#already sliding away | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wyattjohnston · 2 years

Text

or run away - jack hughes

series: we don’t have no time to waste

summary: it isn't always easy.

note: i've had this idea for months now and as far as i'm concerned it was going to be canon in this universe regardless of whether or not i wrote the fic.

i implore anyone and everyone to fight for access to safe and legal abortions.

word count: 3,580

warning: very frank mentions of abortions including the decision process, abortion related medical descriptions, emetophobia, references to eating disorders (bulimia), maternal death. please excuse any inaccuracies, i tried my hardest and did a lot of research but cannot promise this is flawless

Daisy heard the front door open and the loud conversation between Jack and Ty cut off suddenly, presumably as they took in how dark the apartment was. She managed to sit up in bed, resting weakly against some pillows and be smiling when he peeked his head into their bedroom.

He didn’t look convinced.

He sat down on the mattress beside her, crossing his legs and leaning forward to press his hand to her forehead—she wasn’t sure he’d be able to tell if she had a temperature but she appreciated the gesture.

“Have you gotten out of bed at all since I left?”

Daisy shrugged, saying, “It’s been less than 12 hours.”

“Yeah, but it’s already been two days and that’s two more days than you should have been in bed.”

“I don’t have any energy,” Daisy sighed, slumping back down into the pillows. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me; I haven’t been this sick in years.”

“I’m gonna call the doctor and try get you an appointment for tomorrow. You should be at least a little better by now.”

Jack helped her move down so that she was back under the covers, moving around enough so that he could tuck the covers up under her chin. He kissed her forehead, ignoring her protests that she didn’t want to get him sick, too. He wasn’t worried about it, though, because she didn’t have any obviously contagious symptoms and hadn’t even when she first started feeling unwell.

There was a conversation about what she’d eaten—crackers, but even they were tough to keep down—and the worry across Jack’s face was worse than she’d seen in years.

She made him go out to get her a glass of water and some more crackers, just so he would be distracted, and also asked him to send Ty in to say hello if only because they were both her boys and she needed the normality of Ty’s Roadie Recap even if they’d just ventured to MSG for the day.

Daisy didn’t hate doctors in a crunchy-mom sort of way, but, as much as she understood why they were necessary and that they were the quickest way to work out what was wrong, she didn’t like them.

Her memories of the hospital visits to see her mom weren’t vivid—a combination of her young age and ability to repress memories meant all hospitals blended together in a haze of sterile white walls and antiseptic and the ending nobody wanted—though it was the aura and the associated memories that did her in.

And it all came rushing back even when she was just heading into a doctor’s surgery.

None of it was very pleasant, especially not when she was already regretting even getting out of bed.

Still, she managed her way through a polite chat with the nurse, explained what was going on and was asked approximately a million questions while her vitals were taken. It was just like every time she showed up for a new prescription for the pill, only the nurse was making a few curious noises that Daisy wasn’t used to.

If only she had the energy to care.

Daisy didn’t hate doctors but she did hate how long they made her wait.

She was nearly falling asleep in the waiting room chair when her name was finally called by her usual doctor—a middle aged man with a terse demeanour who she’d found when she first moved to New Jersey and hadn’t ever left because he prescribed her what she needed without too much hassle. A smile wouldn’t kill him, though.

They went through the same conversation she had with the nurse, that she’d spent the previous two days in bed and a few days before that hardly able to keep food down.

“The nurse said that you didn’t get your period last month so I need to ask: is there any possibility that you could be pregnant, Daisy?”

“No,” Daisy said quickly, then hesitated and added, wide eyed and high pitched, “Well, I mean yes but we’re so careful about protection. Like we don’t have sex if there’s no condoms left and I’m also on the pill like—I can’t be pregnant.”

“To rule it out and for peace of mind, I’d like to do a test. You can take this jar to the bathroom right now and we can know in a few minutes, or I can draw some blood but that might take a couple of days to get a result back.”

“I’ll go pee,” Daisy whispered, picking up the small jar and taking a steadying breath. “It’ll kill me if I have to wait.”

She also wanted to talk to Jack and didn’t want to have to wait for the doctor to draw blood. Her phone was out of her pocket before she’d even left the room, her lip quivering. She kept her head low as she walked to the bathroom and could feel the rattle in her breath when Jack picked up.

“Are you done already?”

“Jack, he thinks I could be pregnant.”

“He always throws that out there as a suggestion, though,” Jack countered easily. “You come and tell me he’s said that after every appointment.”

Daisy wanted to be able to laugh about it, about how he’d asked her if she could be pregnant when she walked in with a poison ivy rash on her arm all because she regularly used the pill to skip her period entirely—and when she didn’t skip it, it didn’t always come.

Daisy put the jar down on the counter in the bathroom, staring at it as she whispered, “This time he’s making me pee in a cup.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, well… we can deal with that,” Jack said, the calmness in his voice so unbearably fake that Daisy let a tear fall. He sounded less fake, more determined, when he added, “You won’t be, anyway.”

Daisy did laugh then, weak and wet, wondering if she could actually just will herself to not be. She whispered, “I hope not,” into the phone and her reflection in the mirror.

“It’s gonna be okay, Daze.”

Daisy looked down at the jar again, sighing.

“I have to pee now,” she said solemnly, smiling a little at Jack’s abrupt laugh. “I’ll see you at home.”

“Call me when you’re done. Either way. I love you.”

Daisy agreed, if only because Jack sounded desperate.

The house was eerily dark and quiet, the boisterousness she usually encountered when she walked through the door missing as if the boys were on a road trip and it was unsettling knowing that they weren’t and should have been back from practice.

Jack was waiting quietly by the front door; Ty was nowhere to be seen.

Daisy wanted to go to bed, she wanted to cry, she wanted to vomit and it looked like Jack might’ve been in the same boat. She couldn’t remember a time he’d been so pale.

He reached out to touch her, his fingers barely brushing over her hips before Daisy was taking three steps back with her arms stiff by her sides.

“Please don’t touch me.”

“Daisy…” Jack said cautiously, his face turning a murky grey.

Daisy sighed, blinking back tears, “It’s not—I worked so hard to get past that and to change how I think but I—Jack, I don’t even want to touch my own stomach right now.”

“It’s not?” He didn’t sound as if he believed her, and she couldn’t fault him for that—not when he’d heard the same thing, that she’d beaten the bulimia, and soon after seen the exact opposite.

“It feels a lot like it, but it’s got nothing to do with what I’ve eaten or—” she inhaled deeply, letting it out slowly. “I really don’t want to be pregnant right now, Jack.”

Jack’s nod was instantaneous and his steps towards her slow. He kept his hands by his own side, letting her know that he wasn’t trying to touch her waist in any way, and Daisy sighed shakily when his forehead touched hers.

“I know,” he whispered, his voice also shaky. “You’ve got school and a plan that doesn’t involve a baby for a few more years.”

Another shaky sigh left her lips as she asked what she’d been dreading to ask the entire drive home, “Do you want to keep it?”

“No? I want you to get to do what you’ve planned and I’m gone a lot so I won’t even be around to help with a baby. And I like our life right now. I’m not ready for a kid.”

Daisy’s vision blurred entirely, and her shaky breathing turned into a full body sob as she collapsed into Jack. He was ready, though, his arms wrapping tightly around her shoulders, a hand cradling her head.

The first thing Daisy did when she woke up the next morning was schedule an appointment online. She didn’t want to wait any longer than she absolutely had to—though that did mean having to schedule around Jack’s games.

He was laying right next to her on the bed as she used her laptop with shaking hands and puffy eyelids. She looked to him before she finalised it, another check that he agreed with the decision being made, and then pushed her laptop onto her cluttered bedside table—not bothered by the things she heard falling to the floor—and buried herself underneath the duvet.

“I’m not going to tell my dad,” she muttered when Jack was buried underneath them with her, the duvet pulled over their heads. “He doesn’t need to know.”

Jack frowned. “Do I tell my folks? Mom’s going to kill me. I’ve got like one big responsibility and it’s to not accidentally get you pregnant and I fucked it up.”

“This is a freak accident,” Daisy assured him, wetness still present in her voice. “If you want to tell them then you should. You can, if you’re asking permission.”

He touched her face—he was being very careful to not accidentally touch her waist or stomach even if he normally would have pulled her closer that way—and kissed her forehead.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll tell her after. If I tell anyone else…” Jack trailed off.

Ty was the only person they’d told—a by-product of living with him and explaining to him why he’d been booted out so quickly and why there was a heaviness in the house that had never been there before.

Brie—Dougie’s partner—would find out soon enough because Jack planned on calling her to keep Daisy company while he had to play a game against St. Louis.

Daisy offered, to finish his thought, “It might be too real?”

“It’s already pretty real.”

“Yeah, Jack, it’s really real.”

Jack got home after the game, saying goodbye to Brie who had sat on the couch with Daisy to watch the Devils defeated the Blues, and bundled Daisy towards their bedroom without much fanfare other than Daisy stopping to greet Ty and congratulate him on his goal.

It was the happiest she’d been since she started to feel off-colour, a glimmer of hope and return to normal when she’d launched herself off the couch in glee. She told Ty as much as she hugged him tightly.

Jack was smiling at her when she joined him in their room.

“So,” Daisy said, using her renewed vigour to kneel on the bed and talk as Jack changed out of his suit, “I did some research into Judaism and abortions.”

Jack paused halfway through removing his jacket, getting stuck momentarily, and said slowly, “You didn’t have to.”

Daisy shrugged, trying to play nonchalant so she wouldn’t lose her ability to have the conversation, and continued, “I wanted to make sure I wasn’t condemning you to eternal hell or purgatory or whatever.”

Recovering and seemingly understanding Daisy’s need for the conversation to continue at a relatively fast and causal pace, he told her, while still undressing, “Neither of those really exist in Judaism.”

“Oh, well, it wouldn’t matter anyway because Reform Judaism is really cool about it? They’re really into it being the woman’s choice to decide. And while they don’t really want you to just have abortions for fun—which nobody is doing, obviously, despite what the whack jobs think—it’s not a giant unforgivable sin.”

“That’s… good,” Jack said, thinking through what she had said, and taking in the relief it had brought to her face. He reminded her, gently, “Daisy, you’re not Jewish.”

Daisy laughed, sarcastically, falling onto her back with her legs still tucked underneath her so that she could speak to the ceiling.

“Well, my religion is going to condemn me to hell and label me a murderer; I just thought I’d make sure at least one of us was safe.” She sat up again, making sure they were making eye contact when she said, “And I’ll probably be Jewish one day, right? Don’t want to start off on the wrong foot.”

The softness on Jack’s face was almost like nothing she had ever seen before but it came close to the earnestness in his expression when he’d proposed to her in the Vegas wedding chapel.

“Even if eternal damnation was on the cards for both of us—that doesn’t change anything. Not for me.”

“It doesn’t for me either,” Daisy admitted. “It did make me feel a little bit better, though.”

Jack was skipping practice to take Daisy to her appointment—she’d offered exactly once to have Brie go with her instead and Jack had shut it down.

He’d told Nico that he’d be missing—“I just told him that you had a thing I needed to be there for and he said he hopes you’re okay.”—and Lindy—“He knew what I was talking about. I told him you had an appointment and I had to be there, and he told me he could be discreet if we need any help from him. It was weird. How many guys has he had that conversation with?”

Neither of them cried that day; they were too nervous to do so. They didn’t do much talking, either, but they were never more than an arm’s length from each other from the moment they woke up and that didn’t change until they were at the appointment.

Daisy filled in what felt like truly unholy amounts of paperwork, her shaking hands making her normally perfect handwriting rather illegible. In the seat beside her, Jack was bouncing his me at a million miles a minute and twisting his head around at every noise.

They’d discussed the possibility of Jack being recognised in the conversation about Brie bringing her and, while he acknowledged it as a possibility, he wasn’t going to let it stop him from being there with her.

When she was called into an office, they both sat there and answered questions that Daisy couldn’t remember two seconds after they were asked; Jack answered some when Daisy stalled.

“Do you mind stepping out of the room, Jack?” The nurse asked. “There are some things we need to do that are usually more comfortable without an audience.”

“Uh, yeah. Are you okay with that?” Jack asked, nodding when Daisy nodded up at him. “I think I’m going to call Quinn.”

“That’s a good idea,” Daisy said, feeling a small weight off her shoulders knowing that someone in their family would know.

The nurse explained that they ask partners to leave the room so that they can ask questions that aren’t always well received, or that aren’t always answered truthfully in the presence of a partner. Daisy listened and answered, assuring her repeatedly that Jack hadn’t ever forced her into anything, including the making of the appointment—all she wanted was for Jack to be back and holding her hand.

As they were finally calling Jack back into the room as well as organising the ultrasound technician, Daisy made it clear that she wanted to hear as little from the ultrasound machine as possible. She didn’t want to hear much of what they were saying either.

Neither she nor Jack would see the ultrasound image, or hear much of it, but it was impossible to pretend it wasn’t there.

“Do you—can you tell when, like, conception was?” she asked too loudly for the silence they had been in. “We always use a condom and I’m on the pill so we have no idea when this could have happened.”

“I would probably put it at—” the tech paused for a moment — “the first week of February.”

Daisy’s brow knitted together, her entire face contorting as she tried to think back to when it could possibly have happened, “I don’t—”

“Vegas,” Jack said, interrupting her. He sounded hollow. “I don’t think we used a condom after the wedding.”

She squeezed his hand, already knowing that he was going to take that as a personal failure, and admitted, “I was really bad at taking the pill on time.”

She still is, truthfully, though she was already working out how to be more consistent in taking it.

Jack squeezed her hand right back.

“Do you need time to think about your options?”

“No,” Daisy said immediately. “I’m here for an abortion. We’ve already decided.”

It was hard letting Jack go when they started to prepare her for the surgery. It was the first time she cried all day, clutching his arm and begging them to let him stay with her. Jack wasn’t faring much better despite the strong face he was trying to put on. His attempts at assuring her that she was going to be fine, that he’d be there when she woke up, did little to actually comfort her.

At least the nurse looking after her was there and ready to take Daisy’s other hand, not quite a perfect replacement for Jack but it was better than nothing.

When Daisy did come to, Jack was right there as promised. He looked… relaxed. She felt relaxed. It was quite the contrast from how she’d felt when they pushed the anaesthetic through the IV.

She listened dutifully as she was given instructions on how to look after herself and was happy to hear that she’d be able to get on a plane to Vancouver the next week as long as everything continued to go as smoothly as the procedure had.

“You okay?” Jack asked cautiously when they were left alone.

“Yeah,” Daisy said, a small laugh bubbling out of her. “Was way more scared about being pregnant and now I’m not—so I actually feel really good. You okay?”

Jack nodded, leaning down to kiss her forehead before he wrapped her up in as good a hug as he could manage.

On their way out, some of the relief was lost.

Despite Jack being a strong and firm presence by her side, Daisy could still see and hear the people antagonising her from across the parking lot. She craned her head to get a proper look, but Jack caught her.

“We’ve just gotta get to the car,” Jack said, firmly holding her hand—partly as a source of comfort, but partly to stop her from rushing to meet the protestors face to face.

Daisy groaned, “But they’re assholes and I want to tell them.”

Jack’s laugh was small—he could picture her doing just that quite clearly. “And I’d let you if you hadn’t just been under anaesthetic.”

“They don’t even know what I did in there,” she huffed, unable to tear her eyes away from them. “Maybe I was getting prenatal vitamins.”

“You know they don’t care.”

With all her might, Daisy shouted, “Because they’re assholes!”

Heading back to Planned Parenthood was something Daisy did when she could, knowing that the protestors outside were only getting worse as legislation was changing around the country—as midterm elections were racing closer.

She sat and waited for people to show up and call for an escort, no matter what they were there for, because nobody deserved to walk past the protestors alone.

Daisy met a young woman at her car, dutifully ignoring the heinous things that were shouted in her direction and smiled kindly as the door opened.

“Just don’t stop walking,” Daisy said. “I like your shirt.”

“You’re a Red Wings fan?” the woman asked after looking down to see what shirt she was wearing that day.

“I grew up one, but now I’m more of a Jersey Girl.”

“I know they’ve been bad but I couldn’t imagine changing teams,” the woman said, Daisy could hear the horror in her voice. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard it, the betrayal in someone’s voice when they found out she’d moved on.

She never took it personally, and it served as a good distraction.

“My fiancé has a vested interest in the team, so I don’t really have a choice. Detroit is still my team in my heart; Seider winning then Calder was the most exciting thing to happen this summer.”

“If anyone else won it I would have fought the NHL.”

“I would have been right there with you,” Daisy agreed. She opened the building's front door and was thankful to drown out the yelling when it closed behind them. She said to the young woman, “And I’ll be right there with you when you leave.”

The decision you make is the right one.

#jack hughes fic #jack hughes imagine #nhl fic #nhl imagine #hockey imagine #hockey fic #homemade fic #we don't have no time to waste fic #title is from slide by the goo goo dolls #it would be ‘put your arms around me’ but I already used that for a different fic #‘do you wanna get married or run away’ is the whole lyric and well they already did the wedding thing #fic: devils

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