brandi. (zombiephile) wrote in daiquiri, @ 2008-01-15 23:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | 25 flavors, char: margaret kenmore, game: memories 1975 |
25 Flavors: #12, baby (Margaret Kenmore)
Title: A Father's Love
Characters: Bernard Kenmore, with mentions of Cordelia and Margaret
Setting: Mostly Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, 1957; also January 1958; the Kenmore house in Dublin, Ireland with a brief jaunt to the hospital.
Word Count: 1,225
Summary: Why Bernard really gave Margaret up.
Rating: Um. PG, maybe? Her mum dies "off-camera." If that doesn't count, then it's definitely G.
Author's Note: For the 25 Flavors prompt "Baby." Yes it counts, Margaret is a baby in this ficlet! Anyway, with this ficlet, I wanted to explore Bernard's motivations for sending his daughter to live with his mother after the death of his wife. Margaret's view and thoughts regarding this event were often made clear, and we know what her grandmother had told her, but we've never seen Bernard's side. Until now.
They had just finished supper on Christmas Eve when it happened. Cordelia, true to form, was flitting around the nursery, hanging pictures. It didn't matter to her that it was Christmas Eve, nor that she still had just over a month until the baby was due to be born, she was always working on something or other up there. Bernard, sitting down in his office and going over some paperwork, could hear her footsteps above his head. They should have turned the other spare room into the nursery, he thought, if he was going to have to listen to her walking around up there with the baby while he was trying to work. He had just put pen to paper to calculate out some figures when a cry sounded from the room above him. His hand jerked, drawing a line of ink across the paper. Cursing silently, he pushed back from his desk and went upstairs, to demand to know what it was. If it was another bug or little mouse, he would not be happy. Cordelia always got upset over the littlest things, and he had called the exterminator about it, anyway. Plus, if she was a witch, she could just ... zap it away, or whatever it was that witches did. Entering the nursery, Bernard found his wife on the floor, curled up around herself with her hands splayed over her belly. His angry words died in his throat as he rushed to her side. She managed to whimper out the word "baby" amidst her pain ... she hadn't realized that it would hurt this much. Bernard gently helped Cordelia to her feet, supporting her as they began the long trek down the stairs and out to the car, which was parked at the curb. After settling Cordelia into the passenger seat, Bernard raced around to the driver's side of the car and took off to the hospital. Hours later, Bernard was still in the waiting room. It was maddening. Once they had reached the hospital, Cordelia was swept away from him, and he was ushered into the waiting room for the delivery ward. There was nobody else in the room; apparently he was the only father-to-be in Dublin that Christmas Eve. Christmas music softly filled the silent room, pouring out of the radio set up in the corner. A clock on the wall ticked away the seconds as they melted into minutes, as those minutes marched on into hours. The clock continued moving on, but to Bernard it felt as though time stood still. He paced the room, his thoughts (for once) not on his job but rather on his wife and child. He wanted to know what was happening, what was taking so long. He wanted to know if it was a boy or a girl. He wanted to know if Cordelia was okay. It didn't matter anymore, how strained things had been in the last month. Ever since she had told him that she was a witch, he'd found it hard to be around her. To believe that she had lied to him for so long. He found it hard to accept another world, one so different from his own. But right now, all he wanted to do was see Cordelia and tell her that he loved her anyway. The clock declared the time to be 4:07 when somebody finally came into the waiting room. A doctor, dressed in clean scrubs. Instead of putting Bernard at ease, the cleanliness worried him. "How's my wife?" he demanded as soon as the door closed behind the doctor. "I want to see her." "Mr. Kenmore," the doctor started, looking straight into Bernard's eyes. "I'm sorry ... we lost her. The delivery was difficult and complicated. Her body was too weak." Bernard felt as though somebody had socked him in the stomach. Or what he imagined it would feel like to be socked in the stomach. Cordelia? No. She'd always been fragile, gentle, but beneath it all he knew she was strong. She was a fighter. She couldn't have. "The baby?" he managed to get out. "We nearly lost her, too. A month early, and with such a difficult delivery, ... but she pulled through. A real Christmas miracle, you could say. We'll have to keep her in intensive care for a few days at least, to monitor her, but you can visit her there." Bernard was sitting in one of the chairs without even having realized he'd walked over to it and sat down. Elbows propped on his knees, he dropped his head into his hands. Cordelia ... she was gone. The doctors wouldn't have been so cruel as to lie about something like that. But ... he had a daughter. A little girl. Maybe she would have Cordelia's smile or her eyes, ... she probably would be a witch, too. He had only just come to terms with Cordelia being a witch, was he ready to accept that his daughter might be, as well. It wasn't until January 5th that Bernard was able to take his daughter home. She had been named Margaret Diana, a name that Bernard and Cordelia had agreed upon months ago, should their child be a girl. Bernard didn't know anything about babies. When Margaret cried, he didn't know what to do. He tried feeding her bottles, he very clumsily changed her diaper. He wanted to scream from all the crying. She never seemed to stop crying. Nothing he did helped. He hardly slept, and he was quickly running out of sick and vacation and bereavement days away from work. He didn't know what to do. He didn't feel like enough for his own daughter. He had to do something. Anything. Margaret was his last connection to Cordelia. He couldn't just abandon her. But he couldn't take care of her, either. He'd never met Cordelia's parents, they didn't even come to her funeral. He didn't even know how to contact them. Plus, they were probably like Cordelia. That left him with one choice. At 3:19 PM on January 18th, Bernard picked up the phone and called his mother. She lived in London, but she managed to get a train ticket the very next day to come out to Dublin. Bernard hadn't seen his mother, the original Margaret Kenmore, for whom his own daughter was named, in years. Not since Bernard had stayed in Ireland when she moved to London after his father died when Bernard was eighteen. Bernard had always considered his mother to be flaky and flighty. He constantly groused at her to act her age and behave as a woman of her stature was expected. And now he was asking her to take his daughter. It took some persuasion, but both Margarets left for London on the morning of January 22nd, at 9:13 AM to be exact. He left it to his mother to explain his absence to his daughter. Told her to say whatever she wanted. Bernard never forgot his own daughter. Although he never wrote, never telephoned, every year on Christmas morning, he would stare into the lovely eyes of his daughter, the beautiful brown ones she had inherited from Cordelia, captured perfectly in the photographs that his mother sent him yearly. He always loved her, he just never knew how to show it. |