Jerome Clarke was excited. He was beyond excited. His wife was just about to give birth to his baby. He had a wife to love and hold and now he'd have baby to love and hold with her.
A mini version of him… or Mara, he didn't yet know what the baby would look like yet obviously and him and Mara had decided to keep the gender a surprise.
He was going to make sure that he was the best dad in the whole world. If he has a son, Jerome would help him prank and teach him his ways. If he has a daughter he will spoil her rotten, like he does to Mara.
Jerome's parents never did that type of thing with him. His father had never taken him fishing, or come to his football tryouts with the other boy's fathers.
His mother didn't even acknowledge him as a being in the household, let alone buy him presents.
However, Jerome's dad had made a difference, he was always there for him now, and he loved Mara as a daughter too. In fact he was outside in the waiting room, waiting for his grandchild to be born.
Mara Jaffray was scared. She was beyond scared. She was just about to give birth to a baby. A baby. A baby was about to come out of her. That did not seem possible and she was freaking out. How was it going to fit?
She kept trying to think of the positives in this situation. She would have a baby to hold and love, and if the baby were anything like Mara, it would be a very tiny little baby indeed.
But the thought of giving birth kept pushing its way back into Mara's mind. Sure, she had Jerome beside her, holding her hand, calming her down, telling her it was all going to be okay. Although mentally that made the situation seem as though she was just about to take a nap, physically, the situation was quite the same.
She would still be screaming and shrieking for hours on end, she was 45 minutes into labour and she wasn't even 3 cm dilated. She would have to keep up with these contractions for hours still and that still wasn't the worst part of this story. Oh, no.
The worst part was that today wasn't the due date. Today was 2 weeks before the due date. And looking at Jerome, even though he was grinning from ear to ear, Mara had known him long enough to know that there was something in his eyes. A strange darkness. Fear. Fear that the baby might not be ready yet, or that the baby won't make it altogether!
But she couldn't think these things. She had to think of the positives here.
She was going to be a mother
Jerome was going to be a father.
And they'd be one big happy family.
It had been thirty-six long, long hours, but she had done it. Mara Jaffray was on her very last push and then she'd be a mother.
Jerome was at her side, holding her hand and whispering encouraging words in her ear. And with his other hand was wiping Mara's sweaty face with a hot towel.
"Alright, Hun," Said the nurse to Mara. "Just one more push"
Jerome's concerned face turned into one of absolute delight. He'd been waiting to hear those words for thirty-six hours now. This was it.
Mara looked like she could barely move her fingers, but with all the strength she could muster up, curled her fingers tighter around Jerome's soft hands and pushed with all her might, letting out an agonised grunt in the effort.
There was shuffling as all the nurses gathered round the new born baby and Mara and Jerome heard a snip of the umbilical cord being cut.
Mara collapsed back into the pillow as they took the baby away to be cleaned and Jerome immediately reached up with his hand and stroked her hair, then her cheek.
"Well done, love" he whispered affectionately and kissed her lovingly on the cheek.
"Jerome?" Mara asked, her voice was barely audible, she was too exhausted.
"Yes, love?"
"Why isn't the baby crying?"
She looked up at him with big brown questioning eyes. And then realisation dawned on him as he noticed that the baby was supposed to be crying.
"I'm sure it's nothing, love. Don't worry" He whispered into her ear, but now even he was wondering what was going on. He cast a glance over to where all the nurses were and saw them all frantically moving about, whispering loudly, and if they weren't all whispering at once, Jerome could have heard what was going on.
Suddenly, the nurses began to exit the room and only the midwife was left. She brought the baby in her arms and stood next to Mara on the other side of the bed, opposite to Jerome.
"I really am truly sorry, Mr and Mrs Clarke" She began to say. "I am afraid your daughter didn't make it."
At this point, Mara burst into tears, shaking uncontrollably. Jerome joined her, silently sobbing, and wrapped his arms around the shaking Mara rocking her gently. Daughter she had said. He would have had a little girl to spoil rotten.
"I'll let you hold her for a while" the nurse said solemnly. Looking at her face, Jerome could tell that she wasn't sorry. She wasn't sorry at all. Even after Mara had been screaming in agonising pain for over a day, she wasn't sorry. She didn't have to be sorry; Jerome knew that, I mean they'd only met yesterday. But if she wasn't sorry, she should have kept it to herself and not lie, or have the decency to lie convincingly.
She handed Mara the baby and Mara cradled them in her now weak hands, placing soft, fragile kisses on her forehead, as if he might break. But she was already broken.
"Why?" Mara asked in between sobs.
"She was too small to make it," The nurse said, her face still the same as before. "Am I correct in assuming the baby is premature?"
Mara gave a helpless nod.
"Hmph. Well, did you have a name picked out?" she asked, taking out her clipboard and pen.
"Lily. Lily Kathryn Clarke" Jerome said, still crying.
By this time, John and Poppy had both come in and were sitting on the bed with Jerome and Mara who had calmed down and was sleeping now, after much convincing from her husband. She was exhausted but she had refused to rest, she had just cried and cried for Lily.
Mara blinked. Everyone turned their heads to her as she woke up, bit by bit, like a flower blooming.
"Hey" John said. John had liked her ever since he saw her and Jerome in prison, but now he loved her as if she were his own daughter, and she was comfortable with looking at him as a dad, not an annoying father-in-law. Mara's dad had long passed as had her mother and she only had the Clarkes as family now.
Mara didn't speak, just smiled weakly at him and she lay there, not bothering to get up. But she did however turn her head ever so slightly to face Jerome and he smiled at her reassuringly, but it was a half smile. He was just as broken as she was by this loss.
They had been waiting for this not just for 9 months, but for years. They had been looking forward to starting a family 2 years before Mara finally got pregnant, and now, even if they did have another child, the memory of Lily will always surround them. Whether that be a good thing, or a bad thing, Lily is permanently engraved into their hearts.
"So, I'm just asking, but… why exactly did she… pass away?" Poppy tried wording her sentences carefully; she knew that Mara was like a ticking time bomb. Anything said that might trigger her emotions, and she would burst into tears.
The question was aimed at Mara, if not to find out the answer then to get her to say something, but Mara wasn't going to say anything, instead she looked to Jerome for help and he complied.
"They said she was too small"
"Well, I guess we all know that she got something from her mother!" Poppy said.
Mara's eyes widened to the size of saucers and she just kept staring at Poppy. She tried to open her mouth to say something, anything, to defend herself, but nothing came out. Instead she lay there, looking like some sort of wide-eyed goldfish.
Poppy hadn't meant for it to sound like that! She wasn't trying to say that Mara's inherited size killed Lily; she was just trying to say that the baby was like Mara, because Poppy knew that throughout the whole pregnancy, Mara had wanted the baby to have some quality of hers.
Jerome and John both sent her looks. John looked like he was about to faint and his mouth was shaped like a big O.
Jerome on the other hand looked like he was about to kill poppy for what she did. If Mara started blaming herself for this, he didn't know what she'd so. She would probably do something crazy. Even though Mara is usually calm and collected, she had been known on rare occasions to over-react, just a smidgen. And this was nothing if not a rare occasion.
"No, no. Mara, love, you didn't do anything. This isn't your fault… Shhhh…" Jerome soothed. Mara was now wrapped up in his arms, crying softly.
Was this her fault, she thought.