Glimpses

This is the next approximately four years of the Keogh's life, compressed into just over 1,000 words. Hope you enjoy.

Sam looked down at the small piece of white plastic in her trembling hand.
It couldn't…
She wasn't…
How could it…

She was only twenty two.
She was still a student.
She had only been married two months.

"Dylan!" She half-whispered, half-spoke, the word still drifting through the bathroom wall to the adjoining living room anyway.
"Samantha?" Dylan questioned, worried for his wife that had been behaving even more strangely than usual the last two or three days.
The blonde woman stood up shakily, and offered him the white stick. "I'm pregnant."

Eight months had passed since then, not to mention the seven gruelling hours of labour, but it was worth it.
"She's beautiful," Sam's voice was awe-filled as she held her ten minute old daughter in her arms.
"Just like her mother." Dylan replied, his voice filled with rare emotion, as he stared at his family.
"What's her name?" The kindly nurse asked as she ensured that everything was satisfactory for them and the baby.
"Eleanor. Eleanor Stephanie Keogh." Sam replied, her eyes never leaving her now sleeping daughter.

Sam turned around at the last minute, and saw the two of them there, just waiting – her Grumpy, and their two and a half year old daughter.
It was in that moment that she wanted to be anywhere but here, anywhere but walking away from them.
But she just closed her eyes and walked on, until they were just tiny objects in the corner of her eye.
She didn't cry until she was alone, over twenty four hours later.
She'd see them in eight months time.
She could survive until then.

"Hi, Mi' Kinsey," Ellie called to the receptionist as her father carried her into the building.
"Hi Ellie," the young woman named Paula replied cheerfully, "Are you helping your father today?"
"Yeah," she exclaimed happily. "I help daddy e'vy day." She replied, the same way she had every morning her father had worked since her mother had left for Afghanistan.
Paula just smiled as she watched the strange man, and his over excitable daughter interact happily, alone in their own world.

"I come wi' you daddy." The small girl sobbed, it was her first day getting looked after by someone other than her mother or father, and she wasn't pleased in the slightest.
"You can't." His answer was short, unemotional to anyone to anyone looking in from the outside, but Dylan knew he was only seconds away from quitting his new job and taking his daughter home.
This was precisely why he didn't want to work here.
"I'll be back later Ellie," he muttered quietly, leaving his crying daughter in the arms of the nursery staff.
"Daddy!" The small girl yelled. "DADDY!" She tried again louder.
Dylan couldn't let himself turn around, but walked out of the NHS nursery two streets away from the hospital.
He'd be back in few hours.
He could manage until then.

It had been a long eight months, with far too little time at home, but at last she was back.
Her eyes scanned the thick crowd looking for them … Where were they…?
There they were – Dylan and Ellie, the first she laid eyes on, but Emily and Jenny and her parents stood just behind.
Her pace quickened until at last she was there, she was with her family.

"Mummy!" The small girl cried with glee, reaching out from her father as soon as Sam got within three metres, the elder woman taking her quickly, and accidently holding her too tight in her joy to see her again that she began to squirm to get free.
Loosening her grip, the three year old settled down quickly, cuddling into her absent mother, not letting her leave ever again.
Leaning around Ellie, Sam kissed Dylan gently, wary that her parents and little sisters were just metres away.
She let go, mindful that there would be time enough for that later, and began chatting animatedly with her family, but one eye never left the husband and daughter that she had missed so much.
She was glad she had managed.
Really, she was just glad to be home.

"Dylan, this is Samantha Nicholls, our new doctor." Nick introduced, gesturing at the young woman.
His eyes widened as he thought how he could have missed that she'd gotten a job here. His mind filled with questions but he waited until they had walked out of earshot before he hissed almost silently at his wife. "What are you doing here?"
Sam just looked innocently back. "I told you I'd got a job," she replied with a smile in her words.

Looking up from the makeshift triage in the middle of the hospital car park, Sam breathed a silent sigh of relief as both Dylan and Zoe, along with their patient, a man named Frank, escape from the rapidly burning hospital just seconds before they would have been trapped within by the fire.
She catches his eye for just as moment as paramedics start to check him over, before she returns her attention to the injured man before her.

"Mummy!" The three (and three quarters – not that you should forget within her earshot) year old little girl called as she ran into the boat and her mother's waiting arms.
"What is it Ellie Bear?" Sam asked, picking her up and balancing her on her hip, even as Dervla wrapped herself around her legs, feeling a bit put out.
"Guess what Abbie got?" Her voice was excited as she waved her free hand about in the air.
Sam, thinking back about Abbie's mother over the past few months, had a very good idea what Abbie had gotten over the weekend, but played along with her daughter anyway, "I don't know. What did Abbie get?"
"Abbie got baby! Me and Daddy seen her." She started to babble, her words running together slightly, but still understandable to her parents.
"Really? That's brilliant." Sam replied, with enthusiasm, the way she always did, even while she dropped the little blonde girl onto the sofa.
"Mummy!" the small girl whined, even as she righted herself, as Sam froze – she recognised that tone – it meant she wanted something.
And she wanted it now.
"Yes sweetie." Sam replied, hoping it wasn't what she thought it might be.
"I want baby." Ellie ordered her voice firm. Sam could hear Dylan coughing suddenly from the kitchen as something went down the wrong way, and she just refrained from rolling her eyes at both of them, it was exactly what she thought would happen.
"Maybe when you're older." Sam tried to reason.
"But I help," Ellie countered her eyes wide and pleading.
"We'll see." Sam told her daughter in the way all children know means 'no'. "Now go to the table."
"Yes mummy." The small girl replied meekly, stopping bouncing on the cushions and heading for the small kitchen. She turned back to her mother. "I have baby now?" She asked hopefully.
Sam smiled as she shook her head slightly at her young daughter's antics.

"Samantha? Are you okay?" Dylan asked worriedly.
Sam turned to face him, a weak smile on her face. "Maybe Ellie will be getting her wish sooner than she thinks."

Thank you for reading, and please review, I'm going to try and go for a whole five this time,

Mia