Twelve is grim, to say the very least. She spends three weeks floating through the mercantile and Victor's settlements in her Capitol-style dresses and wigs and heels pursued by film crews and reporters and the hatred of the District's inhabitants, trying to ignore the ever-increasing sickness and pressure of her corsets on her stomach. It's not like he's going to notice she's looser laced even on the odd days he stays mostly sober, and when her time is up she's leaving for Three to spend four days reviewing one of the tech company's marketing measures. One of the textile producers in Eight is offering her a year-long job with accommodation, and that isn't quite what she wants, but it's better than she has been expecting to get considering the reaction of the Capitol to her holiday request.
The doctor who owed her helps her write up the forms in a way that combines her own skill with human reactions and intimidating official medical jargon, and he is her connection to the ongoing argument within the hubbub of Capitol politics. Apparently she's got her month of sick leave, but they don't want to give her a long block of leave – especially as much as eight months. This is no obstacle: Effie still has a couple of scandals in her arsenal, despite the Capitol smugly assuming she's used all the blackmail she possesses, and she sends several messages indicating that should her requests be ignored or brushed off, she is ready to quit being an official Escort in favour of pursuing the ever more attractive jobs in the fashion industry businesses keep offering her.
That should shut them up long enough to make them think over their responses.
Another process she sets into motion during her stay in Twelve is remotely discussing her natal care options. She refuses to stay in the Capitol at the best hospitals, refuses to run the risk of being known and having to invent an explanation that won't destroy her and him both, and not even her nightmares of loss and pain and the recurring one which is nothing but the sensation of screaming, leaving her sobbing when she wakes, can convince her. There are two hospitals in Three she likes, has always liked, and one birthing-home in One that would do in a pinch. It's just a little too near the Capitol, is favoured by the socialites who think they are oh-so-perfect and even worse think they're so intelligent just by merit of being rich. Yeah. Effie rolls her eyes at the thought of their tittering gossip grating on her nerves in a confined space without even being able to shock them into quiet with her degree certificates. One of Three's hospitals it is, then, somewhere far away enough that she won't be recognised in her plain clothes, somewhere that won't care all that much about a only-recently-in-uni disaster of an adult who made a mistake and wants to hide away.
Mistake. Is this baby a mistake? An accident, certainly, but to call the bean inside her, this six-week-old seed of a human, a 'mistake' twinges painfully in the region of her heart. No woman should call her baby a mistake, not to anyone but her own darkness, never in any circumstance call the child 'mistake' where they can hear. Effie remembers her father calling her a mistake, a waste, nothing, and hopes he knows how far she's come without him.
Her days pass here as they always do at the tail end of Games season, stress and resentment and the mask of bubbling optimism which nobody ever looks at long enough to see through. Except him, who doesn't count, because now he's home he doesn't even try to make himself presentable, drowning in his trauma and grief and cheap alcohol, unable to even focus his eyes on her, much less see the secret she harbours under kaleidoscope layers of silk, satin, frills. She's safe enough.
The triad of tests remain tucked into a secret pocket of her old duffle, under the soft leggings and old leather boots, safe from prying eyes and the bribing of her meagre staff. They're proof of the bean's existence, more than nausea and the growing firmness of her lower belly. If she let him touch her, would he feel it? Would he make a comment? If she starts showing before she left he probably wouldn't bother investing even if he noticed. After all, he'd made it very clear he had only been sleeping with her because she wasn't afraid of his roughness, nightmares, coarse manners, and he found her attractive under all her ridiculous layers of makeup. Not that Effie is at all bitter or slightly heartbroken, she muses bitterly as she pulls on the black boots over leggings under a silvered grey dress. She's outlined her eyes in gold and silver and dug out blood-red lipstick and a deep red wig, so that if the press are still here she still wears the image she's spent – what will it be now? Five years, almost, spent building up her image of the bright bubbly Capitol darling who never gives up. The wire fences aren't electrified, and she remembers that he took her up through the forest to a waterfall last year on one of his sobriety stretches. That's another lost thing, his attempts to draw his life back together into some semblance of the man he used to be. Effie remembers his Games as long months of sighing and a serious crush on the well-built tribute from Twelve who outsmarted and more to the point outlasted every other contestant despite every odd. She has a lot of respect for what he's survived and what he struggles with now, truly, but it's hard to be sympathetic to the man who threw her to the street and expected her not to be upset.
Her pregnancy seems to be already messing up her meticulous thought processes, her methods of only thinking about the most important details, progressing logically from point to point. She should be focussing on the route to the falls yet here she sits with one boot on, no nearer her goal of seeing the wildness outside of Panem's boundaries one last time before leaving for Eight to start on a six-month marketing overhaul for one of the older textile companies.
Boots on, Effie leaves the house and starts her trek up the back lane to the Victor's settlement. There are ten or twelve houses, only one of which is occupied – by the very man she's attempting to avoid extended extra-social interaction with. It is so easy to fall into imagining raising the child with him, even picturing herself quitting Escorting to have a family. There are precedents which would permit the endeavour, arguments she knows she can sell to the public to force the Capitol to let her out, press members who drink up her every interview and would be on her side in any argument. In any case, this is what her degree is in. The ragged houses loom up ahead of her, and Effie rambles to a halt on the simple gravelled track as she wonders at herself.
Is she truly considering going in to his house and letting him work her sacred secret out?
Truly?
Truly, no, she is not. No matter how much Effie craves his presence, his comfort, his hands in her own, she cannot have it, can't afford to be thrown away or for him to cause a scene over it. Unplanned pregnancies have caused too much distress to too many public figures over even the years Effie has worked in HR for her to permit herself to become another part of the statistic of broken women.
Effie strides past his house.
The trail leads up to a pretty clearing, about an acre, dense with wildflowers and ringed in edible berry bushes. For those who know where – and how – to look there is a deer track twining up between the pines to the fence, and past that to the Falls. As far as she knows there's no name for them in either the local villages or Capitol maps. It would be useful, she considers as she tracks the deer prints through the dried mud, for her son or daughter to be rather close to their father, in order to gather the necessary skills needed to survive in the ever more stringent state. Even more useful on the off chance that it was their name chosen – would she one day stand on the podium and read out the name Trinket? Would it be a name altogether unrelated that only she would recognise? If it comes to that, she isn't sure she could stand the pain of it, stand up in front of the cameras and send her child into the horrors of the Games. Suppressing a shiver, she presses harder up the slope to the fence. Perhaps if she exhausts herself she'll be able to sleep.
The three month mark arrives whilst she's six weeks into her current five-month project in Eight, wrapping up the first stage of the marketing campaign; it is of course aimed at the Capitol, singing the praises of the reliable sourcing and ethical production methods of the new bright fabrics. She's used up her first month of sick (they had in fact owed her two) in excellent fashion, lolling around her company flat setting up samples of products and matching materials to prepare for stage two: the opening of the textiles for purchasing to the fashion industries in One. There are a few independent shops in Capitol who'd expressed interest, so she sets aside a few choice limited samples, not to restrict public access but because scarcity raises prices and Effie knows what she can haggle out of the little hand-craft boutiques. Challenge brings out the best of her skills, and absurdity (for surely the Capitol represents absurdity pretty damn well) in the face of challenge even more so. Jaegar, the textile production company who hired her, are quite rightfully expecting to make more money this year than ever before.
Effie is being fabulously reimbursed for her efforts. The flat has five large rooms, as well as kitchen and bathroom, which allows her to have one room as a wardrobe, one for sleeping in, one for herself and two for the samples, stocks, patterns, and the copious quantities of notes and sketches the job requires. Monetarily, she can afford the hospital without this job, but having plenty stockpiled in a separate account set up in trust for the baby won't hurt anyone. This is what she's dwelling on as she waits for her three-month consultation.
"Miss Grace?"
A false name, yet one she knows she won't forget: it's how she markets all her fashion designs. Elfaba Grace, the youthful blonde artist who is a demon with a needle, knows her rights better than some lawyers, dresses like a diva, and talks like an actress. Most hostels, homes, and clinics don't question falsities or discrepancies in the paperwork too hard at these early stages – everyone knows that each District has its own methods of erasing the problem of childbirth, even at this point. The nurse sets down a mug of tea and plate of the little oaty snacks so popular in Eight, the ones she still isn't positive she actually likes what with how they get stuck in her teeth, before taking her own seat behind the narrow desk. Shuffling papers, the nurse lets the silence settle.
She smiles up at Effie. "Good afternoon, Miss Grace. My name is Lora Carter, and I'll be your attached nurse whilst you're with us. We'll get you scanned and then discuss your natal care – it's correct that you intend to have the child in Three?" She nods in confirmation, throat oddly tight. "Good, good. They have some of the best hospitals," says Lora Carter, "Let's get baby scanned."
Scanner gel – obviously there's a proper name, but that would feel too much like intention to keep the baby and Effie knows, despite how much it hurts, that she can't keep this baby – is far less uncomfortable than she was expecting. Generously, the nurses allow her to hold the instrument and watch the floating bean inside her. The bump is easily hidden under the flowing day dresses she's taken to favouring, many of which are part of the new campaign, so she takes this moment in both hands. The bean floats inside her, this is a bean that is a baby that will grow into a child into an adult, all without her –
Effie very quickly starts crying.
Hormones. She could live without these ones, she has to say. A kindly orderly tucks a cluster of tissues into her palm with a gentle smile. "It's so wonderful, isn't it?" she says softly, "Let me know when you're ready to finish in here, you're our last appointment today so we have plenty of time."
"Thank you," she croaks, wiping at her eyes, smiling through the cold hurt in her chest, even as the love of motherhood boils hot in her heart. How much will it hurt her to let the baby go? How will she ever be able to see the child grow up in stages without her there for the first step, first word, first young love?
There has to be a way she can have insights, involvement. There are several options for visitation, she's read, but it's all very dependent on the foster parents' feelings which Effie doesn't think is very fair. Those who live in the Capitol are known to buy small children and babies to raise as their own, with no knowledge of their births and no option for the parents to visit or know anything beyond the name of the babe. It's cold, unfeeling, just like the Capitol itself.
After another five minutes, the gel is tacky and uncomfortable, so she reluctantly allows the nurse to clean it up and switch off the monitor and lead her back to the small office where Lora Carter is waiting. Effie quietly fills in some more paperwork, distracted by the memory of the grainy grey scanner image of the tiny human inside her. The morning sickness seems to be finally tapering off into lingering headaches behind her eyes, nothing she can't work through with a pair of sunglasses but persistent enough to make her want to cry some days. Lora Carter taps away at her keyboard, making her own notes on various papers with a pen plucked from behind her ear, doctorish scrawl spreading like spiders' tracks over the pages.
"If you want, we can print two copies of the scan image." Effie looks up in surprise from filling in the 'symptom' chart of the second page; she hadn't expected a physical copy of the image. "That way there is one for you, and one for the father."
"Oh," says Effie quickly, "I don't think he'll want it. I'll take one though, for the future. Maybe – well." Even to her own ears she is bitter and cynical, a woman left. Lora Carter hums, offering no comments, no judgement in her tone, tapping away. In the ensuing Effie turns back to her papers, getting distracted by the material of the nurses' overalls, mind springing off into images of practical dress outfits for on-call responders. There had been a high-ranking neurosurgeon two years ago who'd carried out a seven-hour surgery in a green ballgown. Effie had designed her a dress which looked complicated to the untrained eye yet could be removed within three minutes by the wearer, and two minutes flat if they had an assistant to unzip the skirt. Yes, looks like she can corner the market regarding practical dress clothing.
The same orderly who'd run her scan enters the room with a cursory tap to the door, handing Effie a pair of grey envelopes labelled "E. Grace", nondescript and nonthreatening. Easy to hide among her designs and scraps in the temporary flat if anyone comes looking for her from the Capitol or even Twelve. With a final flourished signature – Elfaba Grace T – she hands the stapled wad of paperwork across the desk. It's not final, which is what she had expected, but rather she is left with a sense of budding anticipation, of new horizons, exactly how she felt when she started her first assignment.
The rest of the visit passes in confirming her contact details and arranging a return in four weeks, with contacts arranged for the hospital in Three. Effie is staring in elation at her photo, the little son or daughter – she'd like a son – without moving from her bed until after midnight. She's going to pin it to her bedroom mirror, tomorrow. Tonight she's letting the peace and love in her heart send her straight to sleep.