Based on episode 4:4. Will contain some sexual innuendo. I did create a few of these characters. Please enjoy and review!
The Captain's Wife
Chapter 1
For the second time in a week, Christine had to bandage her hand. She had been splitting wood and the ax handle was too rough. Her hands were covered in blisters and callouses. While she had never been one to get manicures and such, just three years prior, her hands would have never been covered in blisters. Her hair was now streaked with gray, and there were worry lines where there hadn't been before. If her husband saw her, he would want to run in the other direction. If he was even alive and interested in her anymore. It had been just over three years since she last saw him. He deployed and their marriage was on a sour note. She was mad because he refused a desk job in Miami because there would have been no advancement for him in the Navy. Christine wanted the kids to have their father around more. He spent the last week before he deployed sleeping on the couch, except for the night before he left. That night he left her with a parting gift.
After the Red Flu hit, and Lucas died, she was so angry with him. She and the girls went to a safe zone in Virginia. He called her from the Arctic and she bitterly told him about Lucas dying. She had just blurted it out. In hindsight, she felt horribly about it, she could have been gentler. Mike loved his kids, no doubt about it, and he and Lucas had a special bond. He didn't play favorites but Lucas was the only boy. She didn't realize until a week after he called, that she was pregnant and pretty far along. She had known that she had missed periods but thought it was because of the stress, Lucas dying, fighting to survive, the anger at Mike. Then she realized that she was craving guacamole with oreo's crushed on them. It was her go-to pregnancy craving. She had also gained weight. She was able to obtain a pregnancy test and it was positive, she was four months pregnant. She had to not only fight to keep herself, Brooke, and Hannah alive, but also try to have a healthy pregnancy while the world was falling to pieces.
She and Mike had been college sweethearts. Her dad was a hotshot lawyer and her mom was a college professor, and they thought that he wasn't good enough for her. And the other thing that stuck in her dad's craw was that he was in the academy to become a cop. He was a defense attorney who hated cops. Mike wanted her dad's blessing but he wouldn't give it. He threatened to disown Christine if they married. Her dad's brother was the only one who would help her. It was her Uncle Adam who gave Mike the blessing to marry his only niece, and Uncle Adam had given her away at their small wedding on his farm in Missouri. He had been going against her dad's grain for most of his life and it didn't bother him to do it then. Uncle Adam had a eighty acre farm in south central Missouri, deep into the Ozark Mountains. He could make anything grow in the rugged, not good for anything land. It was from her Uncle Adam, that Christine got her love of gardening. Uncle Adam had helped Christine from day one, and when each of the kids were born, he opened a savings account for them. Mike and Christine had no idea how much was in each account.
Christine was able to get through to her uncle and told him her predicament. He insisted that she and the girls come live at his rambling farmhouse. He was a lifelong bachelor who had a live in house keeper who was widowed during the Vietnam War. Rosemary was full of grit and sass. She was the only one that could handle Uncle Adam. Christine acquired a car and enough money and gas to get to Missouri. At that point the Red Flu was still raging and once Christine and the girls got to the farm, she completely secluded them. If she went into town, people still called her by her maiden name, Davis. Christine just didn't bother to correct them. It was just too much energy.
Her uncle had died late that winter. He'd contracted pneumonia and wouldn't allow them to try and obtain antibiotics. It was heartbreaking, and it was what sent Christine into labor. Rosemary had been a nurse once upon a time and Christine didn't want to go to the hospital. So they delivered the baby at home, a beautiful baby boy that she named Adam Michael. He looked just like Mike. As soon as she was able to she started planting anything that would grow. Potatoes, carrots, squash, zucchini, tomatoes, lettuce, corn, anything edible. She also worked a herd of cattle, pigs, chickens. The cattle had a two fold purpose, some were beef cattle and some were dairy. She would carry the baby with her wherever she went.
Brooke and Hannah worked right alongside her. She homeschooled them in the evenings. Hannah was a daddy's girl through and through, and she was convinced that Mike was suddenly going to show up at the door after three years and everything would be copastetic. Christine wanted the girls to hold onto their innocence as long as possible, so she went along with it. Brooke was very angry at Mike and Christine wasn't sure the reaction that she would have if Mike suddenly showed up back in their lives. She resented him for leaving, going as far as saying she hated him. She blamed him for Lucas dying and having to work so hard. She had no hope that he would show up, if he was alive. She even made the remark that had he survived, if he had probably hooked up with some other woman and had started a new family.
Christine knew Mike better than that, and would remind her that Mike loved them all. But she had lost hope too. The only thing she did do was tell Adam stories about the daddy that didn't even know he existed. Adam worshipped him and it was his favorite bedtime story. Rosemary had also died not too long after Uncle Adam and so Christine was left to fend for herself and her kids.
There was supposedly a global famine going on, but for whatever reason, it hadn't reached her crops. Christine canned everything she could in case it infected what she had planted. She also had fruit trees and had learned how to utilize fruits like the persimmon that was virtually inedible. Her kids ate well and flourished. If there was a neighbor needing food, Christine bent over backwards to help them, but liked to keep to herself. Her days started before dawn and went until after midnight. When she did finally fall into bed, out of exhaustion, she dreamed of only one thing, Mike being beside her. As angry as she was when he left and after Lucas died, it had dissipated. Now imagining him laying in the bed beside her was the only comfort she had. She didn't know if he was dead or alive, but hoped if he was dead, he had found Lucas somewhere in heaven and was at peace. He had been so broken up when she told him, she wasn't sure how he could even function.
Between constantly pruning her plants, taking care of animals, maintaining a farm, cutting wood, educating the kids and trying to just be a mom, her days were filled. She didn't mind hard work but she did miss having Mike there to shoulder some of the responsibility.
Adam was a good little boy who would follow his mom and sisters around, and was so like Mike, quiet, resolute. Taking care of the three of them and the farm gave her very little time to actually grieve for Lucas, and sad as it was, she rarely thought about him.
She went to town so rarely that it worried the neighbor's. Because the kids weren't in school, everyone just assumed their last name was Davis. She had heard that the Nathan James had landed in St. Louis but she was so busy on the farm she didn't go looking for Mike. If he wanted to find them, he would know that her Uncle Adam's was one of the only places she could go. It was when she thought about that maybe some of what Brooke said was true. Mike had probably found someone else, and looking at her now, he would be better off. She just couldn't imagine him abandoning his girls. He loved them.