Note : The no-name girl (let's call her Jane Doe) is mine, the baby belongs to Marvel, even if his name isn't mentionned (I think you can guess just by reading my other fanfics). I wrote this while I was thinking about the next chapter in my other fanfic. But this short story has nothing to do with what's happening in the saga Through Time is turning into. So don't think this is a spoiler for TT. I'm just having fun.
She moaned as the pain ran through her body one more time, waking her. The room was dark, and the clock on the wall suggested it was almost 4 o'clock in the morning. The sky was still a dark grey, it would be so until almost 7. She could see the big evergreen trees through the window, slightly stirring under the small breeze, and she could smell the humidity in the warm air. Even in January, the weather was warm in New Orleans, especially in a hospital room.
Her stomach was clenched with cramps and she could still feel the ripping in her womb and between her legs. The blood still lightly flooded from there, and she started to cry again. She felt so alone. She hurt and felt like she was a living wound.
She raised herself on her elbow and looked at the wheelchair by her bed. If she could just sit on it, she could go see him. The thought of him gave her the strenght she needed to get on the wheelchair, and she pushed the big wheels ahead, heading for the door and into the white corridor.
She had signed. But she would see him.
The scent of disinfectant made bile rise to her throath, and the neon lighting hurt her eyes. Why did they persisted on putting the nursery so far from the new mothers' rooms, she didn't know. But she was tirering and hurting, and the corridor seemed to stretch a little more each time she managed to push the wheels a little further.
She had to see him. One last time. She had signed, but she had to see him.
Her hand had been shaking when she had put her signature on the piece of paper. Now he was born, and there was nothing she could do about it.
She couldn't go back in time, and tear the form into pieces.
She had signed.
But she wanted to see him.
She arrived in front of the big glass window of the nursery, and she peeked inside, streching her neck to see over the wooden frame. She let out a brief sight of despair. There must have been dozens of babies in there! She could never see him! A diamond tear ran down her cheek and sunk in her blue hospital shirt. She automaticaly played with the little plastic bracelet on her arm, as if it could lift him into the air and levitated him to the glass window.
Where she could see him.
But she couldn't. She didn't have any magical powers, of anything, like the mutants she could hear about on the small television in her small room. She couldn't see him. A sob shook her hurting chest, and she felt pain seeping through her heart like a venomous snake.
She couldn't see him.
She had signed.
A white dressed woman appeared on the other side of the room. The nurse bent over a bed and took a little baby girl, speaking soothing words she couldn't hear through the glass. Her heart leaped. She knocked on the window, tears running down her cheeks. The nurse could show him to her.
She could see him.
The nurse lifted her head, and her features softened when she saw her. She put the baby back in the crib and walked towards the window.
She would see him. The nurse would help.
She showed her blue bracelet to the nurse. The woman squinted her eyes to read the name on it, then she looked at her eyes, and stared at her a few seconds with an expression she couldn't read.
She moved her mouth to mime the word "please". The nurse's eyes were beginning to wet, and she nodded before turning back. She walked towards one of the white cribs, and took in her arms a tiny blue clothed baby, limp with sleep in her arms.
She couldn't help crying.
She would see him.
Even if she had signed.
The nurse slowly walked to the glass window, and showed her the baby. The little boy was deep in sleep, mouth slightly opened. His eyes were closed, dark lashes resting on his round cheeks. A dark auburn fuzz garnished his round head, and he stirred a bit in the nurse's arms, dreaming his baby dreams.
She was crying.
He was perfect.
Her son.
No, she corrected herself. It wasn't her son. It wasn't anymore from the moment she had signed her name on the piece of paper they had put in front of her.
She had no choice.
Disowened by her parents, abandonned by the man who had given her this treasure, this abomination. Crying, she had put her signature on the adoption form. What else could she have done? She was sixteen, she had no money to raise him, to feed him.
He was perfect, but he wasn't hers anymore.
He had never been.
The nurse walked away from the window and put back the sleeping baby into his crib. She cast a sad look to the teenage girl in a wheelchair the other side of the glass window, crying because she knew she would never hold her son.
She had seen him.
Even if she had signed.
But it had hurt more than it had helped.
He was perfect.
But he wasn't hers.