Sorry if this is OOC, first time writing Jac so she may well be overly emotional etc. I hope this doesn't depress you too much in anticipation for next Tuesday- I did want to write something happy, but I'm too angsty of a writer to ever let it get that far. *sigh* maybe one day...
For the record I never imagine Jonny would just leave her/the baby for a life with Bonnie but in Jac's insecure mind I think that's entirely plausible. (He has been acting like a jerk lately, tsk)
This is unbeta-ed and I'm pretty unhappy with it and not entirely sure why, so if you have something to say I would really appreciate the feedback.
Thank you for reading, I hope you had a lovely holiday and that you have a happy new year! (*cough* and so does Jac Naylor *cough*)
She had never imagined this moment. Had never allowed herself to believe they would get this far, never anticipated her tiny baby, who everybody had portrayed to be so helpless, would fight her way into the world and continue to fight after taking her first breaths.
That idiot Mr T carried her in, and even if she ought to thank him for taking such good care of them both, he was still an idiot, and she did not want him holding her child any longer than he needed to.
Jac Naylor had never been particularly maternal, but now, she found herself holding her arms out, an automatic reaction once she caught sight of the tiny pink bundle.
Mr T was smiling, talking, and a nurse by the monitor was laughing at his joke, but Jac heard none of it. She was dumb to any noise but that of her daughter's little cry- proof, to Jac at least, that it was her mother she wanted.
Her mother, and that's what Jac was now: a mother. She had never dreamed she would be anybody's parent, never considered being one person's entire world.
After everything she'd done, she did not deserve this responsibility, and perhaps that was why she had forbidden herself from getting close to anybody, from getting close to this baby her entire pregnancy.
Tears welled in her eyes- hormones, of course, because Jac Naylor didn't cry- and she wished now she hadn't wasted the time her daughter was inside her dreading this day.
The good thing was that the baby would never remember how hard it had been for Jac to get attached to the idea of being a mother. She would never know, and she would never need to, because Jac would spend the rest of her life making up for it.
Mr T finally relented, easing the baby into her arms, and the second he did, the child settled. She nested further into her blanket, and Jac was overwhelmed by how much she looked like her in the few baby pictures she had seen of herself. A little tuff of red hair, a tiny pointed nose, wide-set eyes that were closed but Jac-shaped all the same.
Suddenly, it didn't matter that Jonny was dating that aggravating nurse. It didn't matter that he would eventually grow tired of splitting himself in two, that he would someday disengage from Jac altogether in favour for a family with Bonnie or a girl equally as annoying. It no longer bothered Jac at all that he would be just another person who left her- like her own sorry excuse for a mother; like Joseph.
Because she felt something, and maybe it wasn't love just yet (because really, it was ridiculous to believe that you could fall in love with somebody within seconds, even if you had given birth to them) but it was the closest to it Jac had probably ever felt; closer than she'd thought herself capable of feeling.
Her daughter was here, alive and healthy. Her daughter needed her, relied on her. Jac finally had something to call her own, something she wouldn't have to share (well, she might for a while, until Jonny would no doubt give up trying.) She had someone who would love her unconditionally, someone who expected so little but yet so much from her. It was a lot of pressure, but Jac had always been remarkable under pressure, and this did not suddenly change because the person watching her this time was an infant.
She didn't know how to change a nappy, but she would learn, just like every other parent in the world. She was not a failure because she'd brought this baby into a one-parent family- if Jonny decided he couldn't, she would love her daughter enough for the both of them. She would always be manipulative, ruthless and far too selfish, but so long as she left these traits inside the walls of Holby when she went home for the day, her child would never need to hate her like everybody else did.
Jac shut her eyes tight, the baby now squirming in her arms, and even though she did not believe in God and had placed all of her faith in medicine for the duration of her career, she found herself thanking something much bigger than she was, thanking them for a healthy baby; for a second chance.
When she opened her eyes, there was no baby in her arms. She wasn't on the obstetrics ward- she was in her own bed, in her lonely apartment, a cot Johnny had bought for her weeks ago still in its box by the window. There was a movement in her stomach, the small inching of an arm, of a leg, about all the stretching the baby could manage given the limited room inside her.
Her baby hadn't been born: it wasn't over. Her child wasn't healthy, her feelings had not magically changed. She still felt empty inside; she still felt less than, because she had little control over whether her own kid lived or not.
Jonny was still with Bonnie, and it still mattered: it still mattered because apart from this baby (who Jac was certain she would lose, all dreaming aside) he was all she had left; it still mattered because, when all of this was over, she didn't want to come home to an empty apartment on her own with no baby and nobody to echo her pain and no one to blame but herself.
She hadn't been given a second chance. She was being punished again. Forced to want somebody, forced to come close to loving them, forced to dream about them, simply to have to let them go because it was exactly what she'd always deserved. This whole pregnancy was torturous, if only because she knew the chances of her sharing the idyllic moment with her daughter she had just dreamed about were slim to none.
She rolled over, onto her side, which was more comfortable anyway. She faced away from the unpacked cot, away from the pink teddy she had been foolish enough to indulge herself in buying, away from the tiny flowery onesies Elliot had given her for Christmas.
There was just no use dreaming.