Hi!

I am truly forever indebted to you for your wonderful feedback! Thank you!!

Before I post the next part I would like to say something. Parts of the discussion in this part were inspired by a documentary I saw recently on premature births and the lives of the ones that did survive. It was a very upsetting documentary and it left me with many conflicted thoughts. As my beta pointed out, the discussion in this part might anger some, so I just wanted to ask you to not listen too much to the words, but more to what is behind the words of what Liz is saying. She's trying to deal with her own situation and it really hasn't got much to do with the question of abortion. This might sound confusing before you've even read the chapter. I just wanted to point that out.

 



Chapter 10


"'If you are looking for a new love, this is the right week to do so. The love gods are shining on you.' You hear that, Liz? Love is on my side this week."
Liz plopped a piece of popcorn in her mouth, her eyes never leaving the TV-screen as she answered, "Do you actually believe everything they write in those horoscopes?"
Maria raised an eyebrow in warning towards Liz before dropping her eyes back to the magazine resting in her lap. "It's written in the stars. Don't mess with the stars."
"Stars, huh? Journalists, I would call them. They must have a blast making up all these things."
Maria frowned in disapproval, sneaking out a hand and taking a handful of popcorn and plopping them into her mouth while her eyes traveled along the letters on the pages in front of her.

"Oh, listen to this," Maria said, folding her legs under her, "This is your horoscope; 'You will receive an invitation to an exciting party and why not accept the invitation? If you listen to your heart, you might find the love of your life-'"
Liz snorted. "Have you even noticed that they use the same words over and over again? They must say that you'll meet 'the love of your life' every week. By doing that, the odds of the horoscope actually predicting you meeting the love of your life must be pretty high. They can't lose if they are being that vague."
"You are so pessimistic. Have a little faith."
Liz rolled her eyes and cast Maria a glance. "I'm not pessimistic. I'm realistic."
"Whatever," Maria shrugged, continuing to skim through the text.

Liz returned her eyes to the documentary on the TV, a soft smile on her face. Maria had always been into astrology and everything else that was somehow connected to New Age. She attended séances where she talked to the spirits of people that had, as Maria would call it, "passed onto another plane of existence". She visited numerous different people working with alternative medicine. She once went to someone who could interpret all her physical weaknesses by looking into her eyes. This person informed Maria that she suffered from pollen allergy and that she had an iron deficiency. Maria started eating pills with iron and her health was actually improved. She had a person measuring energy waves in the ground come to her house when she was having trouble sleeping. This person found a center of energy where her bed was located. She was informed that the bed was not to be placed on top of such a center, so she rearranged the furniture and her insomnia disappeared.

It was not that Liz didn't believe her. Maria had dragged Liz along on many of her adventures during her experimentation periods because she was adamant in finding a cure to Liz's heart condition. But fixing a heart was a little more extensive problem than insomnia and iron deficiency. In fact, Maria's fascination for the hidden and not so acknowledged and scientific things in life was one of the things Liz loved most about Maria because it connected with Maria's spirit: wild, free, passionate, and alive. Maria was not afraid to speak her mind and not afraid to test different things which was quite the opposite of Liz. Liz often chastised herself for being so fearful, so careful and for not being able to live life as carefree, bold, and with as little abandon as Maria. While Maria loved to explore the unknown, Liz treasured the safe paths where she knew what to expect and where she could predict every move.

But even though the two friends might appear very different, their hearts were the same. They understood each other. There had been a silent understanding between them ever since Maria had defended Liz to two older boys on the playground when they had been just four years old. As all other of Liz's friends sooner or later had turned their backs on her as she had spent most time being hospitalized, Maria had never left her side. She had been running all over town to get Liz her favorite book or a CD she wanted. She had been there through thick and thin, and the situation had not made their relationship any worse. On the contrary, it had strengthened it. Made it permanent.

"What are we watching anyway?" Maria asked, staring at the TV-screen in confusion.
"Premature," Liz answered.
Maria scrunched up her face in a combination of disgust and disbelief when she involuntarily had to witness a child being taken out of a uterus by Cesarean Section, completely covered in a whitish thick substance.
"Um...why?" Maria watched the small baby, who was barely bigger than a packet of butter, being carried to a respirator.
"It's interesting," Liz answered, her eyes fixed on the TV.
Maria looked at Liz with a dubious expression on her face. "Uh-huh?" She didn't get it. What was so interesting with that? It was only depressing. There were parents crying and talking about their babies not surviving. And if they did survive they could suffer all sorts of diseases and handicaps.

"Did you know that they are able to save infants who were born in their 25th week, which is the same week that is the last week you are allowed to have an abortion?" Liz asked, leaning back into the sofa.
"Really? That's really...twisted," Maria said.
"Isn't it?" Liz shook her head with an expression of awe on her face, as she pointed on the screen where a small infant, barely looking human was trying to breath in a respirator, the workings of the heart showing through the thin skin and the not yet hardened ribcage. "It's just amazing that they can save those teeny tiny babies."
"It is," Maria agreed, taking another look at Liz's awed facial expression.
Liz turned and met Maria's eyes. "If you gave birth to a premature baby, Maria, would you want to save it, with the risks of it having handicaps for the rest of its life, or would you stop fighting for it?"
"I don't know," Maria answered slowly, as she wondered to herself what was really on Liz's mind.

"I'm not so sure I would want them to fight for my baby," Liz said quietly, lost in thoughts. Maria's hand stopped in mid-air in the motion of plopping yet another popcorn into her mouth. She hadn't expected that. Good, idealistic, create-peace-in-the-world Liz Parker didn't say things like that.
"You wouldn't?" Maria asked.
Liz slowly shook her head. "Is it really worth it? Think about it. The risks of this child being impaired in some way are so large they outweigh the good outcomes by far."
Maria's mind was working fervently. Something was not right here. Liz was trying to tell her something, even if she wasn't doing it consciously.
"Okay," Maria said, her voice shifting from confusion to determination. Putting down the bowl of popcorn on the floor she turned in her seat so that she was facing Liz. "Let's forget about premature babies. If you were pregnant and you found out that your child was going to be born with Down's Syndrome. Would you abort it?"
Liz dropped her eyes a few seconds, before raising them and without hesitation answered, "Yes."

Maria bit her lower lip. Everything Liz was saying was working against everything Maria knew about Liz. This didn't sound like Liz at all. She had always been the one to defend the sick and defenseless. That everyone had a right to live.
"If you found out that your child was going to be born with only one lung and be having difficulties breathing his or her entire life, would you abort it?"
Liz nodded, which deepened the frown on Maria's forehead. "And if you found out that your child was going to be born with a fatal heart disease...?"
"I would abort it," Liz filled in.
Maria's heart missed a beat as she looked into her best friend's sorrow-filled eyes, and whispered the echo in her mind, "Why?"
Liz averted her eyes and looked at some point beside Maria's face before sighing and rising from her seat. Maria watched Liz move up to the TV and shut it off.

"Maybe I'm being ungrateful, I probably am," Liz said as she picked up the bowl of popcorn from the floor. "I mean, I was lucky: I got a new heart. I'm alive. For the first time in my life I can climb a flight of stairs without getting palpitations and burning lungs from the lack of oxygen. I can laugh without immediately starting to cough. God," she raked her hands through her hair, putting the bowl down on the small table by the far end of the room, "there are so many things I am able to do now that I haven't been able to do before, so many things that I only dreamt of. Every day is a wonder to me. It's like I'm living in a dream... Sometimes I find myself holding my breath, just waiting for someone to yell in my ear and start shaking me. And I will wake up in a hospital bed. I will hear the beeps of the EKG and the sucking sound of the respirator. And I will once again be fighting for my life. I am grateful. Every day. Every second. Every breath."

"I know you are," Maria whispered, watching Liz's nervous movements. This was Liz's way of dealing. Cleaning. Whenever she got upset and emotional she started to organize and clean up just so that she had something in her hands. Maria silently watched her fluff the pillows on the sofa and then move onto picking up a book Kevin had left on the small table beside the sofa. The deep inhalation echoed in the room as Liz tried to calm herself down. Her emotions were running amok and she didn't even know why. Something about watching those tiny infants fighting for their lives had hit her. Hard.

"But what about my parents? They have spent 23 years of their lives taking care of me. Being there for me 24/7. They canceled dinner invitations. They lost contact with their friends. My relatives never came to visit. I don't even know my cousins. It was as if I had leprosy and they would get infected with something lethal just by being around me. The parents of those premature babies just don't know. When that tiny baby is pulled out of her, the mother will fight with everything in her for it to live. It's her baby and she will not abandon it. But she just doesn't know. They don't know what it means to be a parent to a damaged child. They will never get a life of their own. I've destroyed my parents' lives. I've destroyed Kevin's life and I've destroyed yours-"

"Whoa," Maria exclaimed, shooting up from her seat. She wasn't going to listen to this anymore. "What are you talking about, Liz? You are so contradicting yourself! How can you insinuate that your parents wouldn't want you if they had known how much work it would mean one second, and the next describe how a mother would fight with everything in her body to keep her baby alive?"
Maria walked up to Liz, who was energetically trying to look everywhere but at her best friend.
"Have you asked your parents what they think? Do they think you are a mistake? That raising you was a mistake? Because that's what you're saying, isn't it, Liz? That you would be better off if they had let nature take it's course and let you die when you had your first heart attack?"
Liz raised her glimmering eyes to Maria's eyes, her look pleading with her to understand her. "I hurt everyone around me. I scare everyone away. Even if I'm alive now, I'm not really alive, Maria. I'm still damaged. My heart is still damaged, even though it is, in flesh, someone else's."

"This is about Kevin, isn't it?"
Liz sighed and aversively turned away from Maria, and answered with a tired voice, "No, this isn't about Kevin."
But her body language said it all. This was about Kevin.
"Don't even try to hide it from me, Liz," Maria warned, "Tell me."
"It's nothing," Liz answered, moving into the kitchen with the popcorn bowl. "You want some more popcorn?" she asked offering Maria the bowl.
"Have you talked to him yet?" Maria asked, totally ignoring the bowl.
"I talk to him all the time," Liz said casually, throwing the popcorn into the garbage, before putting the bowl in the sink.

"I'm not talking 'How was your day, honey?' here, Liz," Maria said, "Have you told him about how you feel? That you aren't too fond of him pampering you and treating you like a baby?"
"He must feel chained to me," Liz mumbled, putting a plug in the sink and turning the tap to fill the sink with water, "He deserves so much better. He deserves a normal relationship with a normal woman."
Frustrated, Maria pulled the sponge from Liz's hands, which caused Liz to look up at her in surprise.
"Don't play that game with me, Liz! This isn't about him and what he needs. You haven't forced him into this relationship. He is free to leave by his own will, whenever he wants to. You aren't keeping him her and neither is he. You can leave too. A relationship is a two-way agreement. You give and you take. If that isn't working then you either try to work it out or you leave. It's as simple as that."

"No, it isn't," Liz said, her voice taking on a little force as she snapped the sponge back from Maria and started to clean the bowl. "It's not as simple as that. I may not be openly forcing him to stay here, but I'm emotionally forcing him. He feels responsible for me like he can't leave me just because I have a heart condition."
"That's BS," Maria cried, "He's a grown man. I think he can decide when he wants out. He knows that you are better now and some part of his brain must know that you wouldn't die if he left you. Or he's just very self-centered."
"Why doesn't he see that something is wrong?" Liz asked, the hasty movements of the sponge in the bowl making the water splatter up on the walls of the sink, betraying her calm voice to the turbulent feelings on the inside.
"Because you don't tell him!" Maria said, throwing up her hands in the air in resignation. "He can't know if something is wrong if you don't tell him!"
"No, Maria," Liz said, taking up the bowl from the water and putting it down on the counter with a slam before turning to face Maria. "If he knew me at all he would know that something was wrong. He would notice that something was wrong when his girlfriend barely listens to him anymore. When his girlfriend doesn't initiate kisses anymore! But he doesn't even react!"

"That's what's bothering you, isn't it?" Maria asked.
"What?" Liz asked with a tired sigh as she sank down on one of the kitchen chairs behind her.
"That you are practically screaming for him to see that you are not all right and he doesn't see it," Maria said.
Liz went silent. That was it. If he really knew her, if he really knew her at all, he would know that something was wrong. Maria could just take one look at her and tell when something was wrong. Kevin had never done that. Maybe it hadn't interested him enough, or he just didn't notice. He might not even be paying any attention to it.
"But even if something is really off when your boyfriend of four years back can't see when his girlfriend isn't feeling okay, you can't just put all the blame on him," Maria said, her voice softening as she took in Liz's defeated expression and sat down on a chair opposite to her.

"You are both to blame. He might not listen, but you aren't talking. And the perfect boyfriend should probably be able to read the vibes you are sending, but no one is perfect Liz, and maybe you are just so out of balance with each other that it's not odd at all that he can't read you anymore. You are closing up, Liz. I can see you pulling further away with every passing day. Something inside of you is dying."
"What are you talking about, Maria?" Liz asked, fear bubbling up inside of her.
"I remember the day when you first woke up after the transplant. You were so happy. You were glowing, so vibrant and alive. And you were like that for maybe a year afterwards. But then I could see it fading. It was like something was sucking the energy out of you again. Like the bad heart had done to you earlier. What was it, Liz? What changed?"
Liz looked at Maria for a few long seconds, before answering, quietly, "I don't know." What Maria said scared her. Was she really pulling away? She didn't want that. The first day she had woken up in the hospital, the first that day she could remember clearly, she had promised herself that she was going to live her life to the fullest, doing all the things she had missed out on and then some. And at the time it had not been a difficult promise to make. There had been so much life inside of her, so much energy just waiting to get out.

But real life hadn't been easy. It was still the same world that surrounded her while she was sick. It was still the same harsh reality even though her heart had been replaced with a healthy one. Life still contained the problems and confrontations of everyday life. And she had been restrained. She had to swallow that energy that had so desperately wanted to get out. It had almost been somewhat disappointing to be going back to normal life. Life was going to be a party later. Well, not really a party. She wasn't that unrealistic. But it was going to be easier. Physically, it had been. And a lot of worries had been removed. But the replacement of her old heart didn't replace her old feelings.

Liz could feel her friend's eyes on her as she stared at her hands on fingering on the edge of the table.
"Okay," Maria said, the determination in her voice making Liz tear her eyes away from the wooden table to Maria's face, "I have a plan."
Liz raised her eyebrows with an expression of confusion and curiosity, but remained quiet.
"I think you should meet my new boyfriend," Maria said with a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
"Michael, was it?" Liz asked, interest flaring in her eyes. Maria had talked about this Michael non-stop for a week and he certainly had Liz's interest peaked. Maria was, as she called herself, a Teflon girl. If some guy hurt her, she cried and yelled and cursed for a couple of days to get the guy out of her system and then she just brushed it off because it just wasn't worth the trouble. Life was about so much more and it was easier just to move on. But hearing Maria talk about Michael, Liz wasn't so sure Maria would be able to brush Michael off so easily and Liz really wanted to meet the man who seemed to have pulled Maria in and had managed to keep her interest for more than a week.
"Yes," Maria answered. "His friends for dinner once a week and Michael isn't able to attend them very often, but he's going there this week and he asked me if I wanted to come. Would you like to tag along?"

Liz suddenly got a little doubtful. "Wouldn't I be like the third wheel?"
Maria smiled. It was a smile that made Liz a little suspicious. "Oh no, Lizzie. You will not feel like a third wheel. Trust the horoscope."
And with a wink, Maria got up from the chair and disappeared into the living room.
"When does Kevin get back?" Maria yelled over her shoulder.
Liz rose to follow Maria. She knew that she had to talk to Kevin. But for now, it could wait. She would talk to him tomorrow.

Tomorrow.


TBC...