Chapter 11 Seeking You Out
Janine Mapplethorpe held the baby capsule tightly, and peaked fearfully around the corner and into the waiting room. There despondent sat her daughter, her previously full of life, shining daughter. Jennifer had been replaced by a shell of a woman, grey to the face, wrist strapped, fingers purple, grazed a plenty and dressed in clothes that were so clearly not her own. She was almost unrecognisable. Janine shuddered inwardly then approached.
She sat down silently beside her and placed the capsule at her feet. Reaching for her daughter's good hand, she held it softly until Jennifer looked her mother in the eye, her face contorted in paralysing shock and fear and she fell into her mother's arms and cried like the world had ended. When a few moments later Jennifer had regained some control Janine spoke quietly.
"I've found out where Nick is," she whispered. Jennifer raised her tear stained face in question. It pained Janine to reveal what she had found out. "He's not in this hospital."
Jennifer stood up immediately and Janine stood with her, still keeping a firm grip on her daughter. "Take me to him," Jennifer whispered, her voice hoarse and sore from all the dust and ash she had inhaled earlier.
"Let me find out if you're good to leave here first sweetheart," Janine insisted gently. She made Jennifer sit back down in her seat. "I'll go and check…I'll be right back." She gave her daughter the most reassuring smile she could muster and picked the baby capsule up off the floor and put it on the seat where she'd been sitting. She wanted to draw out the time before Jennifer saw Nick, though she didn't know why. She knew he wasn't in a good way, and she wanted to spare her daughter the heartache, but also knew she needed and deserved every moment she could get with him.
Jennifer did as she was told and remained seated. She stared blankly at her lap as Janine walked into the next room to speak to the nurse there. She then looked over at a sleeping Elise, bundled securely into her little capsule, strapped in and covered with a pink blanket Janine had quilted her. She reached out and ran her shaking hand over the baby's tiny head, her soft hair slipping between Jennifer's fingertips. A tear slipped down her face as she stared at their child, already a feeling of absolute dread spreading through her body.
A moment later Janine returned and Jennifer immediately stood up, grabbing the handle of the capsule as she did so. She joined her mother at the door to the waiting room and there Janine took the infant from her grasp with one hand and reached for Jennifer's right hand with the other. They walked down the hallway and out of the hospital slowly and hand in hand, both eager to get to Nick, yet wanting to procrastinate at the same time, because at least in the time up until they finally saw him they could still pretend that this hadn't happened, that it was all a dream, that terrorism had not rocked Melbourne and that Nick was just fine.
Jennifer sat in the backseat of Janine's car with Elise. She didn't speak. As Janine drove she spent more time looking at her daughter in the rear vision mirror than she did keeping her eyes on the road, checking to make sure she wasn't about to pass out from the shock, or dissolve into tears again. She hated this. All she wanted for Jennifer was happiness, and she had finally found it in Nick, and now she was driving her towards what could potentially be the end of that happiness. What had her precious, caring, well meaning daughter ever done to deserve this?