brandi. (zombiephile) wrote in daiquiri, @ 2011-03-21 16:20:00 |
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It was a normal Friday morning. Sally was running around the cottage, trying to find everything she needed before she headed into work. She'd already let Dog out into the backyard, where he could run around freely until she got home. The wireless was playing in the background, but Sally wasn't paying much attention to it as she turned nearly everything over in search of her second shoe. She had just found it when the song that had been playing stopped and the DJ's cheery voice piped out of the wireless speakers. "That was the Weird Sisters with their new single, 'Hit Me Up And I'm Yours.' It's a beautiful Friday morning everywhere here in the isles today. 18 March is all set to be a gorgeous day, so if you don't have to be stuck inside all day for work like some of us, you should be out there enjoying the day. Here's hoping the weather holds through the weekend. We've got three Quidditch matches coming up tomorrow, and all promise to be exciting. The Wasps are playing at Puddlemere, the Arrows and Falmouth, and the Magpies at Ballycastle. More music coming up after a few words from our sponsors. I know, I know, but we all gotta eat somehow!" Sally had frozen in place as the DJ cheerily announced the date. It couldn't be. The 18th couldn't have just snuck up on her like that with no warning. She was only vaguely aware of her shoes slipping from her fingers and clattering to the floor at her feet. Her hands gravitated toward her abdomen almost without any conscious thought on her part. She rested her hands there, trying hard (and failing) to not remember: she hadn't even been showing yet, but she knew it was there. The baby. Her baby. She'd been terrified of becoming a mother, afraid that Nathan would want nothing to do with her and the baby. She hadn't even told him yet when it happened. The pain. The sudden, intense cramps. The blood. She'd called Hannah, trying to keep from crying. Hadn't wanted to believe Hannah when she told her she'd lost the baby. The blood rushed out of Sally's head, and her vision was speckled with black. There was a roaring in her ears, and Sally wavered a bit in place, nearly passing out. She gripped the chair beside her until her knuckles turned white. Her stomach rebelled, and Sally staggered on unsteady feet to the loo, barely making it before her breakfast came back up. She knelt there, heaving until her stomach was empty, then weakly hit the lever to flush it and collapsed to the floor, where she passed out. A few hours later, Sally groggily lifted her head from the tile, then dragged herself to her feet. She splashed some water on her face and rinsed her mouth out, then stumbled into the bedroom, where she curled up into a tight ball in the middle of the bed, pulling the covers up over her head, as if that would magically block everything out. She fell into a fitful sleep, punctuated by dreams of what could have been. In most of them, the baby looked a lot like Bailey. And that somehow made everything worse. Actually, what was really making everything worse was that this was making her jealous of her boyfriend. She was jealous that he had a daughter -- a happy, healthy, alive daughter -- dropped off at his doorstep. One who was absolutely adorable. And so cheery and vivacious. Everything that Sally had hoped her own baby would be. And he had exactly what she'd lost. And it hurt. Days passed. It felt like no time and also like forever. She dragged herself out of bed just long enough to feed Dog and refill his water bowl, and let him into and out of the cottage. And to use the loo. But other than that, she stayed in bed. Curled up into a tight ball, splayed out face-down, burying her head in her arms. Nothing else even registered. She wasn't hungry. The knocking on her front door (and on her bedroom door, which she kept locking behind her every time she returned to the bedroom after leaving it to care for Dog), the floo-calls, they sounded like they were too far away. She couldn't pull herself out of bed to answer them. She couldn't handle this. Any of this. She couldn't see anyone. Talk to anyone. Even the Howler that arrived from work on Monday morning failed to get her to respond. When she didn't open it and it exploded, her boss was yelling at her for not showing up to work on Friday, not photographing the game on Saturday, and not even checking in yesterday. If she didn't show up to work today, she was fired. But it all sounded like it was coming from the other end of a long tunnel, or the other side of a very thick door. She just covered her ears with her hands and buried her face in her pillow. Maybe it was fate. Luck. That he happened to have come over to try knocking on her door again, right at the same time that she was letting Dog out later on Monday. She froze in the doorway, still in the slacks and blouse she'd put on for work on Friday, though they were now rumpled from her sleeping in them ever since. Her hair was a tangled mess, and her face was pale and slack, her eyes haunted. Dog let out a happy bark and wriggled past Sally to pounce on Oliver, wagging his tail so hard that his entire body was shaking. Sally couldn't help it. She couldn't hold it in any longer. She collapsed to the floor just inside the door and burst into tears. |