Chapter 1
Of course, the heavens would open the minute they set off for the train station.
Years ago, back in her junior doctor years, she would have seen the joy in it, the unexpected, the dark clouds all of a sudden looming overhead out of nowhere, the cascade of rain soaking her through, the sudden chill, the shock and the surprise and the reminder from Mother Nature that life is so beautifully unpredictable. She would have skipped through it shrieking at the top of her lungs like a small child, not a care in the world, the fact that she had left her umbrella by the front door and it being far too late to turn back now the furthest thing from her mind.
She was a different person, then.
That was another lifetime, a lifetime when the world was serene and divine and all at her fingertips, a lifetime when she truly believed with every part of her that everything happened for a reason, when she was impulsive, caution to the wind, lived in the moment cherished every second, carefree, happy.
If only she had known then that nothing lasts forever.
Perhaps she would have held onto those moments just a little tighter.
It's as though Mother Nature is crying with her. It would be today; it's as though someone up there knows, knows where they're going and the hell it's going to be and is trying to show some empathy… pathetic fallacy, her English Lit teacher would have called it, a lifetime ago.
Alicia used to love rain.
Today, it only seems to accentuate her misery.
They hold hands and they run and they don't stop until they're through the doors of the train station, utterly soaked and half laughing, half crying, weighed down with the emotions of it all.
Except that part's just her, Alicia realises, digs her purse out the bottom of her handbag for the train tickets (miraculously, only slightly damp).
She's carrying this burden for both of them; most of it, at least.
"Platform 3, then." Alicia hands over the second ticket, winces a little at the painful reminder in the far corner, small print.
Holby to Castle Cary isn't exactly cheap.
It had better be worth it.
He had better be worth it.
"My socks are wet."
She sighs; the whole excursion already has an impending sense of doom surrounding it and they aren't even out of Holby. "I know. We'll get you dry ones out the suitcase once we're on the train, yeah? But first we're getting coffee. God, I need the caffeine."
"Can I have coffee too?"
"No, you can't, you can have orange juice, or we can compromise on a hot chocolate if you promise you aren't going to moan the whole journey, okay?"
She probably should have known better than to hand over her credit card, but she's cold and she's soaked and there's a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach she can't shake and she feels as though she's suffocating, and if the possibility of excessive caffeine purchases and the inevitable hyper-activeness on a is the price she has to pay for a few quiet moments to compose herself, then she'll take it now and suffer the consequences later.
Alicia doesn't know if she can do this.
It's taken weeks to even make it this far, to narrow down the address, to buy the train tickets, book the annual leave, throw some clothes and a stack of coloured pens and paper and god-awful slime made out of contact solution and PVA glue and all the other paraphernalia into a suitcase, and then there's all the times last night she lay awake and almost bottled out, psyched herself up and then told herself she couldn't do it and somehow managed to psych herself up again, a vicious cycle, nervous, just a little panicked.
Eight years. She's been waiting for this moment for eight years, and now it's finally here Alicia doesn't know if she can do it.
She's halfway through reapplying her lipstick, fixing her hair, when the moment of truth comes.
"What did you get?" Alicia eyes the takeaway cups suspiciously.
Wide blue eyes meet hers, oh-so-innocent. "Latte with coconut milk, no sugar."
"And?"
"Babycino. I asked for a mocha with coconut milk and caramel syrup, but the lady said this was better."
"Oh, she did, did she? That was nice of her." Alicia makes a mental note to leave the barista an enormous tip.
"Do you think it has caffeine in it?"
"Oh, definitely," Alicia lies. "Loads of caffeine. Loads and loads. Right, can you carry that, then?"
"Uh huh."
"Okay. Come on, then." Please don't drop it, Alicia groans under her breath. She gathers together the bags, cake tin wedged precariously under her arm, leads the way out onto the platform. "And you can look at the guidebook on the train, yeah? It's going to be like going on holiday. Right, come on, I've got the bags, you hold that and find us seats."
Somehow, she manages to heave the suitcases up onto the overhead luggage rack, groans as she realises half her latte is most likely going to be long gone by the time she catches up.
"Mammy, over here!"
Her mobile vibrates in her pocket. "Okay, I'm coming, darling."
Elle. Thinking of you and C today. You know you can call me anytime. Take care x
This is it, Alicia tells herself. This is it, there's so much riding on this. She's never going to get another chance like this again, not unless she waits another eight years, at least. She'll be sixteen then… he'll have missed so much…
He's missed so much already, but somehow another eight years feels as though it will simply be too late.
She tries not to remind herself that it could be, that his time could be up by then for all she knows.
She isn't his consultant, but she's read all the medical journals, she knows how this goes. He could be anywhere between symptoms barely there and full blown by now and she just doesn't know; that's what makes this so horribly hard.
She knows so little. That's part of the trouble; it's fear of the unknown, because so much has changed in the eight years since he went away and she knows it will be the same for him, too, that there's so much distance between them now, lives lived, eight years of his life she hasn't a clue about and eight years of hers he should, eight years he should have been there for, eight years he chose to walk away from.
She hasn't grilled Charlie for details. She had tried, at first, when he had first pulled her to one side after shift, taken her out for a drink and gently broken the news to her, handed over the name of the clinic. She had begged and pleaded, but he had insisted he knew so little himself; just small details, via a friend of a friend, didn't feel able to ask any more and she had believed him with every fibre of her existence, because it's Charlie, because she refuses to believe Charlie has ever lied to anyone in all his years.
She could have phoned, Alicia supposes. She could have phoned, but somehow that idea seemed even more terrifying.
He could have put the phone down had she called. He could have slammed the phone down the moment he heard her voice and that would have been the end of it, she would have had to let him go for good and Alicia isn't ready to do that. She wasn't ready when he left and she's no more ready to do it now, still clinging to the faintest threads of hope she suspects have withered away to nothing after all these years.
At least this way, face to face, he'll have to hear her out.
And if it comes to it, Alicia doesn't think he'll have it in him to throw out them both.
She hopes not, at least.
She knows hoping isn't always enough when it comes to Huntingtons, but she doesn't want to believe it.
"Mammy!"
"I know, I know, I'm coming." Alicia sighs, a nervous wreck again, slips along the walkway into the free seat. Okay, I've got Harry Potter, or I've got colouring? Or we can look at the guidebook. We need to decide where we want to go, so there's a cave, or we can walk up the tor…"
"What's a tor?"
"It's like a hill, it's just a weird name for a hill, I think. There's a church on the top, or the remains of a church, anyway, the tor's supposed to be where King Arthur lived. You know about King Arthur, right?" This is Alicia's next distraction technique; she's already lining it up in case it all goes horribly wrong later, ordered the Michael Morpurgo version from Amazon in preparation because hers must be the only child on the planet who actually enjoys museums and history books, and something inside her suspects that she is going to need anything and everything at her disposal as a distraction technique today. (And, of course, the Michael Morpurgo legends of King Arthur is the only one just about on her level, she nearly bombed history at school). "The tor was supposed to have been in Avalon…"
"Where Daddy is?"
"What, no... where did you see that?"
"You left the sticky note on the kitchen table."
"Oh, okay." She's been losing her grip, these last few weeks, she's usually better at parenting than this. "No, Daddy's in the Avalon Clinic, it's just a name. Avalon's where King Arthur lived, in the legend, it's just an old story. It's supposed to have been somewhere near Glastonbury, that's why the clinic's called that. Loads of things in Glastonbury are called Avalon. So we can climb the tor, yeah? What else do you want to do?"
"Will we take Daddy?"
"I… I don't know, sweetheart," Alicia admits. "We'll have to see. Daddy isn't very well, I explained that, didn't I? I really don't know, he might not be well enough…"
Or he might want them gone before they're even through the door, of course, but Alicia can't bring herself to voice that possibility.
She sleeps on the first train. She sleeps until a small hand shakes her shoulder and they change at London Paddington, lug the suitcases across the platform and onto train number two, no seats left and so they perch on the edge of the spare baggage rack, squashed together, hearts beating fast, synchronised.
There's so much. Eight years when it's been just the two of them, a clock that can't be turned back, no matter how much Alicia wishes for it to be possible, wishes she could do it for him. First steps, first words, first day at school, first trip to the ED, first time in resus (that was an accident, she'd left Elle's boys in charge, not a mistake she's likely to make again any time soon). It's all gone, immortalised forever in Alicia's memories, in photos, in the odd home video but none of it will ever be the same, can't make up for the eight years in which he wasn't there.
Eight years.
She wouldn't take back her decision for a moment, but it's been so bloody hard.
She didn't sign up for single parenthood.
And the worst of it is she knows Ethan would have been a bloody good father, if only it hadn't been for this bloody disease.
They're both silent in the taxi to the clinic. They go straight there; there's no point going to the hotel first, Alicia reasons, it's too early to check in and it's in the wrong direction anyway. She'll sweet talk the receptionist at the clinic into letting her dump their bags behind the front desk, get over there first, get this over with.
She doesn't know if she'll have the strength to go through with it if she doesn't do it fast.
Hand in hand, shaking with the cold and the nerves and the emotion of it all, uneasy, they walk up the pathway to the visitors' entrance together.
They're both shaking, Alicia realises. It's not just her, they're both shaking.
She's been trying so hard to keep this as calm and as natural as possible, because it's not fair, it's not fair to expose a child to this level of stress and anxiety, but clearly she's been failing miserably.
"Hey," Alicia whispers, does her best to smile. "It's okay. It's all going to be fine, you'll see." She takes a deep breath, crosses the threshold into the Avalon Clinic with a distinct feeling of heading into battle.
"Hi. I'm here to see Ethan Hardy, I understand he's a patient here."
The receptionist glances up at her, suspicious. "I take it you don't have an arranged visit, then?"
"No, not exactly. Listen, if you could just tell him we're here…"
"Visits have to be arranged in advance, if I could ask you to call our patient liaison team, I'm sure they'll be happy to arrange something for you. With Dr Hardy's consent, of course. "
"I know that, but if you'd just listen…"
"We have a strict policy, we can't have visitors just turning up and…"
She sighs, frustrated. "Look, we've come down from Holby specially, we just want to…"
"We've brought cake." Small hands prise at the lid of the tin, peer over the desk pleadingly. "Please?"
The receptionist's face softens. "No thank you, sweetie. Are you relatives?"
"I'm Cha…"
"Yes, we're relatives," Alicia interrupts hurriedly. She doesn't want the receptionist to know too much, can't have Ethan find out like this, second hand, Chinese whispers, a rumour passed through so many staff by the time he reaches him that god only knows what he'll be thinking, and that's assuming he's open to the idea of seeing them at all. "I haven't been to visit before, it's been a while…" she trails off. "I didn't know, we lost touch…"
"I shouldn't say this, but it sounds like you aren't the only ones," the receptionist admits quietly. "He's not exactly had a lot of visitors. Look, I shouldn't do this, but I'll send a message through, okay? Just take a seat there. I'll keep you updated."
I shouldn't really start another multichap right now, but I've had this idea in my head for a while and I just couldn't let it go. I will still be updating Atoms in the Universe, my other Ethan/Alicia fic, this is just a side project. This chapter is kind of deliberately vague, all will start to be revealed in the next chapter.
Reviews would be hugely, hugely appreciated, this is very different to anything I've written in the last couple of years. Please do let me know what you think, and if you would like me to continue.
-IseultLaBelle
PS- bonus points to anyone who can guess the name! For some reason I can imagine Ethan wanting something very traditional and classic and Alicia being completely new age and alternative with baby names, so I guess it depends who you think came up with the name...