Takes place around "Eggtown". Kate and Sawyer. Why she reacted the way she did. One shot.
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This is something written a while ago. Gets dark – obviously - since it deals with loss. It is all my imagination of course, but when I watched the Eggtown scene I just thought there was something else behind her rather unreasonable reaction. I imagined that either she had had problems getting pregnant in the past or experienced a loss. - Note : the timeline is completely taken out of the air - but thanks to 'Lost Fan's' perceptive input I 've changed the title to bring it a bit closer to the series.
Disclaimer: None of it is mine. None of it.
His December
.
Claire stretches her arms up, pinning up the laundry on the line. The sun plays, throwing golden reflections in her hair.
"Oh - can you get Aaron for me?"
Her sweet face smiling, nodding encouraging, waiting for Kate to pick up the baby. Who wouldn't jump for a chance? He is a gorgeous little plump thing. All pink dimpled skin and vanilla. She knows this without ever having touched him. But she can't.
"Just pick him up and rock him a little bit."
She can't.
She ought to just reach out and take Aaron. That's what any normal person would have done. It would be so simple. But it's impossible. She can hardly look at him – it tears her apart. She mumbles something to the extent that she's not good with babies.
Not good with babies. That would be an understatement.
Five. There are five of them now. Sometimes she lines them up – imagining them like little pebbles laid out on a window sill. She touches them – one by one – picks up the memory of each and every one of them and relives the pain. A bittersweet discomforting reminiscence. It's beyond her; how you can miss someone you didn't even know. Miss them so much nothing lines up anymore.
May.
The first one – an accident – the result of sweet, awkward fumbling in the backseat of Tom's beat up old heap of a car. Such a cliché, she never even told him. Then, the unimaginable within days of finding out, she had lost it in a pool of blood in her mother's toilet. She wasn't stupid. She knew it was for the best and that they had been given a break, a respite from taking an impossible decision. But she wasn't prepared for the grief that had followed. Eyes that would well up at the most inconvenient of times. A throat that would tighten at the sight of pregnant bellies - unexplicably. She wasn't ready to be a mother – she was well aware of that – she wasn't cut out for that kind of responsibilities. She was barely sixteen.
She had been caught completely off guard by the pain that followed.
She'd named it. She'd grown tired of thinking of it as a mishap, an accident, or just as "it". It was too big, too weighty to just be brushed aside. It was hers and Tom's. The name she gave it was a shameful secret. – What kind of freak names a lump of cells that has made its end in a stained old toilet bowl?
She named it after the month when it happened – May.
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July.
The first one was a freak accident – something that just happened. Then, weeks before her wedding as she saw the stick forming a plus within seconds, it didn't even occur to her. That it could ever happen again.
Her wedding day.
It did seem too good to be true. She wasn't used to getting what she wanted. She was unaccustomed to happiness and try as she might she couldn't remember having ever felt that everything was just about right. Only this once, for a few precious days. Her little secret growing in her belly – a man that seemed to love her. A whole family behind him that had welcomed her in with open arms. She was already planning on how to break the news - on their honeymoon. She'd drop it casually in a conversation and she could already picture his face – beaming – his joy matching hers. And it happened exactly like that. He had shrieked and lifted her high, twirled her around like in some corny Hallmark movie. He had taken time off for their first doctor's appointment.
She can still remember everything about that appointment, everything. Their sweaty palms squeezing each other's hands as the doctor puts jelly on her lower abdomen for the ultrasound. Everything – down to the silly clown pattern on the doctor's tie under the white coat. His family picture on his desk. The little origami paper bird hanging above the examination table.
And then the end.
"I am sorry. There is no heartbeat."
It can't be. Must be a mistake.
"These things happen all the time. You're young – you have plenty of time to try again."
Kevin had clutched her hand - too hard. They learned new words. Words they'd wished they'd never had heard of. D&C. Missed abortion. Try again.
It was a late enough loss for the doctor to advise her to do the D&C. Get it over with quickly. It hadn't hurt - not physically. He'd put her under and when she woke up it was already done. Her baby – gone.
And the emptiness. Unbearable.
She couldn't even do what every woman's body is designed to do – that one simple, undeniable purpose. Defective. He mother was right. She wasn't any good for anything.
Unworthy.
Home to their little perfect house. Her hand on her belly. Empty. Crying in the shower, blood dripping down the inside of her thighs, mixing with the soapy foam. She watches it swirl towards the drain at her feet. Her knuckles pushed hard between her teeth –trying to muffle the sorrow.
He had tried to be supportive. It was painfully clear. He'd hugged her close at night and she had almost felt like suffocating. She didn't want him to touch her. Didn't want to feel.
Anything.
That was July. A second large gapping hole was left in her heart.
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November.
She had gotten pregnant immediately after the D&C and later when the doctor asked; why so soon – she had heard the clear accusation hidden behind the question.
You did this. You did something wrong. Your fault.
She had wanted to ask for testing. Something must be wrong.
"After three spontaneous losses we'll do a work up for habitual abortion. This is only the second, these things are really common early on. I'm sure the next pregnancy will be fine."
She couldn't even tell him about the first loss -the one way back then, her May – and that they were already on number three. Not with Kevin in the room.
She had looked over at Kevin's pained smile, accepting the doctors medical platitudes with an ease that she'd envied. Spontaneous abortion – the words like an open handed slap across her face. Like it was something you did while skipping joyfully, all spontaneous and happy-go-lucky. And habitual – a bad little habit that she had, a little quirky hobby. She pulled her hand out of Kevin's, feeling the ravine widening between them. She was alone about this. Her body. Her fault.
Not worthy.
Her mother-in-law had hugged her close when they'd arrived home after the second D&C.
"I'm so sorry honey. It just wasn't your time yet – you will get one when you are ready," she had whispered, stroking Kate's hair. Kate had felt her whole body go rigid.
She couldn't deal with the pity, the physical closeness. It was eating her up. It was all that she could do to stay in one piece, stay sane and get up every morning. Worst of all, the knowing that this was her punishment, for taking a life, for being the awful person she was. And she knew there was a certain fairness and justice in all of these losses. She didn't deserve a child – of course God wouldn't give a baby to someone like her. Christ - her own husband didn't even know her real name.
November tore another jagged hole, perhaps the largest one yet, right next to May and July.
February.
After November – all was changed. She went through the motions. Pretended to be hopeful. After the physical pain was gone following the D&C, Kevin expected her to go back to normal, everyone else did too. You don't grieve a miscarriage of a three month old fetus the way you mourn a child.
But she did. She did.
And everywhere she looked, there were children, mothers, babies and distended pregnant bellies. She grew restless and she started wondering if she could ever make up for the past.
Then came February - it was brief and reminiscent of May – her first one. She didn't even have time to tell Kevin about it before it was too late. It happened at home. The familiar sight of blood on the toilet paper as she wiped. She remained seated on the toilet for the longest time. Hyperventilating. Her head cradled in her hands trying to calm her breathing. She decided not to think of it – to try to erase it from her mind. Her heart like a little Swiss cheese for all the holes. She didn't think she could survive another one. Still she got up every morning. Never told Kevin – she just couldn't. The shame of it – too imposing, too large. No more. Never again. She took a pregnancy test a few weeks later to make sure she had past all of the tissue. It was negative.
She still wasn't worthy.
She couldn't sleep with Kevin after that. She would still make love – she'd force herself to go through the motions. Faking it for him. She'd fake being normal, that she wasn't scared out of her mind. She'd wait until his breathing slowed down and he snored lightly before she'd sneak out to the living room. If discovered she'd say she wanted to watch TV – that she wasn't tired. But she couldn't sleep next to him. Couldn't stand even the accidental contact with her skin. Her dysfunctional, useless body. Poor Kevin. What a worthless mess he had married. He deserved better than her ruined, worthless body. She had wanted a normal life above all, but it didn't look like that was ever going to be part of her future.
Too late.
It was after February that she decided to contact the Marshall. The thought that kept running through her mind as if looped; to make amends. To stop running. To come clean, at least to Kevin. Or she'd never be allowed to keep a baby.
In the end - it was also February that convinced her to give up Kevin. Give up the dream of being normal. She had tried so hard. So she did what she'd always done.
She ran.
That last one.
December.
She doesn't know exactly when it had happened - though hardly ought to be a big mystery. Perhaps it had happened that first time at the cages. Or perhaps a little later - at the beach.
They hadn't exactly taken any precautions. And she cursed at her own recklessness - feeling the panic taking its hold on her. The stupidity of it. It wasn't as if she'd ever had any problems getting pregnant – only staying that way. She'd felt such a fool. Such an idiot. And she'd known that she was pregnant, known before she was even that late. She didn't need a test for that. The same familiar discomfort in her lower belly, an easily recognizable sensitivity and fullness of the breasts. She knew. Just knew.
His.
She had perhaps imagined that it might have been different on the island but as she found herself crouching in the jungle, the familiar contractions in her uterus and the blood leaving her body, she had understood that it was all the same. Nothing had changed.
Still not worthy.
She imagined the holes punched in her heart like the five petals of a flower.
That morning. Half awake, her head on his shoulder, the smell of him, heady and stirring. She feels herself responding, her body readying itself for him. As always. His lips, implausibly sweet for a man first thing in the morning. He rolls on top of her, nudges her thighs open with his leg. And then the claustrophobia hits.
No.
She can't breathe.
" No. Sawyer." Shoving him away rougher than necessary.
"What? What, what'd I say?"
"Forget it."
She concentrates on pushing the panic away. The loss too fresh. She can't risk it again. Him. Next to her. He who knows her better than anyone else – he doesn't know – doesn't understand, but still his snide comment hits dangerously close to home.
"Alright. You still think you might be pregnant…"
The pain that sears through her is immediate and scorching.
"I'm not worried. And I'm not pregnant!"
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah I'm sure."
His giddy display of relief completely shatters her - the little bit left that was still whole. He laughs. Pulverizing her. His blond beauty heart-wrenching there in the bed.
That's what December might have been like. So many could have, might have, and would have.
None materialized.
"Would it have been the worst thing in the world?" she fails to keep the hurt out of her voice but he doesn't catch on to it – basking in his own relief.
"Yes, yes it would have been the worst thing in the world. What would we have done with a baby?".
"I'm going back to the beach."
She has to get away from this. She wants to tear through the jungle. Stomp out her anger, her failure and her anguish in a sweaty frantic run through the hostile terrain of the island. The slap - immediately regretted. She'd taken it out on him. Her own failure. Her unworthiness.
What would we have done with a baby?
Indeed. What would she have done with a living breathing baby. She could hardly handle her five dead ones. Couldn't even tell him about his one. The last in the row of hard pebbles of sorrow.
His.
December.
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