In a Heartbeat Chapter 3: What if, Maybe, a death note fanfic

'Maybe' doesn't exist in the real world. But if it did, then maybe 'L' would never have existed.

Days passed. The days turned into weeks, and eventually it became clear to everyone that nobody was going to come and claim me. They put an article out in the local newspaper enquiring about my mother, but she either didn't know where I was or didn't care. When I was in my teens I did some research and found a copy of that newspaper. There, crammed into the corner of the seventh page, was a tiny picture of me and a few small sentences telling where I had been found and the hospital I was at. I clipped the article and I saved it, keeping it safe between the pages of my worn old 'Hound of the Baskervilles' book. It was the only picture I had of myself as a baby. It wasn't very clear- I got the impression that the cameraman must have been tired or rushed. Or maybe he just didn't care.

I wasn't a very attractive baby. I used to think, with a dash of bitterness, that there was no wonder my mother left me in the shopping cart, like a used product she wanted to take back to the shop. I got the feeling that I slept a lot- surprising, considering how little I slept when I grew older. But I had no worries to keep me awake when I was a baby. I was sleeping in the photo, too. Though the picture wasn't in colour, I could make out the shock of black hair that covered my head, even at such a young age. Though I was asleep, my face as screwed up as if I was having a particularly bad nightmare. My legs were a white blur- I must have been kicking when the photo was taken. Maybe I was starting to cry. Did anyone pick me up and comfort me?

After a week, I think people forgot about me. It was an easy thing to do. There were so many babies, after all. What difference was one from the other? They still fed me and bathed me and changed me, but they had forgotten all about the circumstances of my birth. They just thought I was another child that had been born in one of their wards.

Then one day, about two weeks after they found me, they gave me away, to a young couple. It was an accident. Their baby had been small with a mass of black hair, too. So I was seized from my little tank and thrust into the arms of a stranger, where I was cradled lovingly. It was the first bit of love I had experienced in my short life. I was strapped into a carrier cot and loaded into the back of a run-down old family car and driven away from the hospital.

The journey was long and bumpy, and the milk I had been given just an hour before began to churn and turn sour in my stomach. I was horribly, milkily sick all down my front and all over my new mother. But instead of the impatient sighs I had received from the nurses at the hospital, my cries were shushed and I was picked up and held, and the vomit was carefully wiped from my chin.

Maybe if I had stayed with those young parents, my life would have been very different. Maybe I would have played football with my friends. Maybe I would have been taught how to ride a bike, and been fussed over if ever I fell off and cried. Maybe I would have gone on family trips out to the beach and the countryside. Maybe I would have gone on holiday to Italy and have been bronzed brown. Maybe I would have grown up into a teenager who went out for a sneaky drink with his friends and played his music too loud. Maybe I would have gotten a girlfriend. Maybe I would have gone to college, university, and become a solicitor or a doctor or a teacher. Maybe, one day, I would have married and had children of my own. I maybe I would have died peacefully of old age.

So many maybes. So many what ifs. But this was the real world, and a world where 'maybe' meant nothing. I could never have stayed with them, I know that.

I was taken to my 'parents' house and they had taken turns in holding me. Their arms around me were awkward and cautious- it was obvious I was their first child. But they were also loving. And I felt happy and warm and safe. If only I could have stayed like that forever.

I didn't like it when they put me down in my cot. I wanted to be picked up and held and loved all over again. I started to cry. They misunderstood. They thought I needed my nappy changing- they were new at this, it was understandable. I was placed on a cold, plastic mat, and tentative fingers carefully peeled back my nappy.

And then they realised I had something that I shouldn't have had. The room was suddenly filled with shocked gasps and worried voices. The voices grew louder, and my mother and father were arguing. I could sense the panic in their voices, and I started to panic too. I cried harder.

But this time, they didn't pick me up.

Instead my wet nappy was closed back over my bottom and I was hastily dressed and lifted shakily from the mat. I was strapped carelessly back into the carrier cot and secured in the back of the car. Did I know what was going on? Yes, yes, I think I did. They were going to leave me, just like my first mother had.

They drove me all the way back to the hospital. I was tired, but I hadn't slept. I had wailed and cried all the way there, begging them in my baby-language not to take me back, to keep me as their own. I was bustled into the baby ward and thrust in the nurse's face. I wasn't the only one crying by now. My new mother was, too.

By now I was so tired that I was beginning to drift away involuntarily. I was passed from person to person and stripped and examined. But one look and everyone could tell that I wasn't this couple's precious baby girl.

I think I must have fallen asleep. When I woke up I was back in that white room, in another tank, surrounded by restless babies. I wanted to be picked up and loved, so I started crying. It was all I could do, being only two weeks old. But the nurse took one look at me, decided I was fine, and tottered away. There were so many others she could tend to. So why would she tend to me?

The next day, when I woke up, the first thing I knew was that I was hungry. I wanted my bottle. I had forgotten all about the family I'd had the previous day. But when the nurse picked me up and jammed the teat of the bottle into my mouth, I had felt strangely empty, even with the milk filling me up.

Somehow, a part of me remembered what it was like to be loved.

Thanks to the little mix-up incident, the hospital staff remembered me. They remembered that I didn't have a family coming to take me off their hands. So it was arranged for me to take up residence in an orphanage that specialized in babies and very young children.

I don't remember the name of the orphanage, and I never did find out. Perhaps I could have, if I had been bothered to do more research into it, but I never had. I think maybe I didn't want to know. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. Though I never thought I'd be one to say something like that.

I lived there until I was about three or four years old- I cannot quite recall. In any case I remember nothing of my first few years there. And the few memories I do possess are cloudy, to say the least. What I do remember was that it was run by two people, and man and a woman. They were married. The man- I think we called him 'Uncle' something- was very large and very hairy, like some sort of ape. He tended to make a lasting impression on people, which is probably why I remember him far better than I do the woman, who seemed tiny in comparison to him.

They were kind, Uncle and Auntie, but they didn't care for us. There were so many of us, and of course there were those who were adopted and never seen again, so I suppose they couldn't afford to love us. It would hurt too much.

The other children there were okay- they would motherless, like me- but I never befriended any of them. I heard from Uncle that the best time to get dumped was when you were young and cute. I was young, but I certainly wasn't cute. I was scrawny and skinny and because the orphanage was a little draughty I was cursed with a permanent cold which meant my nose was always dribbling. And I was a picky eater- I refused half the meals I was given. I didn't get any better as I got older, either. If anything, I got worse.

So every time a new couple came visiting the orphanage for whatever reason, be it that one of them was infertile or that they were simply too old to have children of their own, they always left with a cute, 'normal' child. And of course, that child was never me.

All the children that had been in the orphanage when I arrived were either fostered or adopted. I grew up there watching babies come and go, sometimes in a matter of days. The younger you were, the better chance you had of being picked. But nobody wanted the shopping cart baby.

Uncle and Auntie became desperate. They would always choose me as 'Child of the Week'- an article in the local newspaper that advertised children in need of a family. Whenever new would-be parents showed up, they would push me to the front of the crowd of youngsters in an attempt to show me off. But people would always look right through me and cast me off in favour of a cuter, happier child. Every time, Auntie would put her arm around me and assure me I would be the next to find a family.

I never was.

I am very happy indeed that this chapter turned out so much longer than the previous ones. I wasn't planning on putting the incident where L was mistaken for another child in here, but I felt that it just fit, and would show how easily he could have been a different person. Just think, if he had stayed with his first 'family', L as we know him would never have existed.

Next chapter I am planning on writing about his childhood. He will find a family soon- though perhaps 'family' isn't the best way to put it.