Oh so that's why she was so emotional. Rigby sat on the bathroom floor, phone in hand, reading through article after article. She'd gotten freaked out for the first couple minutes, calmed down when she realized what was happening, and then freaked out again. At first, she'd been asking herself if she was dying but now she was asking how exactly she was supposed to deal with this. Were periods supposed to hurt so much? Were they supposed to be this scary? What was she supposed to do about this?
Michael knocked on the bathroom door, asking her if she wanted breakfast. She sat there for a second, deciding if she should say something or not.
"Dad, my period started." She'd meant to say something less blunt, but had panicked at the last second and just blurted it out. The other side of the door stayed quiet for a while. "Dad?"
"Uh, yeah, I heard you." He paused. "Do we need to go get stuff? Do you need stuff? Of course you need stuff. This is a needing stuff kind of situation." Okay, so he was panicking. That helped. Not. "Do you want to go now? We should probably go now."
The car ride was an awkward kind of silence with a little bit of background music from the radio. Going into the store and walking down "that aisle" seemed to only increase the awkward. Rigby stood there, reading each of the packages while Michael stood off to the side, staring at everything but the packages of tampons and pads.
"Why are there so many different kinds?" Michael muttered, unable to stand the awkward tension anymore.
"Periods are different for every girl. Some get lucky and have no cramping, little bleeding, and a lack of any other kind of symptom that shows they're slowly dying." Rigby pulled a pack from the shelf and turned to Michael. "Other girls basically look like they've been stabbed in the stomach seventy different times, but get internal bleeding instead of the expected external."
Michael nodded, not knowing how to respond to that.
Rigby held up the package of pads. "I'll just get these for now."
"Cool, let's get out of here." He'd never left a store as fast as he left that one.
They spent the rest of the day purposefully not bringing up the period unless absolutely necessary but that seemed to be just fine with both of them. Michael stayed up with Rigby, trying to keep her distracted from the cramps with as many movies as he could fit into a night.
He made a mental note to get pain pills the next time. And to be a little more helpful. Since he was the parent and all.