Gen Five: Chapter Eleven – Lost and Listlessness

This chapter was planned to be an audio chapter. Sadly I could not find enough guys to do the guy parts. As such – no audio chapter. Maybe some other time.

As such, feel free to listen to THIS instrumental that I felt goes along with the chapter well.

———-

When I woke up in the hospital and saw my father sitting there in the chair next to the bed I knew something was wrong. I hadn’t seen him in a few years, well, not counting Christmas and birthdays. I could hear him murmuring under his breath begging with the almighty Berry in the sky that I would wake up, and come back to him. The way his voice cracked as he whispered the word please over and over, it broke my heart to see him like that.

“Dad?” My own voice was croaky as I spoke my first words in I didn’t know how long. I moved to sit up, wincing at the sudden pinching pain in my abdomen as I moved. Too many thoughts to count raced through my mind as I glanced down at my mostly flat stomach. No more sizable bump from my seven month pregnancy, no kicking or squirming or the uncomfortable moments when the baby would decide to take a nap on my bladder.

Dad lifted his head, relief washing over his face before my eyes met his, confusion clouding them.

“Dad…What happened? The baby…is he okay?”

As his face crumpled into sadness realization washed over me. I barely noticed him as he moved from his chair to the bed with me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and kissing the top of my head as I waited for him to say what I knew was coming.
“Ana…I’m sorry…The baby, he…You lost the baby, love. The doctors said there was nothing you could have done to stop it…It’s not your fault.”

The first thought to cross my mind after he spoke were his last words, that it wasn’t my fault. How could it have been my fault? Had I done something wrong? I sat there in shock, not crying, but silent.

What had I done that could have caused this? I ran for the bus. I drank a cola. I had a sip of coffee. I had two sips of wine. I ate way too many cookies. I forgot to take my prenatal vitamins six times. I petted my cat right after she used the litter box and probably didn’t wash my hands. I took Tylenol three times. I wasn’t sure I wanted a child. I laughed too hard.

The day it all happened, I was murdering dandelions.

As I began to sob, dry heaving sobs that I knew weren’t exactly attractive, but I couldn’t help it, and as they turned into soft wails my father pulled me to his chest, stroking my hair, repeating the first words he had said to me, that he was sorry and I apologized back for making so much noise. We echoed, I am sure, a chorus of voices throughout time saying the same thing for the same reasons: I’m so sorry; so, so sorry. So many voices apologizing for something none of us have any reason to be sorry about.

Eventually I calmed down, and Dad moved away to his chair again. The tears still fell, but now, now I could let them. They needed to fall, I knew that. I couldn’t keep the feelings cooped up inside even if I had wanted to. All the emotion that was rushing through me was pounding in my head and I needed to let it out.

“They said that you are going to be fine, but they wanted to keep you here for another day or two, just to be sure the miscarriage hasn’t done you any permanent harm.”

“I hate that word…” I whispered “It sounds like a mistake I made: Whoopsie, I dropped the baby. I was carrying her all wrong. Forgive me.” But what were the alternatives? ‘I lost the baby’? How bad a mother do you have to be to misplace a baby who’s inside you?

I saw that Dad was fighting the urge to smile, it was like he wanted the moment to remain sombre, when all I wanted was to feel happy again, to be able to smile. I didn’t like feeling like this, so helpless, so agonizingly sad. I needed the happiness in my life or I knew I’d be swallowed whole.

“Why didn’t you tell us you were pregnant, Galliana? You didn’t tell anyone…You just…You dropped off the earth.”

“I didn’t want you and mom to think any less of me.” I whispered, “I didn’t want you and mum to blame yourselves.”

“Ana, why would we ever do that? You’re our daughter, we love you. All we want is your safety and happiness.” He smiled warmly at me, glancing up as a knock came at the door. My eyes made their way to the transparent door, biting my lip as I saw the person on the other side moments before he made his way into the room.

“Ah, I’m glad to see you’re up, Miss Mulberry.” I winced at Mentha’s professional tone as he looked to me. The smile on his lips didn’t reach his eyes, and I knew he wasn’t pleased. I didn’t suppose I’d be pleased with me either if I up and disappeared without telling the guy I’d been sleeping with that I was leaving, or better yet, that I was pregnant with his kid. “I’m here to check your vitals now that you’re awake, see if you need that anymore.” He waved his hand to the drip that was attached to my wrist, one I hadn’t even noticed.

“I’ll leave you to it and go tell your mother you’re fine. She spent the night back at the hotel. When you get out of here we’re going out for lunch okay?” I nodded meekly, watching as my father left me alone in the room with the one person I wished I could run away from at that moment.
——

After my father left it was just Mentha and I alone in the room, and I knew he could hear my breathing s heavy as it was even though he was on the other side of the room gathering the few items he’d need. When he turned around my breath stopped, it was like I wasn’t looking at the same man. He wasn’t showing any of the emotion I’d seen on him before, he looked blank, as professional as professional was. And it hurt.

“Mentha…I…”

“Please give me your right arm.” I held out my arm for him and as he took my wrist in the palm of his hand I felt his fingers curl to hold it. He placed his other fingers on the wrist, counting out my pulse.

“I don’t know what to say, I should have-”

“You don’t have to say anything, Galliana.” His voice became a low irritated growl as he dropped my wrist. “You made your decision the last time I saw you at the café. May I?” He gestured to my clothing, before holding up the stethoscope in his hand. I nodded, turning slightly in the bed. He moved behind me, unfastening the ugly hospital nightgown I had been forced to wear. I winced as the cold metal of the stethoscope hit my skin. I doubted he even breathed on it to warm it up for me.

“What was I supposed to do, Mentha? You’re married, it wasn’t the best thing I could have done, but it was the safest for all of us.”

“I can’t really talk about this right now…Breathe in deeply, please. You have an appointment for an ultrasound in an hour to just make sure you’ve healed up properly and haven’t lost any more blood…I have a break about the same time you’ll finish up there. If you ask one of the nurses they can probably help you up to the roof. We can talk then.”
The metal disappeared from my skin, leaving me feeling colder than before as I felt his fingers move to tie the gown up again.

——

I opened my eyes. Grunting with pain as I straightened up in the bed. My hand went to my eye, where the pain was coming from. Dried blood came back on my fingers and I groaned. Now I remembered.

“You took a nasty hit there, I’d be careful with it…” I looked up, jumping slightly as the voice jolted me from my thoughts, I had thought I was alone in the miserable prison, but apparently not. I made my way off the bed I’d been thrown onto, trying to ignore the headache that was pounding in my head.

By the time I had reached the cell door and I had gotten a good look at my companion I had  realized who it was.

“Adrienne…”

“Yeah, it’s me. What are you doing here? I expected you to be long gone with Galliana by now.” I flinched hearing her name, but sighed, resting my forehead against the cool iron bars.

“Things didn’t work out.” Adrienne looked up and over at me, taking in my bedraggled appearance.

“They very rarely do.”

“Oooh, that one looks painful.” I winced hearing a voice I so very badly didn’t want to hear. I stepped away from the bars like they had turned to molten lava and being near them was hazardous to my health. It pretty much was with her in the room.

“What the hell do you want, Angie? Have you come to gloat? To rub it all in that you won, that you got what you wanted?” I growled, eyes narrowed. The pain from my eye had blossomed into a headache, but I refused to let it sway me now.

“I just wanted to check on you, but I see you’re not in the mood. Come here, let me look at you.” I stepped back a little further, but not fast enough as her hand lashed out and clasped around my wrist, dragging me toward the bars, hitting my head against them. I groaned as a wave of nausea passed over me. “Oh poor baby. You’ve lost your looks. Who will take you now?”

“I don’t want anybody to take me. I just want to be left alone.” I snarled, trying to move my head away as she brought her fingers to my chin, staring into my eyes.

“Oh what about your sweet little friend in the Berry world, hmm? I’m sure you want her…But she doesn’t even know you, Artemis. She doesn’t remember you, and even so, she doesn’t know you like I do…” As she began undressing me with her eyes I took a hold of her wrist, mimicking the movement she had done to me and dragged her into the bars, my eyes shadowed as I growled at her.

“Stay the hell away from Galliana Mulberry.”

——

“Why didn’t you tell me, Galliana? I could have helped you.” The moment I left the elevator I winced. I had expected it, but the one thing I hadn’t was him to be so straight to the point. Why had I kept it from him? He knew why, but he refused to admit it could be for that reason, the reason that I had told him we couldn’t be together when he had first asked me. “I could have helped, made sure everything would be okay, but you just didn’t trust me.”

“Mentha…I…” I winced, hearing the pain in his voice. “It wasn’t a case of trust…I just couldn’t tell you. When it all comes down to it you are a married man, and it just wouldn’t have been fair to you, to your wife, to your daughter. I was the ‘other woman,’ telling you would have just destroyed everything you have with them.”

“And not telling me may have done the same thing. That was my son too, Ana, you seem to be forgetting that.” I winced. “My son who you were carrying, who died without me knowing about him. You think not telling me spared my family? It may have made things worse. She will notice that something is wrong, and she will not rest until she gets it out of me.”

I sighed, staring at my feet, wanting this to end, the awkward interaction  the anger, the pain. If I weren’t as strong a person I would have flung myself from the hospital railing the moment I had a chance…But I was strong, I had to force myself to pull through this. The baby I had lost wouldn’t, couldn’t be the only child I would have. I couldn’t dwell on it, even though I would never forget everything I had gone through.

“You need to understand what it was like for me, Mentha…It was all my fault, I was the one who invited you to my place, who initiated it all in the first place, and when I got pregnant I knew I couldn’t go to you, I couldn’t interfere with your life any more than I had…”

He turned to me, taking my hands in his, his eyes searched mine for something to cling onto, but I felt nothing, I had known that Mentha was not the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with from the beginning, and as much as I hated to admit it he was just a fling. Staring into his eyes then, though, seeing the emotion there, the pleading desperation for an acknowledgement of passion, of feeling for him, it broke through the perfect barrier I had forced to keep up since I had awoken and I winced, unable to keep my eyes on him any longer.

“Look at me, Galliana. Look at me!” As his voice rose wavering slightly I began to shake, feeling myself sinking to my knees, losing all strength to hold myself up anymore. He sank with me, still holding my hands. His hands were quivering as he stared at me. “Please look at me. It wasn’t your fault. It takes two to do what we did. I agreed to your proposition so I am to blame as well. We’re equal partners in this, and have been since the beginning, don’t you understand that?”

“Are you saying you don’t regret any of it?” I whispered, my head hung as tears threatened behind my eyes. “That you don’t feel like you can’t be happy, because you have hurt someone else, whether they know it or not? That you feel like you don’t deserve love, or happiness because you may have ruined someone else’s life?”

“I feel that all the time. But that doesn’t mean it’s true. I know you don’t feel the same way about me as I feel about you, Ana, but you need to know that even if you think something is or was a mistake it doesn’t make it one. You’re just as entitled to love and happiness as everyone else in this Berry forsaken world. Don’t let one thing ruin your entire life, Ana. Don’t let it change you for the worse. Grow and change and learn for the better.” He released my hands upon realizing just how hard he was holding them, and standing he reached out to me, picking me up and carrying me back to the wheelchair I’d been assigned. “You’ll learn to be happy again, Ana. And you’ll be the better for all of this.”

——

He was right. Almost a year later and I was almost back to normal. Occasionally in town I’d catch sight of his wife and move to the other side of the road, or cover my face in fear that she would know me, and after a while I began to realize that if she knew who I was she would have found me before then, that it was time for me to move on from my past and try to learn to live again.

So I did, and got back into painting. Three years without picking up a brush had put a damper on my abilities, but after a while it was like I hadn’t stopped at all. I also began to take commissions, sell various works I had painted, and my friend Custard Apple had even suggested I give a few paintings to the Starburst Shores Art Gallery.

She told me that she had shown the curator, who she had met a few weeks prior when she had taken her seventh grade art class to the gallery for a field trip, some of my art, and that he was impressed. She said that all I had to do was call the number she had given me and he would pick up my art right away.

For days I stared at the number, tempted but wary that the curator wouldn’t really be that interested. In the end I forgot all about it. I picked up a job from one of the classier families in town who wanted a series of paintings for their new home.

The lady of the house was Fleur de Sel, an actress who had recently decided she had had enough of the limelight and wanted to settle down with her family away from the hell that was Briocheport. It had been she who had approached me regarding the paintings.

So I had spent a good portion of time at her new home recently to do my painting. It had helped being in the rooms where the paintings were going to go to help me decide what I would paint for them.

It was a seasonably cold day in November when I met him.

The blizzard had been going for six solid days, and it was beginning to seem like I was going to have to stay for the entire winter. I hadn’t been home in three days and Fleur had given me some of her clothing to wear, which I was lucky was the same size as my normal clothing. I was in the day room, painting a the cold from outside frosting the glass when I heard the music.

I had thought I was alone in the house, Fleur having braved the weather to go pick her daughter up from the airport and leaving me to my own devices, but I heard the music, and placing my palette down I found myself drifting from room to room trying to locate the source of the sound that had found its way to my ears.

I found him in the lounge area seated at the large grand piano that sat mostly unused. His fingers moved so swiftly over the keys it made me wonder how he could be playing at all. But as I stood in the doorway I let the music pass through me. It made me think of fresh winter snow and perfect spring mornings, of a bird first taking flight and soaring through the clouds, and of rain falling from the sky and blanketing the earth in a fog so delicate it is like a spiders web.

As he played I stood there, entranced, unable to move. And when the music stopped I was still there, lost in my own world until he had come up to me, and as my eyes focused and I saw him my heart stopped, my breath halted, and he smiled.

“Hi.” His voice was soft, and almost shy as he looked at me, his green eyes intense.

“H-hi…”  I breathed the word out, stuttering a little on the first letter as I took a step back from the room, a little unnerved by the way he was examining me so intensely, like he was trying to map every fleck of paint and misplaced hair to memory. I was stunned, and he was still smiling. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have interrupted, it was just so beautiful, I had to know where it was coming from…I’m-”

“Galliana Mulberry, the artist, I know. I’m a friend of Fleur’s, visiting from Fondant Fields. Forrest Lake.” I was confused about the last words he said until I saw his hand extended toward me. Blushing I look his hand and he shook gently. “A pleasure to finally meet you, Miss Mulberry. Fleur has told me how much she loves your work.”

I found myself biting my lip as I looked back to the day room, a newly started painting still sitting on the easel. Did she really think so highly of my paintings? I guessed she did, or she wouldn’t have hired me.

“Really? I’m surprised she thought I was worthy of mention, I’m just a painter afterall.”

“A painter? Hardly, you’re an artist Galliana Mulberry. I’ve seen your paintings, you show passion, promise. You’re not simply a painter.”

“I guess not. So what do you do, Mr Lake?”

“Please, call me Forrest,” he smiled again, “and I’m a pianist, if you hadn’t guessed already. I normally play with the Briocheport Philharmonic, although i’ve been looking to move away from that area, so maybe something new is in order.”

“Move away? Where to?”

“Here, of course. Fleur has boasted about the lovely town you all have here, how everything is almost as sweet and perfect as Sugar Valley itself and I just couldn’t resist. I’m staying here while I look around the town for the next few weeks and then I’ll be going home…Perhaps you would like to show me around town, Galliana?”

I froze, small smile still sat on my face. It was a simple request, to show him around, but the look in his eyes, the request was more than that, and he was letting her know that. He wanted to get to know her just as much as he wanted to get to know the town. Did he fascinate her so much? Simple Galliana Mulberry with the eternally paint flecked cheeks and messy hair? The girl voted in high school to be least likely to stand out from a crowd?

What harm could it do?

“I’d love to.”