best friend and confidant, or he can be his chief first and friendly colleagues second, but he can’t be both without raising concerns among the other residents about partiality and conflicts of interest.
He has a feeling that Bing has already decided which he’d rather Darcy be, considering that he’s pretty much stopped coming over after work to hang out with their friends ever since Darcy and Lizzie started cohabiting.
They end up having to sit down with Ed Gardiner, Becca Reynolds, Dr. Metcalfe, and her pediatrics chief residents. The meeting goes past 9 p.m. as they work out how and if Bing can be transferred. In the end, he decides he’ll apply through the regular Match and start over as a new intern next summer, after sticking it out and finishing his second year in EM, since the peds program at MCMC currently doesn’t have any openings for him to switch directly into, and none of their current interns or second-years is experiencing an identity crisis or wanting to trade their position for his in EM. He’s going to have to hurry, though, to get his application materials together, since at this point in the year, most of the current fourth-year medical students have already started submitting their residency applications through ERAS.
Lizzie is understandably concerned when Darcy finally gets home and tells her what’s going on. She and Lydia both are, since Jane will still be at the MCMC peds residency next year if Bing gets in, and she may even have to interview him to determine his compatibility with her program, as part of the whole interdisciplinary switcheroo process.
Fitz and Brandon, by complete coincidence, each choose the same night and the same exact spot to propose to the other.
They’re having dinner as a group—Fitz and Brandon, Darcy and Lizzie, Dan Hurst and his wife Louisa, and a handful of the orthopedics attendings and senior residents and their partners—at the new Ethiopian restaurant that just opened down by the riverside. Purportedly it’s to celebrate Fitz surviving the first month in his new faculty position at MCMC, but the plan after dinner is for Fitz to take Brandon to the spot on the riverbank where they’d shared their first kiss and then pop the question.
Fitz is a lot of things, but discreet he is not, so of course everybody except Brandon already knows what’s about to go down tonight. Darcy has been roped in to keep tabs on the band and prevent them—and the rest of their friends—from spoiling the surprise, and Lizzie has been tasked with sneaking out beforehand to the chosen spot and decking it out with strings of fairy lights (on the nearby bushes) and jars of lit candles (on the ground, well away from the bushes).
Darcy thinks the two of them manage their assignments fairly well. The only hiccup is when Brandon excuses himself to the bathroom and is gone for a little longer than expected, and there’s a moment of panic when they realize nobody has been keeping an eye on him. But the crisis is averted when Lizzie tracks him down after he’d apparently “gone outside to answer a phone call.”
Naturally, Darcy is a little concerned that Brandon might have accidentally stumbled across Lizzie in the middle of her top-secret mission while he was gone, but there’s no way to ask her about it when Brandon is literally sitting right there at the table with them.
Once everyone is done arguing over how to split the check, Fitz suggests that he and Brandon take a leisurely stroll down by the river, to which the latter readily agrees, and then Fitz is signaling for Darcy to gather all their friends and meet with the band at the rendezvous point.
Something is definitely a little weird, Darcy notices, when he and Lizzie usher everybody into their hiding spot and he sees a trail of scattered rose petals leading up to the spot, where there’s an even larger pile of petals arranged in the shape of a heart among the lit candles on the ground. Lizzie, who’d arranged the lighting, seems as surprised to see them as he is. Fitz definitely hadn’t mentioned anything to either of them about florals being part of the setup, and there’s no time to ask who among them was responsible for it. Lizzie only gets as far as gasping, “Oh! Shit—I think Brandon already—” before one of the hired band members hisses for everyone to get down and shush, and the couple round the bend not a moment later.
There’s a general murmur of confusion among the group in the bushes when Brandon seems completely unfazed and doesn’t bat an eye at all the décor. The confusion turns to horror when Fitz gets down on one knee and Brandon bursts into laughter, but then everybody is laughing when both men take out matching ring boxes from their suit pockets.
(“You had one job!” Fitz exclaims mock-accusingly in Darcy’s direction afterwards, as his new fiancé grins from ear to ear while shaking a few stray rose petals out of his pockets.)
About halfway through his third year of residency, Darcy applies to work in the ED of one of the community hospitals in Pemberley.
It’s a little weird seeing his own name filled in next to “Applicant” under the hospital name and logo. His whole life, the only thought he’d given to the place had been “Oh, my baby sister was born there.” And “Oh, I had my appendix taken out there.” And, later, “My father died there.”
(He leaves that last part out when the recruiter asks him about his interest in their hospital, but he can tell that she recognizes his surname from the way she talks about the social supports available to the local patient population, specifically the foundation bearing the same name that he happens to be in charge of.)
There are other, larger hospitals in the same health system, including the one where both his parents had been working when they’d passed. But this particular site is close to the family home, and they’re offering him a schedule that would allow him to work two weeks a month and have two weeks off at a time to spend in Meryton with Lizzie next year. There’s even a fantastic primary care office down the street that has its own laboratory and imaging center and physical therapy clinic that would be perfect for her…someday…if she’s inclined to follow him to Pemberley after she graduates.
They’ve talked about the future. About whether she sees herself staying in Meryton and joining the faculty at MCMC, or going elsewhere. Whether she and Jane ever planned to stick together and start a private practice, or if she would rather work for a larger healthcare system. Whether she plans to work right away, or apply to fellowships and sub-specialize after her liberation from residency. Whether she would like to get involved with the foundation…someday. Whether she wanted kids…someday.
Even though his plan had always been to go back to Pemberley, he had been hesitant to apply to jobs more than an hour out of Meryton.
But then Fran Bennet goes and gets herself arrested for driving under the influence, and he and Lizzie have their first major fight (over the bail money he’d lent Jane without telling Lizzie), which culminates in a fortuitous slip of the tongue from her and both of them pretty much admitting that they’re going to marry each other…someday.
So when he does his interview for the job in Pemberley and receives the offer within a day, he signs on, knowing they’ll be okay, even without Lizzie’s explicit verbal confirmation that she’ll start her job hunt in Pemberley too when it’s her turn.
In spring, Bing matches into the pediatrics residency program at MCMC.
Caroline, who had not been informed of her brother’s crisis of faith months earlier, reacts to the announcement by raging against Lizzie and accusing her of somehow manipulating Bing into throwing away his entire future in pursuit of Jane.
That volley of abusive texts earns her a strongly worded response from the boyfriend of the target of her ire, after which Caroline finds herself blocked from further contact with both them and her brother. Probably would have been smarter to take a minute and consider whether that would be the best course of action to take, but angry people are not always wise.
Their parents at least, while they’re not happy about Bing having to start over, are backing his decision. The important thing in their eyes, he explains to Darcy ruefully, is that he does have a medical degree and is in a residency. The particulars are less significant, as long as he stays there long enough to earn his professional licensure and board certification, and they have one kid who still has a chance to succeed.
After all, Caroline isn’t exactly in their good graces at the moment, having failed to get into medical school for a fourth straight year, after her new MCAT score came out lower than her first. From the sounds of it, she’ll have to hold her nose and apply to Caribbean schools or osteopathic schools next year to stand any chance of an admission, so she’s taking a year off to reevaluate whether it’s worth it to continue down the path of medicine at all.
Jane, when she sees the list of the incoming new pediatrics interns, receives the news with equanimity, but she does invite Darcy over for another weekend baking session—not snickerdoodles.
“Bing’s decisions are, and have always been, his,” she says calmly when Darcy asks her if she’s really okay with this. “I’m happy for him that he’s found his calling. It’s a shame, though, about Caroline.”
“Um. Duh.” Lydia pokes her head out of her room (which used to be Lizzie’s old room), clearly eavesdropping. “She still can’t get into med school, and her golden-child brother just quit his residency. Meanwhile, I get into law school, and you just won your program’s chief election for next year, and Lizzie and Darcinator here are totally going to get married and become some sort of power couple in Pemberley. It’s no wonder Caroline’s panicking and lashing out at the idea that her family raised less successful kids than ‘the town addict and whore.’”
Darcy powers up the hand mixer and whips the egg whites until Lydia loses interest and retreats back to her room.
“You know, you might have to work with Bing and train him, as his senior,” he says more quietly. “And as his current chief, I can say for certain that there are concerns about his…academic standing. And knowledge base. And clinical performance. Which you may have to deal with as his new chief.”
Jane pauses to scrape down the bowl before replying, “And yet I was the one who recommended him to my program directors after our interview, and vouched for him when we were compiling our rank list. He’s a capable doctor. Or, he could be, if given the chance to do what he’s passionate about.”
“I meant—” he flushes “—having to see him at work every day. And resolve conflicts where he’s involved. I was afraid it might make you uncomfortable.”
“I am not inexperienced in working with an ex as polite and indifferent acquaintances, nor am I a stranger to conflict resolution. And I’m not concerned that he switched residencies with ulterior motives. You and I both know Bing. He wouldn’t make a change so extreme as going through the Match process a second time, unless he was truly unhappy with where he was before.”
“If you’re sure… But if he hurts you again or causes you any grief next year, I will personally drive back from Pemberley to kick his ass.”
“Not before I kick it first.” She smiles. “Don’t worry, Will. I know you’re intending for us to be family someday, but you don’t need to start protecting me quite so soon.”
A year later, Lizzie gets her dream job offer from the primary care office in Pemberley, the one that’s about a half-mile from the Darcy estate and down the street from the hospital where her boyfriend has been working for the last year.
And it’s been a rough year, to say the least.
He enjoys his new job, and he loves his hometown, but only getting to see Lizzie two weeks out of each month is really wearing on his sanity. Long-distance relationships are difficult, or so he’s heard, but he’d figured that two weeks at a time would be manageable if it’s only for a year. There had been plenty of times during his final year of residency when he and Lizzie were working dyssynchronous hours and barely saw a glimpse of each other for weeks at a time, as one got home right when the other was about to head to work.
But now that he’s three hours away, Sundays have quickly become his most beloved and beloathed day of the week by far. Because Sundays mean joyful and passionate reunions after two weeks’ separation, but they also mark tearful farewells at the end of two weeks of bliss and the misery of three-hour return trips home.
No, not home. To Pemberley. Which won’t feel like home until Lizzie joins him. It doesn’t matter that Lizzie sometimes uses her free weekends to drive up and surprise him, because one of them always has to leave the other behind on Sunday.
And, as much as Lizzie loves her own hometown, he knows she’s equally impatient to leave Meryton for good.
He’s pretty sure the housekeeping staff are sick of hearing his mopey sighs over solitary weeknight dinners. Just last week, Mrs. Annesley was asking him when that nice young lady of his is supposed to be moving in (the museum staff who had handed over his grandmother’s ring months ago would know, but Mrs. Annesley doesn’t know that), and whether he had any plans to redecorate the nursery in the near future. He already has a new desk and bookshelf built for Lizzie in his study, the same way it’s set up in the bedroom at their Meryton apartment. There’s an entire wardrobe and a walk-in closet in the master bedroom cleared out, ready for her things. The empty parking space next to his in the garage is just waiting for her car to make itself at home.
Of course, they call and text as often as possible. But hearing Lizzie’s voice on the phone every night is no substitute for actually drifting off to sleep with her in his arms.
That she’s accepted the position at the primary care office up the road is of some comfort, but he’s still counting the days until the year is over because he’s not sure how much longer his heart can handle this cycle of reunions and separations.
She won’t start at the new job right away after graduation—he’s taking her to Italy so they can decompress and enjoy a private extended vacation—so they offer her a start date in the fall or winter. They’re even offering to pay over half of her (substantial) student loans, something which Darcy has expressed repeatedly that he is more than happy to pay for her and which Lizzie has continually refused to let him trouble himself over.
They go to dinner at Sir Lewis’s to celebrate their 2-year anniversary and her first “real doctor” job. Afterwards, he drives them to the park across the street from MCMC, and they amble along aimlessly, as has become tradition.
Really, a beach in Italy would have been the more romantic place to do this. Even if this dirt patch is the place where they had confirmed the inception of their relationship. Heck, he could have suggested a stroll by the creek and the bridge where there might still be some cherry blossoms in bloom…
But Lizzie is beaming up at him, still thrilling from the excitement of landing her dream job and the surprise of coming home from the hospital to find him waiting at their apartment—because he did leave work early on a Monday, just so he could drive three hours to be with her for their anniversary—and Darcy finds he really, really doesn’t want to wait.
Lizzie has spotted something up ahead—an owl landing on the bridge?—and moves toward it, but he stops and tugs her hand. She giggles as the motion spins her around and he draws her into the circle of his arms.
“So you have a job lined up,” he says conversationally.
“Yep.” She reaches up to loosen his tie.
“And you’re graduating in less than two months.”
She slowly starts to undo the top buttons of his dress shirt. “Uh-huh.”
“Meanwhile, I only get to see you for half a month at a time.”
“Yeah, but you’re going to change to working four 8-hour shifts a week after this year.” She presses a kiss to the dip between his collarbones.
“I am. But I hate that I have to get up super early tomorrow to go back to Pemberley.”
“But I’m moving there with you after I graduate. It’s only for two more months.”
“Two months too long. They should just graduate you early. You’re more than ready.”
“Hmm.” Her lips meet his in an indulgent kiss. “In the meantime, we had better take advantage of the time we have right now. Because I may or may not have a surprise for you, under this dress, if we take this home to the bedroom.”
“Have I mentioned that I love you?”
“I wouldn’t be opposed to hearing it again.”
He smiles and places a hand over hers on his chest.
His other hand reaches for the box in his pocket.
“Then I believe I have a question for you…”
When Jane announces she’s freezing her eggs nearly a year into her post-residency life, Lizzie voices her fears that she isn’t ready to be a mother, and may not ever, but there will be certain expectations once they marry, and she’s afraid he’ll—
“Never.” He sets the hairbrush down on the vanity and wraps his arms firmly around her waist, meeting her eyes in the mirror. “I would never. You’re it for me, Lizzie. We could have one child, or seven, or none, and it would not change how I feel about you one bit.”
She knows he wants kids. His family is small. It’s just him and Gigi, and one maternal uncle’s family in Boston that they rarely see…and maybe there are some distant relatives on his father’s side back in England, but he doesn’t know any of them. He supposes she will count soon enough, once she becomes Elizabeth Bennet-Darcy in a few months, but he has few blood relatives.
And he won’t have any more unless…
She admits she’s seen his eyes drawn to families with their young children as they pass them at the grocery store or at the park. She’d seen how he’d looked at Brandon’s niece and nephew, the flower girl and ringbearer, at Fitz and Brandon’s wedding, and more recently the look on his face as he’d held their new baby girl and introduced himself as “Uncle Will.” She’s noticed how he lights up when school lets out and the local afterschool kids turn up at the Darcy library.
And she wants them, too. They’ve talked about this. About someday.
But she’s already 30, and he’s approaching 34, and she’s…Lizzie. Lizzie, who for most of her life, had only thought of children insofar as how she would become the favorite aunt who shamelessly spoils Jane’s. Lizzie, who’d thought she would remain forever a spinster and never imagined someone like William Darcy would come into her life, much less want to marry her.
And now she is about to marry the best man she’s ever known, and she desperately wants to have his children. With his kindness and generosity, his patience, his levelheadedness in a crisis, his respect for and unshakable faith in her—he would make an excellent father and co-parent, no doubt. She has no reservations about having him be a role model for any kids they have.
But can she give them the childhood they deserve when she only has her own mother for an example? Her and Jane’s experience raising Lydia doesn’t count. That was a duty that was foisted on them after the two people responsible for bringing her into the world had shirked it.
Later that night, she admits, her face buried in his chest, that maybe she’s not as over her upbringing as she’d thought. Maybe it’s time to go to therapy like Jane had suggested. Lydia had taken the advice years ago and is now thriving in her second year at law school. And while Jane still hasn’t found her Mr. Right yet and is currently practicing as a primary care pediatrician somewhere out in California, that cross-country move had been a huge step for Jane Bennet, who had always felt obligated to tie herself down in Meryton for her family.
He readily agrees to go to therapy with her.
“You never have to do anything alone,” he reminds her as she finally drifts off to sleep.
Besides, he knows that his old anxieties will probably resurface once he has a tiny human he’s responsible for, and he’ll probably become an insufferably overprotective father, so he could use the help, too.
To everyone’s surprise, it’s Caroline Lee who extends the olive branch a year and a half after Jane and Lizzie graduate from residency.
Apparently now thoroughly reassured that Jane has no intention of ever getting with her brother again, Caroline reaches out, at first just to check in and ask how her “darling friend” is doing over the winter holidays, but then she starts texting regularly. Bing is finally finishing up his third year of pediatrics residency, she makes sure to inform Jane, and he’s starting to look into jobs for after graduation. The whole family is very proud of him for his brave decision to start over in a new specialty, even if it meant prolonging his residency training. She’s hoping that he’ll look for jobs in California as well—the weather would be wonderful year-round, and there’s just so much more cultural diversity there than in a town like Meryton, not to mention very pretty and single doctors. When Jane doesn’t take the bait, Caroline asks after Lydia (still in law school) and Gigi (still in grad school) and Lizzie and William (married for six months).
This last point Jane reveals, before realizing with a guilty start that Caroline must not have known about the wedding. It had been a small, intimate affair with family and close friends, held in the gardens of the Darcy estate in Pemberley, with only Jane and Lydia as co-maids of honor, and Fitz Williams and Gigi Darcy as co-best man and best woman. Jane and Lydia had done most of the planning, while Lizzie chose the color scheme and requested that Fran Bennet not be informed. (As a former cellist, Darcy’s only stipulation had been that nobody was allowed to play Pachelbel’s Canon at his wedding.) There was no talk of deliberately excluding Caroline—but then again, she hadn’t been in their lives for two years by that point.
Caroline, however, accepts the news with grace and deftly changes the subject, wanting to hear all about Jane’s adventures in California—because did she mention that Bing was thinking about moving out there after graduation?
Lydia, being the third-year law student currently neck-deep in studying for the bar exam, is naturally skeptical of her intentions. But Jane, angel that she is, is more willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, even when Caroline uses that reestablished connection to contact Jane’s real estate agent and move out to the West Coast.
She had managed to gain some moderate success as a social media influencer, having initially gone viral with a rant video about the cost and elitism of the medical school application process, and Lydia suspects Caroline must have figured that living in California would be more conducive to the influencer lifestyle. (@miss_carolee had certainly also garnered some controversy since attaining that internet fame, as savvy netizens pointed out that she’d been able to afford preparing for and taking the MCAT twice, and applying to countless schools for four years in a row, and traveling internationally while unemployed, so she was certainly no patron saint of the proletariat.)
Once she’s moved out west, Caroline gets engaged to California’s youngest senator, one Mr. James Philip Elton, within just three months of meeting him at a charity gala, and then sets the wedding date a mere three months after that.
Lydia is the only one who voices aloud her suspicion that Caroline might have insisted on getting married after only three months’ engagement, either because she’s afraid the groom will change his mind if he knows her long enough, or because she has other reasons to rush, such as not wanting to give her guests any visible indication that they’re attending a shotgun wedding.
The entire Darcy and Bennet family is invited. Considering that Caroline hadn’t received an invitation when Lizzie and Darcy married last summer, they can’t help but wonder if her motive is to rub it in her old nemesis’s face that she had snagged the better catch. Or maybe she’s hoping that the Bennets’ outrageous behavior among their distinguished guests will make the Elton family look upon the Lees more favorably by comparison. (She would be disappointed either way, though. If the first, the Darcys are too happy with recent developments in their own family to care. And if the second, unbeknownst to Caroline, Fran Bennet is too busy serving time behind bars for another DUI to embarrass herself or anyone else at the wedding.)
But Caroline is surprisingly gracious when they finally see her again, thanking them all profusely for putting their busy lives on hold to share in her special day and even taking the time to introduce them to some of the groom’s fellow lawmakers in attendance. And the groom’s motivations for rushing into matrimony become clearer when they hear that his ex-girlfriend, some Silicon Valley tech mogul’s daughter whose relationship with him had ended in a rejected marriage proposal just a few months before he’d met Caroline, had been invited, along with his previous ex-girlfriend, his former campaign manager who had left him to work for his opponent five months prior to his getting with the Silicon Valley heiress.
Clearly the bride and groom seem to be operating by the logic of with wedding guests like these, who needs enemies?
Now that she’s marrying up, Caroline seems way more relaxed about Bing’s love life and even seems to be trying to push him and Jane back together. It doesn’t go unnoticed that the wedding party has Jane (a bridesmaid) paired opposite Bing (a groomsman, even though he doesn’t seem to know the groom all that well). The seating chart at the reception also has them placed side-by-side.
Lizzie and Darcy get plenty of opportunity to people-watch since they mostly sit through the reception. He hates dancing and socializing with a roomful of complete strangers anyway, and she doesn’t want to draw attention away from the newlyweds with her 26-week baby bump.
Jane and Bing do dance together, once, during the traditional wedding party dance where they’ve been paired together—but Jane is also popular with many of the other men present throughout the night, having somehow managed to look flawless even in the particularly garish shade of orange that Caroline had picked out for her bridesmaids to wear.
At one point, Lizzie swears she saw Caroline not-so-subtly scanning the crowd of eligible ladies before aiming her bouquet directly at Jane. And for a moment, it looks like Bing might catch the garter…but that distinction winds up going to a cousin on the groom’s side who 1) is definitely not Bing and 2) turns out to be a fantastic dancer when paired with Jane, while Caroline looks on with her lips pressed in a thin white line hardly befitting a newlywed bride.
Darcy’s also pretty sure, later in the evening after the bride and groom have made their formal exit and guests are just starting to trickle out, that he spots Jane and Bing chatting amiably by the refreshments table, with Bing throwing his head back and laughing wholeheartedly at something she’s said.
Then the DJ plays a slow song, so Darcy offers his hand to Lizzie. When he looks back in their direction, Bing is standing alone at the table.
They’re staying in an Airbnb near Jane’s house and will be her ride after the wedding. Lizzie, their designated driver, has just discovered that the senior senator from their home state (some third cousin of the groom twice removed or something) is in attendance. So they make their way over to introduce themselves, and he makes sure to emphasize that they’re the Darcys from Pemberley in Derby County, reeling the man in with multiple unsubtle hints as to the net worth of his family name and its potential for campaign funding, if only he could decide which candidate to support.
While his wife delivers an impassioned argument in favor of enshrining nationwide guaranteed paid maternity leave in federal law, a certain groomsman catches Darcy’s eye and starts making his way across the room.
He and Bing had tried to maintain their friendship, once Darcy was out of residency and no longer bound by his EM chief duties. But they scarcely saw each other that first year, while Darcy was adjusting to being an EM attending in Pemberley, and Bing was busy reacclimating to life as a new intern. Any invitations that were extended to Bing to hang out after work were politely turned down—Jane would be there, Lizzie would be there, he had to catch up on notes, Caroline was in town and wanted to reconnect with her brother. Nothing against Lizzie, he would add hastily each time, but it would be…uncomfortable. To be around the Bennet sisters after everything that had happened.
They had gone back to the ski lodge together that winter—just the two of them on a “guys-only trip” out to their old holiday stomping grounds, while Lizzie was busy working the week of New Year’s—but by then the writing was on the wall. Their conversation was dominated by the women in their lives—how Darcy missed his girlfriend terribly and couldn’t wait to have her join him in Pemberley next year, how Bing felt much more fulfilled in pediatrics than in EM, even if he wasn’t entirely happy because having to see his ex at work was a daily reminder that he still wasn’t over her. How, Bing finally confessed, he and Jane had lost their virginity to each other mere weeks before the breakup, which only compounded Darcy’s guilt for interfering, even though Jane had long insisted she was much better off for it.
“We were best friends in medical school,” Bing had mused one night towards the end of that ski trip, as they’d nursed their bourbon in front of the fireplace, “but we’ve only been drifting apart since residency.” Now he couldn’t be around Darcy without thinking of Lizzie, and he couldn’t think about Lizzie without thinking of Jane. Even to an outsider who only saw them infrequently, it was clear that Darcy and Lizzie were very, very committed. It was only a matter of time before he would ask her to marry him, and then, by extension, Jane would always come before Bing in Darcy’s life—if she didn’t already, as he suspected she did.
Darcy had fallen over backwards trying to apologize for being that guy who gets too wrapped up in his girlfriend, drops contact with his friends, and disappears off the face of the planet.
“I don’t hold any of this against you,” Bing had insisted, interrupting Darcy’s apologies. “That’s just the kind of people we are. You’ll always want to take care of the people in your life, and I’m too prone to taking a backseat in my own life. I know how serious you and Lizzie are because I’ve been there before. I know it was only for four months, but I had been seriously thinking about proposing before I let myself get talked into breaking up with Jane, and I’ve regretted that decision ever since. Ditching EM for pediatrics was the first time I truly chose my own path. And if I stick around you, then it would be too easy to take the path of least resistance again and turn the reins over to you. I need to learn to fall and pick myself back up on my own. We can be friendly, but we aren’t, and can’t be, best friends anymore.”
Darcy had accepted all this with resigned agreement. But, he couldn’t help but point out, now that he was back on speaking terms with his sister, wouldn’t Bing just be in danger of falling into old habits again and letting Caroline run his life?
“That’s different,” Bing had replied immediately. “I need to prioritize the people who are still in my life. And right now, my family is all I have. And Caroline is family.”
And Jane will be to you, one day. He hadn’t said that part out loud, but Darcy had heard it anyway.
That was two and a half years ago. In the time since then, Bing had continued on through the peds residency, while Jane had moved across the country, and Darcy and Lizzie had gotten engaged and then married.
Now, aside from swapping out his more neutrally colored tie for a blindingly orange one, Bing doesn’t look all that different from a year ago, at a certain other wedding, where he had been asked to be one of Darcy’s groomsmen out of respect for their old friendship. (He’d declined, on account of not wanting to disconcert Jane, one of the maids of honor, but he had attended as a guest, sitting among Brandon and his daughter, Dan and Louisa Hurst, and some of their former co-residents and a handful of aunts and uncles.)
Somebody stops Bing—Darcy recognizes her as an old family friend of the Lees—and asks when it’ll be his turn to get married. “After all, it must be so tough to watch your younger sister beat you to the altar first!” He smiles easily and says something that has the older woman pinching his cheek. Then he makes his escape, and Darcy finds himself face-to-face with his former best friend.
“You look well,” they say at the same time.
Bing recovers first. “Married life suits you. I heard Lizzie telling Jim’s parents earlier that she’s due in September. Congratulations on your soon-to-be fatherhood.
“Thank you.” Darcy recalls himself. “And congratulations to your family.”
“Thanks. Caroline is very happy.”
“Your parents must be proud.”
“Oh yeah, they’re even talking about picking up and moving out here to California, too, to be on hand in case Mom’s help is needed with any grandkids. Not that Jim and Caro can’t afford a nanny or anything. But you know how parents can get when they’re going to be first-time grandparents—”
There’s an uncomfortable pause as they both remember that, no, Darcy does not, in fact, know.
Darcy coughs. “So…how are things in Meryton? Are you almost done with residency?”
“Er, right! Yes! I’m graduating next week, actually. Got a job lined up, too, back in New York. I’m going to join a primary care practice in Brooklyn.”
“Brooklyn? Huh, I wasn’t expecting that. Don’t get me wrong—that’s great for you. But I thought Jane said Caroline had mentioned multiple times that you were looking for jobs on the West Coast.”
Whether his sister-in-law had received Caroline’s hints about Bing with anticipation or dread, she was much less forthcoming about.
But it would make sense for Caroline to want her brother nearby, now that she’s finally managed to outshine him in their parents’ eyes, and all without the bother of getting through medical school, to boot. It would also explain, he realizes, Caroline’s sudden altruism and overwhelming affection for Jane, who happens to be the medical director making decisions about physician hiring for a prominent health system in California, where Caroline has just married into a local political dynasty and needs her own family to appear similarly accomplished.
“Caroline says a lot of things,” Bing replies simply.
They end up selecting green and white as the color palette for the nursery.
Lizzie had refused to jump on the gender reveal party bandwagon, and her husband was more than happy to agree with her.
Why bother color-coding cakes, or confetti, or explosions, just to act as if total strangers are entitled to know what their baby’s genitals look like? They’d both seen the “turtle sign” on Lizzie’s anatomy ultrasound, and they had a name picked out, and that was good enough for them.
Ostensibly, her reasoning was that her mother had shoved the color pink down all three daughters’ throats when they were little, so once she was old enough to buy her own clothes in high school, Lizzie had rebelled by only wearing blue jeans and blue plaid shirts for a year straight.
Fortunately, they’ve both already cut any pushy or boundary-challenged relatives and acquaintances out of their lives. Otherwise, Darcy might feel compelled to respond to repeated entreats of But what are you actually having? simply with A baby.
About a year and a half after Caroline’s wedding, Fran Bennet reaches out and wants to reconnect.
Lizzie is instantly wary when she gets the Facebook message, apparently the one platform where she’d forgotten to block Fran after her mother had sent a relentless flood of nasty texts upon finding out that they’d excluded her from their wedding.
They’ve had sporadic contact from her throughout the years, mostly Fran asking for bail money when Jane had finally put her foot down and refused. There had been stretches of months when they wouldn’t know if she was alive or dead if not for the requests to bail her out of jail. There may have been one or two halfhearted attempts at rehab, and possibly many more hospitalizations for withdrawal seizures, but they wouldn’t know since only Jane seemed privy to her medical information. At one point, they’d heard that she’d lost her house and had been living with her sister and Lizzie’s Uncle Phil, before burning that bridge and disappearing from their lives again. The last time Darcy thinks he saw her may have been last year at Lydia’s law school graduation ceremony, but he can’t be sure because Lydia sure as hell didn’t invite Fran, and he’d only caught a glimpse of what he’d thought might be a vaguely familiar face in the back of the crowd before he’d blinked and she was gone.
They don’t quite know what to make of Fran’s request to meet at a bar. Not Chamberlayne’s, where she’d embarrassed herself in front of Darcy and his friends all those years ago—that establishment had gone out of business a while back—but the new bar that’s since opened in its place.
Is this a sign that it’s not going to go well? Or has she decided that she’s recovered enough that the sight of alcohol doesn’t trigger her?
She looks much older than her 51 years. Darcy himself has never properly met his mother-in-law, and he’s seen her sparingly little since her hospitalization at Brighton, back before he and Lizzie had started dating. In fact, he can say for certain that he’s seen more mugshots of Fran Bennet than the sum total of the number of times he’s been around her in person.
From Lizzie’s start of surprise, though, he’s guessing that Fran has lost a dramatic amount of weight since their last meeting (probably from her most recent 6-month stint in prison after being caught driving with a suspended license). It’s hard to tell in the bar lighting exactly what is so different about her appearance compared to before—maybe some crow’s feet around her eyes and definitely some new gray streaks in her hair—but then again, it’s not like they see her often enough to track the changes.
“Elizabeth. William.”
“Fran.”
She doesn’t get up to greet them when they arrive, and he doesn’t offer his hand to shake.
“You’ve gained weight,” Fran sniffs, eyeing Lizzie up and down. “I ordered the charcuterie board. Figured you two could pay for it, bein’ both doctors ’n all. Not that I’ll ever understand why you bothered goin’ through with your little D.O. school, if your husband makes enough to keep you both comfortable.”
“We will be happy to pay,” Lizzie replies carefully.
The conversation doesn’t get better from there.
Fran orders a long island iced tea. Lizzie frowns.
“I’m in therapy. I’ve been going to AA meetings. This is my first drink in years,” she insists when it arrives. “I can stop after one.”
Her words are definitely already slurred. Darcy doesn’t point it out. He also doesn’t point out that her last DUI was less than a year ago, so her AA attendance probably isn’t entirely voluntary.
He and Lizzie both decline to order a drink. Aside from the very, very, very occasional celebratory champagne for major life events—engagements, weddings, graduations—all the Bennet sisters seem to have sworn off alcohol since Brighton. And this is definitely turning out to be no special occasion.
Fran watches them carefully and stares at his hands.
Neither of them typically wears the wedding band on their finger. Lizzie had never been into jewelry, and had decided that she was both too unaccustomed to having something on her hand constantly getting in the way and too paranoid about losing or damaging the precious family heirloom that was her engagement ring. Plus, being doctors, they were continually washing their hands, and the ring was a potential fomite and just made it more difficult to clean her hands effectively. She’d taken to wearing it on a chain around her neck about a week into their engagement, and it has stayed there ever since, just now with the addition of her wedding ring. Darcy had followed suit with his, but he had made a point to move his own wedding band to his finger tonight.
“Two years,” he says, in response to Fran’s silent question.
“Two years ’n no children,” she sniffs. “I myself had two children by the time I’d been married two years. Should’ve taken my advice ’n slutted it up in college. At least that way her body would’ve known what to do. Now she’ll end up like me once her husband realizes she ain’t worth it. Though he’d probably reach that conclusion anyway once their kids are all cursed with red hair.”
Lizzie tenses, and he reaches for her hand.
“Would’ve been nice for your dear old mother to hear from you once in a while,” Fran continues. “A weddin’ invitation would’ve been nice, even if you didn’t want me plannin’ it. But you just can’t never let nothin’ go, can you, Elizabeth?”
Irony is, apparently, lost on her.
“I understand that you felt left out and upset,” Lizzie replies, “but we only wanted a small wedding, with no fuss, just friends and loved ones.”
“Aww,” Fran mocks, “did somebody not get enough hugs growin’ up?”
“Was there something you wanted, in inviting us out here?” Darcy cuts in. “Because we can certainly leave if we’re upsetting you by being here.”
Fran orders a shot of whiskey.
“I’m surprised this one ended up with anyone at all, ’n he actually stuck around. If you two would give me some grandchildren, then Elizabeth might actually be my favorite daughter, now that Lydia is off doing her lawyerin’ nonsense ’n Jane turned out to be such a disappointment.”
He bites his tongue to refrain from pointing out that the one doing the “lawyerin’ nonsense” is perfectly happy with her girlfriend from law school, and the “disappointment” rose to the rank of medical director at a prominent health system in California within just a year and a half.
“I couldn’t help but notice, Elizabeth, that you ain’t drinkin’ ’n haven’t touched nothin’ more ’n a cracker from the charcuterie board. When’s the baby due?”
When they don’t take the bait, she downs her whiskey and orders another.
“Maybe when it’s your turn, you’ll even learn a thing or two about what I had to go through, birthin’ three brats for their deadbeat father, wishin’ they were somebody else’s—any other man’s daughters, raisin’ ’em all by myself through my own grit ’n determination to do right by my girls, slavin’ away at home ’n cookin’ dinner for ’em every night all by myself, ’n cleanin’ ’n keepin’ ’em clothed ’n a roof over their ungrateful heads, gettin’ no thanks for none of my efforts…”
Beside him, Lizzie is the perfect picture of unaffected calm, but he can tell that she’s clenching her jaw so hard she’ll probably have a headache tomorrow. He can imagine her scathing retort—Yes, with the amount of effort you put it, it’s no wonder you want the credit for all three daughters turning out to be such disappointments—but she remains silent, staring forward impassively.
“…At least it’ll knock you down a peg or two, going to some fancy schmancy med school ’n thinkin’ you know everything. I hope it hurts like hell, so you’ll learn you don’t know the first thing about bein’ a mother, a real woman—”
His chair scrapes across the floor. “We’re leaving,” he says firmly, slapping a shower of fluttering bills onto the table.
Lizzie follows him silently.
As they walk out, Fran jeers, “I hope that when you have a daughter, Elizabeth, she turns out exactly like you!”
Outside, he holds his wife for a long moment. Lizzie tries to apologize for the evening, but he won’t have it.
They know she’s not pregnant—she has an IUD, and they’re not ready for another one.
Not yet. 13 months later, he’s still not over the nightmare that was Lizzie’s first labor and the knowledge that he’d put her through that.
Being both doctors, they had prepared for that day: overnight bags were packed and a peanut ball ready to go, along with extra wipes and diapers and the car seat that Jane had specifically picked out and gifted them for the baby shower. And to avoid unnecessarily showing up at the hospital only to be sent home, they’d agreed that Darcy was going to do the exam and only take her in if she actually met criteria for labor.
But in that moment, with Lizzie on her side curled up as tightly as her belly would allow, tears streaming down her cheeks, pained gasps cutting her off mid-sentence as contraction after contraction wracked her body, he’d nearly forgotten to check whether she’d felt any gushes of fluid before performing the cervical exam—could scarcely remember the defining criteria for latent versus active labor, much less have the presence of mind to pull out his phone and time the frequency of her contractions. Not that it had ended up mattering anyway, since his hands were shaking so badly he could barely get the sterile glove on, and she was already 5 centimeters dilated when he’d finally checked.
The nightmare had continued after he’d driven them to the hospital, after Lizzie had been whisked through OB Triage and then to Labor & Delivery. Despite the shock of discovering at home that what they’d thought were Braxton-Hicks contractions were, in fact, real actual labor contractions, progress had stalled at 5 centimeters for nearly a full 18 hours despite them putting her on the maximum safe rate of Pitocin infusion.
He didn’t care for the nurses’ patronizing smiles or their reassurances that they “see this all the time, it’s totally normal for first-time moms,” or that the baby’s heart rate was perfectly within acceptable limits with no decelerations in sight, or that her membranes were still intact so there was no need to considering rushing to C-section. None of it mattered if he lost his wife, and he could do nothing but mop her brow and lend his hand for her to crush and kick himself for ever putting her in such a position, doubled over in agony, completely exhausted and terrified before the active phase of labor had even begun, knowing that the worst part was yet to come and she had to do it all without the support of her mother, or his, or any other female relative who’d been through it and could provide any semblance of reassurance.
Lizzie had tried to put on a brave face, holding off when offered an epidural—even when Darcy had insisted that she had nothing to prove, that her comfort mattered more than a hypothetically prolonged second stage of labor—but she had eventually agreed to it when he couldn’t bear to watch her suffer any longer, and by then the pain was so intense that she could hardly sit up while the anesthesiologist administered it.
By some miracle, around the 18-hour mark, Bennet William Darcy had decided that enough was enough and he was going to meet his parents now. The obstetrician who’d been called in after the reports of a sudden gush of fluid didn’t even get a chance to ask any follow-up questions before Lizzie felt the pressure in her pelvis and knew it was time to push. And then she could barely hold off long enough for them to confirm that she had somehow blown through 6, 7, 8, and 9 centimeters and was completely dilated and the baby was coming.
Darcy had seen plenty of deliveries as a medical student and later as a resident rotating on L&D. They both had. But watching helplessly from the head of the bed had been an entirely different experience—especially when his doctor brain was compulsively running through the myriad ways disaster could still befall them: undiagnosed pre-eclampsia, placenta previa, placenta accreta, cephalopelvic disproportion, shoulder dystocia, fourth-degree perineal laceration, postpartum hemorrhage, retained products of conception, sepsis, venous thromboembolism, amniotic fluid embolism…
After it was all over, and the screaming, pink, healthy newborn was on his mother’s chest and she was looking up at his father, her eyes brimming over with tears of relief and gratitude and the conviction that it was absolutely all worth it, Darcy had pressed his forehead to hers and whispered fiercely that she was incredible, that she was superhuman, that he loved her so much, and he was never, ever going to do that to her again.
(Maybe once the baby is 18 months, she’d suggested, half-jokingly, at her 6-week postpartum OB/GYN appointment. Never again, he’d countered.)
Now, as he holds his wife on the sidewalk outside the bar, she offers him a watery smile and says, as if reading his mind, “I don’t suppose that encounter did anything to convince you to take another dip in our illustrious gene pool?”
He snorts and kisses the top of her head. “You’d think not, but I just might reconsider my previous stance about having more kids if it means we get a daughter who ‘turns out exactly like you.’”
“Oh no, I never thought I’d see the day I’d be indebted to my mother, and for convincing a man to want to have kids with me.” She puts the back of her hand to her forehead in a mock swoon.
His smile drops. “Are you sure you’re okay? After what she said to you in there—”
“Hey, I’m not the one who was insulted enough to storm out. I think it’s safe to say that Mom is never going to change, and the sooner we accept that, the better off we’ll be. I mean, you do have to see the humor in the situation, when you think about how entertaining I will be, say, twenty or so years down the line when I turn into her.”
“Impossible,” he declares firmly.
“Oh, but I have it on Fran Bennet’s authority that daughters inevitably become like their mothers. You’ll be sure to thank her and not me, though, when this hypothetical daughter of ours turns out to be exactly like me?”
He makes a show of pondering deeply. “Considering that I’m the lucky man who gets to say he married one Lizzie Bennet-Darcy, it’s rather difficult to imagine how it could possibly be a bad thing if there were two of her in the world.”
“You mean you want another girl who moves out as soon as possible and never answers her mother’s calls and thinks she’s smarter and better than everybody else? Can’t imagine why she meant it as a curse and not a blessing to raise someone like that.”
“I mean—” He cups her face in his hands and waits for her to meet his eyes, waits for the vulnerability and earnestness to shine through her false cheer and mask of bravado “—someone who grew up as the middle child in her practically perfect older sister’s shadow, and still refused to resent her sister for being their mother’s favorite. Someone who was raised in the kind of family dynamic that forces the daughters to assume responsibilities from their parents at the age of seven, and sought therapy to be a better mother than the one she was born to. Someone who had to grow up listening to that kind of abuse, and is still willing to drive three hours into town to attempt to reconcile, and hear them out in good faith, and make every attempt at civility, and refuse to sink to their level when they try to bring her down.”
“Will…”
“Someone who heard me cast doubt on her capabilities as a physician, without knowing the first thing about her, and then got me to eat my words in just a few short weeks without even trying to impress me. Someone who was gracious enough to forgive me for that and everything else I’d done, but who didn’t settle for less. Someone who knows her own worth, who refused to take anything I was offering until I’d learned to put in the work and be a better person, not because she was some kind of prize for good behavior, but because she showed me that’s what I’m supposed to do if I know what’s good for me.”
He catches the tears as they roll down her cheeks, pressing gentle kisses to both eyelids, the tip of her nose, both cheeks, and the creased spot on her forehead, between her brows, that makes her melt into him every time.
“You once told me that you wanted to have kids with me because I would be a good role model for them,” he murmurs, brushing her hair— just a shade redder than Bennet’s own beautiful darker auburn—out of her face. “But what’s equally important to me is that you are someone who inspires me to be and do better every single day. Someone who, by some miracle, I’m lucky beyond words to call my wife, the mother of my son, and who continues to choose me as her life partner.”
She cuts him off with a kiss. He feels her hand come up to cover his, still cupping her face, her fingers finding his wedding ring as if to reassure them both that it’s still real.
“I could go on,” he says when they part. “But I think we’ve been standing out here long enough. And Baby Ben and his Aunt Gigi are still waiting for us to come home.”