Countless minutes passed with both Ronnie and Roxy answering seemingly endless questions about Danielle. They had reached the part of the questions that Ronnie had been dreading. The nurse had asked if Danielle had been showing any signs of depression…she asked if they knew what may have caused Danielle to try and take her own life.
"We had a fight. She ran off. I thought she'd left. Then I found her in the flat. She was upset…because of me." Ronnie's voice was cold, reeling off the facts. It was unnerving to hear Ronnie so detached about her daughter.
"Don't blame yourself. For somebody to do this, it builds up for a long time. One argument wouldn't cause her to do something like this, Ms. Mitchell. You can't blame yourself. You clearly love your daughter very much." The nurse tried to comfort Ronnie, she had seen enough careless teen suicide attempts to know that the parents suffered greatly and guilt was their first reaction, this it seemed was no different.
"Has anything happened recently which may have effected Danielle? A loss of any kind? Any troubles at work? Boyfriend troubles?" The nurse had her hands folded over the forms and looked up into the eyes of both Ronnie and then Roxy.
"No, shes…" Roxy had started to talk, she meant to say that Danielle was happy, she was a sweet girl who took care of her cousin and worked diligently at several jobs, went for nights out with Stacey, that she was a normal girl. But Ronnie interrupted her. It was time for Ronnie to be honest and she knew it. She had let Danielle down enough times, the least she owed her was to put her own guilt aside and let the people who could help her know the truth.
"We fought a lot, I…I said some awful things. But she had an abortion a couple of months ago. I went with her. She…I don't think she forgave herself for it…or me." Ronnie spoke the words quickly, wanting to stop as soon as she could. She had told Danielle to abort the baby, she had told her that her own baby was the biggest mistake of her life. That was what made Danielle do it. She knew. Danielle had asked her if she ever thought of her daughter, she had answered that she didn't anymore, that she had got over it. Her words twisted and deformed themselves into cruel barbs as she realised how it all must how sounded to Danielle. The abortion was her fault, the rejection was her fault, the suicide attempt was her fault. She begged to herself and to any deity she could that there would not be a death on her conscience, that she wouldn't lose the little girl she had only just found.
"Ms. Mitchell, we see a lot of cases like this. More often than not it's a cry for help. She'll need support around her but you can't blame yourself. Something like an abortion will obviously be playing heavily on her mind. Parent's tend to blame themselves in cases like this, don't let yourself." The nurse spoke almost sternly, admonishing Ronnie for her guilt like a child. "I'll go and speak with the doctors and find out what I can. Feel free to wait here or you can make your way to the waiting room down the hall to the left." She gave one last smile to the women and left.
"You never said she'd had an abortion. Why did you go with her?" Roxy asked, dumbfounded by her sister's revelation. But Ronnie wasn't listening,
"She said Danielle would need support. She said that didn't she? That means she'll be ok. If she needs support that means she's going to be ok. She's not going to die, I'm not going to lose her. You heard her? She said she'll be ok?" Ronnie was babbling, her words tripping over each other as she was hanging desperately to a shred of uncertain hope. Roxy looked away from her sister to take a breath and then forced a smile onto her face.
"Yeah Ron. She'll be fine. She's a Mitchell isn't she? She's just like you Ronnie, she's stubborn." She tried to joke to cheer Ronnie up but Roxy knew that the nurse's careless comment had meant nothing, she hadn't seen or known any more about Danielle than they had.
Ronnie and Roxy were sat in silence on the bed, curtain closed around them as they waited for any news about Danielle. Roxy had briefly wandered around poking at machines and trying to make jokes, mostly dirty ones, to Ronnie to lighten the mood but Ronnie had just sat like a zombie, simply clasping her locket tightly in her hand, her eyes closing every few minutes as she made pleading prayers, beseeching any force that she could that everything would be ok.
"I hate bleedin' hospitals." Roxy moaned , jumping up and pulling the curtain back enough for her to see out into the corridors of the A&E. "Oi, what about telling us about my niece?" She called out to a passing doctor who continued on his way without an upward glance. She rolled her eyes and huffed, folding her arms over her chest when nobody seemed to listen to her.
"Excuse me!?" Roxy sang out "Am I invisible here or can I get some answers?" She huffed again and turned back to Ronnie who was staring at her with a mortified expression on her face, she looked both disgusted and afraid. In truth, despite how much Ronnie wanted to see Danielle she was terrified of any doctor coming to talk to them, afraid that they would tell her the worst and break her once and for all.
Roxy silently moved towards her sister and wrapped her up in her arms. It felt strange and sorrowful to Roxy to be supporting Ronnie, their whole lives it had been the other way around. But it was as if Ronnie was a child again, as if Roxy was finally seeing the scared teenager that had had her child snatched away all those years ago.
"She'll be alright Ron." Roxy cooed into Ronnie's hair as she cuddled her, she was treating her sister like a child but it was so surreal to have her sister back, the little girl beneath the ice queen façade, Roxy was quite sure how to act. "She asked me about you, you know. Every time I saw her she used to ask about you. I never thought anything of it but she loves you Ronnie. She'll pull through for you." Ronnie seemed to relax slightly in Roxy's arms, just for a moment, until another voice pierced through the quiet they had surrounded themselves in.