A PRICE FOR NO FAULT

chapter 15

A weak morning sun shone through the thick layer of rainy clouds and illuminated the hospital room in a dim, fresh light, thanks to the filter of the sheer curtains at the window.

Hadn't she been in a dark place before?

Maria's lids were heavy and took quite a long while to open, subsequently fluttering up and down in blinks to wish the blurred vision of her groggy eyes away. Unsuccessfully, though.

The light was so powerful she could merely bear to open them fully, she remembered never seeing something so bright. She had to shut them close again.

Was that what heaven looked like?

Just a pure and bright surrounding with nothing else but lights filling it?

No, it couldn't be. It couldn't smell of medicine and be so deafeningly loud, it was making her head ache so bad.

By the way, why was it aching so much? She had always been quite familiar with migraines and headaches but the pain she was in now was far different and far more bothering than how she remembered them to be.

She assumed gripping her head in her hand would somehow help it fading away but when she tried to raise her arm, against its spontaneous movement she found something was preventing her from the action.

That's when she realized the pressure was not only trapping her hand but was applied to one of her thighs as well. It somehow intrigued her and forced her eyes to open again.

That was heaven.

What her eyes were staring at were clearly confirming it – dark, thick and silky curls were hiding a familiar face whose warmth radiated over the skin of her thigh, his breath tickling her for how sensitive and cold the rest of her body was.

Georg had fallen asleep, sat and bent in the most uncomfortable position imaginable over that chair.

Couldn't have him just climbed into bed next to her?

She looked around herself and slowly became aware of her surroundings – a vanity, a small bedside table with a handkerchief and a glass of water on it, a radiator and a room divisor on the opposite wall and another chair in one corner of the room - every detail told her that she was in a hospital room. That's why it was so white and noisy.

The realization made her panic a little bit.

If she was already rather disoriented when she had come to, this could only worsen her state of mind.

She struggled to figure out how she had ended up in that hospital but she couldn't remember anything, all she achieved in was the worsening of the ache in her head. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the pain and the constant buzzing in her head to vanish and stirred as it slowly approached a peak and then decreased again. Her body relaxed as it did and quite unconsciously, she tangled her fingers between her husband's hair to find some comfort through it all.

The feeling of a soft movement beneath his face and that of an even softer touch on top of his head made Georg awake.

For a split second his eyes remained unfocused when he got off his slumber, uncertain whether he had actually felt what he thought he had felt or had just imagined it.

He turned his head, lifting it gently from the soft thigh of his wife that had been his pillow before he finally saw her half open eyes. Her beautiful, sweetly awake, yet undoubtedly tired eyes.

"Maria!" his voice seemed to pitch higher than it had been for days, a whisper nevertheless but filled with joyous surprise.

He hadn't cared in the slightest to listen to the nurses the previous days, but deep inside him he knew the chances of seeing her awake and conscious again were not a hundred percent assured. He had much preferred to hold her hand and look after her all through the night, which had unfortunately resulted in his falling asleep on her out of exhaustion.

But now that she was awake right in front of his eyes, he felt as though he was dreaming, as if it couldn't be happening for real.

His hands pressed against the mattress and pushed him in a standing position and in no time, he had gathered her petite frame into his embrace with one visceral yet ever so delicate movement.

He struggled so hard not to crush her weak body into his chest, but the way she had draped her slender arms around his broad shoulders, clasping her hands to the small of his neck, only ignited his longing, his desire, and his need to wrap all of her into his strong arms.

"Oh, my love" a shaky breath of relief left his mouth as the palms of his hands roamed all over her back, hungry and desperate to feel and trace every inch of her body with his touch.

She felt dazed but immensely spoiled as she revelled in the loving treatment of her husband, it felt like his caresses were soothing a sore back, allowing each of her muscles to release their tension and simply let her melt into him.

He backed from their tight hug just enough to look into her eyes for a little while, those beautiful pools of clear morning sky were so groggy, puffy, and tired, but he wouldn't have traded them for anything in the world. They were the mirror of her beautiful soul and of his own too, and there was no heavenly feeling comparable than looking into her eyes and find himself right there.

A hand of his moved to her hot cheek, his eyes closed, and his lips too decided to close the mere distance between them, pressing his over hers with such delicacy and intent that she found herself quickly out of breath, overwhelmed with a love for him she never knew could be so powerful.

"I love you" his statuary voice spoke, though muffled from his grazing his lips on the skin of her forehead.

Three genuine, uncomplicated words.

I love you.

And yet they felt like the most beautiful melody her heart had ever heard and the sweetest nourishment her soul had been ever fed.

Maria's body melted further, burying her head into his neck and breathing in his scent, something she had always loved. It sounded a bit silly, yes, but she had always been so sensitive to scents, she had grown to love them to the point of stopping just to breathe them in, as she did the day of their wedding, smelling the flowers of her bouquet even if she was seconds apart from one of the most important events of her life. A delightful joy for the heart on most occasions, but a curse in this one.

Georg wasn't smelling like him. There was a stink of dirt, wet terrain and mold permeating his clothes.

Mold, humid, whiskey and smoke, brutal hands, engulfing darkness and suffocating fear – everything flashed into her mind at once.

Suddenly her shoulders began to bob up and down at an increasing pace and before none of them could realize, she had burst into a deluge of tears.

She had remembered.

The actual reason of her hospital stay was still unknown to her, but she had remembered enough to understand that she had ended up there because of those blasted Nazi who'd kept her hostage in that dreadful place.

A realization painful enough to make her head almost burst from the ache as hot and heavy teardrops spilled from her eyes and soaked Georg's shirt as she buried herself into the safety of his chest.

"I'm so sorry" she cried in one of the frequent moments when she had to fight for air from how heavy her crying was.

Georg couldn't even process the pain those words caused him.

A sickening twist of his stomach, a bullet shot straight through his heart already shred into pieces by violent tugs and a turn of his guts. This didn't come even close to the way it felt.

Sorry.

She was apologizing to him as if it had been her fault. She was taking the faults of the sickening man Zeller was, of those inhuman soldiers, and was ready to carry their weight on her shoulders alone. And, most of all, she was taking his faults too.

He had talked to himself for hours on end while waiting for her outside the surgery room, but there was no way he could ever forgive himself for what he'd put her through. Yet once more she was apologizing when he should have been the only one to pronounce those words.

There was so much he wished he could say but the lump in his throat was trapping every word he thought of. His arms tightened their safe grip around her, his soul wishing it could hold and surround her with all his might as his body crumbled around hers too and he allowed his own pain to flow and mark his cheeks under the shape of incessant tears.

He clutched onto her, tight, feeling emotional pain shoot through him as anything he had ever felt – he had found it hard to admit but not even Agathe's death had caused him to show on the outside how broken he was on the inside.

One of his hands rambled up to her neck and for the first time, his fingers felt the bandages plastered to the back of her skull under his fingertips, the gauze felt rough and uncomfortable, that's where the doctors had worked on for many hours.

He cradled her bandaged head gently into his palm, the other one brushing calming caresses up and down her spine through her hospital nightgown.

"Shhh …" he softly whispered as her tears slowly began to turn into sobs, "… you have nothing to apologize about, my love, the only reason you are into this room is to heal and get rid of this head injury" he kept soothing her, conveying all the warmth of his love through his voice.

He had cried and questioned enough about himself, now his attention needed to be on her, restless and undivided, as it should have always been.

It seemed it was working since the pace of her sobs too was slowly decreasing, he doubted it was for his words, most likely she must have been just too weary and exhausted to cry more than she had done already.

But to his chagrin, he came to realize that while tears had gone, soft moans and whimpers were released from her mouth.

"It hurts a little" she replied in the cutest groggy voice.

That was the reason she was there, a head injury. Quite a thing for men that had tried to be gentle with her, according to Zeller's definition.

Georg almost chuckled at her words.

She had been through hell and back undergoing a hours-long surgery and a little was all she could describe her pain with? But that was his Maria, it was already a sign of improvement that she had mentioned her pain at all.

"I know" his voice soothed with profound understanding, "why don't you get some more rest, darling?" he asked.

A supporting arm beneath her and a careful hand on her head gently guided her to lean back on the pillows, his eyes thoughtful and sweetly concerned as she adjusted herself in a more comfortable position with slow and little movements.

"Mind if I do?" she asked him, her own lids spontaneously beginning to close

He smiled at her tenderly, reassuringly, still unable to process why an angel had chosen him for a husband.

"I'll go tell the nurses that you've awakened so that they won't be disturbing you" he replied, offering a gentle squeeze to her hand before backing from the bed

"Don't take too long" she requested him.

She knew it would have taken the time it needed but she still felt extremely disoriented and vulnerable, and her husband was all she both wanted and needed at that very moment. Georg shook his head.

"I need someone to climb up here with me"

"No way, unless you're saying it just because you miss my cuddles" he teased her, a smile finally crossing his lips

"I'm saying this because you need to rest too" she replied in her most prim manners

"What if I tell you I don't believe it in the slightest?" he grinned

"Do you think I really am that selfish?"

"Are you really inquiring about how I am feeling?"

"Just don't take too long, I think I'm too tired to argue" she softly giggled, nuzzling her cheek on the pillow.

God, he had missed her.

Every little precious thing about her.

"I love you" he told her again, swearing he would never miss the chance to tell it back to her again.

Before exiting the room completely, he stared at her beautiful eyes watching him with deep love and affection. They sparkled like pure diamonds on the features of an earthly angel before closing and displaying the brownish circles that surrounded them. No woman could ever be so beautiful to his eyes as she was.

It comforted him to no end to see her hair not soaked in blood anymore, her weak body finally out of those smelly and worn-out clothes and her face not troubled by fear and panic anymore, even though her cheeks were still sunk in. The fair complexion of a goddess, the natural rosiness of her soft cheeks, the golden of her hair like a halo, the clean white of her long-sleeve hospital gown and the peacefully restful position of her eyelashes; yes, no other woman on the face of earth would remotely embody heaven and all its angels in all their splendour the way she did.

No other woman on the face on earth would inebriate him with love the way she did.

The ward outside Maria's room brought him directly onto the corridor that led to the large waiting room. It mustn't have been much earlier than late breakfast time, but the hospital was back to its usual schedule, busy, confusing, and relentless, just as he remembered it to be the previous day when he'd brought Maria in.

Georg turned his head into all directions, looking for the nurse that had helped him assuming she worked in that ward, but she was nowhere to be found.

A man approached him, instead.

"Herr Von Trapp"

He was tall and busty, big hands holding some papers and a pen, wavy, lacquered hair and a long-shaped nose with a pair of thick glasses over it; he had a very respectable appearance but seemed friendly as well.

"I'm Doctor Lehmann, I don't believe I had the honour of meeting you yesterday … nor has my nurse" he spoke, attracting Georg's full attention.

He felt a bit of embarrassment, suddenly remembering how he had ignored the woman's words when she had tried to speak to him.

"I'm sorry, I'm afraid I wasn't feeling very much like my usual self" he apologized, threading a hand through his hair.

"Well, that's understandable. Your wife was in quite a bad condition ..." the man turned serious

Georg leaned against the wall behind him and crossed his legs, fiddling with his wedding ring at the awareness that if the doctor was there, it wasn't certainly to speak of pleasant things.

"She's suffered a third-grade concussion resulted in a severe head trauma" the man breathed, "the blood loss has been obviously consistent for how battered her skull was but at the moment, we can't see any brain damage coming her way. Has she woken up yet?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I was looking for a nurse to-"

"Did she complain about any pain at all?" the doctor interrupted, inquiring further

Georg took his time to remember if he had noticed any particular sign of pain in her, she was quite keen to not mentioning her struggles, even though it was much necessary in this case.

"She only told me about her head, but she didn't feel like eating, I suspect the morphine she's on is making her a bit queasy".

Doctor Lehmann found himself smiling, he must be speaking to a man with quite a vast knowledge about medicine among other things. But shaken off this brief moment of admiration, he resumed talking.

"We need to give her morphine for a bit longer, other pain medications won't do her any good if she still feels in pain. We'll have to keep her under control for the next few days, but she will have to take it very easy for much longer than that. Both physical and mental rest are fundamental for her recovery, avoiding any activity that requires excessive concentration will help to keep at bay headaches too".

Georg had listened carefully, trying to commit to his memory all she needed for a faster recovery. He was aware it would have taken time and he was definitely not going to rush through anything, but he was longing for the children to be reunited with her and finally start their new life.

"But I must tell you something, Herr Von Trapp" the doctor pulled Georg from his thoughts, his voice serious as never in their conversation, "your wife was in great danger when you brought her here, I have to admit I doubted we would have saved her at all when I first checked on her on the surgery bed. As you could see the operation was perfectly successful, but I must tell you that, unfortunately, we couldn't save the baby".

Georg's heart stopped.

The baby?

He felt all his blood drain from his face, his eyes lost focus as a tug to his heart caused his chest to ache. His legs became suddenly wobbly, his mind a storm of thoughts.

It would have been already hard to process that Maria was pregnant, but it would have been a joyous news to become aware of, it should have been the happiest day of their lives. Instead, accepting that she had lost it, proved to be even harder.

"Didn't you know?" the doctor asked, noticing how silent and absent Georg had fallen.

He shook his head, wordlessly, the lump lodged into his throat making him unable to utter any word.

"I did try to save it, but the foetus was dead already, there was no need to practice further invasive surgery when there was very little else to do other than remove it from her womb" Doctor Lehmann resumed explaining, his voice slower and warm.

The feeling of telling such news was never an easy one, for as detached as he had to remain for the sake of his profession, he ached for them both.

Georg was still silent, his skin covered in shivers of shock and anger that arose with every passing second.

"It wasn't you wife's fault, though. She was undernourished but there were traces of food poisoning and we suspect she has been beaten which could have played an important part in it too. I don't mean to be indiscreet, but she has-"

"Kidnapped … she has been kidnapped" Georg interrupted him, failing to remember he had to be covert about their whole situation.

A shaky breath left his mouth as the palm of his hand slammed against the wall.

"Of course, she has no fault", his eyes raised and were revealed brimming with tears.

His voice sounded like a soft whisper, but it was directed more to himself rather than his interlocutor.

No, she hadn't had a miscarriage.

She had been forced to suffer an abortion by the hands of those bloody Nazi that not only had endangered her life, threatening it, but had also murdered the first child they had conceived.

They would pay, they would all pay for the inhuman crime thy had committed.

"I am very sorry for you both, the news might overwhelm her quite a lot. If you'd rather have me tell her, I'm at your complete disposal" the doctor spoke with sympathy and understanding.

Georg wanted to feel grateful and wished he could accept the offer, but it was something he had to tell Maria personally, it was a matter too personal and intimate to have an outsider involved into it.

No, he had to do it himself.

"Go back to her, she needs you" he patted the back of his hand, a hand Georg hadn't even realized the doctor was holding.

He was grateful, but the only way he could convey it was the look into his tearful eyes, his lips too devastated to hint at a grin.

They walked towards opposite directions, only a few steps separating him from Maria's room, steps that he took slowly, suddenly pondering if telling her now was actually a good idea.

Of course she had to know, he owned it to her, but now it was a matter of priorities.

It was better to choose rest for her recovery rather than mourn over a loss.

Yes, he would have told her with the appropriate time, as soon as she began to feel a little better. Even if it meant to bring her down again.

He took a deep breath, trying to take in as much air as he could into his lungs and then opened the door to her room.

Maria was just as he'd left her – hands on her stomach fiddling with her wedding ring, her eyes gazing outside the window, surprisingly vigil instead of asleep.

Her stomach.

The nest where she had struggled to protect the tiny life growing deep within her that those evil people eventually took away from her.

He couldn't avoid thinking about it.

The breath that he exhaled attracted her attention immediately.

"Hello there" she turned her head into his direction, her eyes still quite tired but slowly beginning to regain their prettiest sparkle, "I missed you"

Georg forced a smile on his lips, trying to leave behind his shoulder the heart-breaking news he'd just received.

"I missed you too, darling. Did you have trouble falling asleep?" he then asked, worrying about her headaches remembering what Doctor Lehmann had told him

Maria shook her head, "I got worried about you, darling, when I didn't see you coming. Why did it take you so long anyways?".

Georg saw her trying to stretch out her arms to welcome him in them, but she was probably still too weak to do that, so she settled to pat the mattress at her side, inviting him to close the distance between them.

He walked slowly, his lips pecking hers once he was at her bedside. He sat back on the chair, threading a hand through his hair while thinking of a convincing answer.

"I met Doctor Lehmann, the man that operated you"

"And?"

"And- he said that the operation went well and all you have to do is rest so that we can get out of here soon. He can't change your pain medication yet, though, I'm afraid you'll need to deal with nausea for a little bit longer"

"So much time just for that?" she pressed him, raising a brow in confusion

"Well ... nothing is wrong with you, just close those beautiful eyes of yours, stop questioning, and start resting instead. You need it, my lov-" his palm caressed her cheek, but she interrupted him, taking hold of his hand.

"Georg ..." she breathed out his name, resisting his cuddle for as hard as it was being for her.

He followed the path that her eyes traced from his eyes to her stomach, where one of her hands was still resting.

He remained silent for a moment, unable to comprehend what she meant with that action. Or rather, afraid to admit that he understood only too well.

"You knew about it?" he shyly dared to ask, voice troubled with confusion.

Maria nodded ever so slightly, her eyes still fixed down there as she tenderly brushed her thumb just above her navel.

His heart plunged into his stomach.

How was he supposed to even start telling her that she had lost the baby? A baby she knew about, a baby she must have thought of as living till that very moment.

He tried to swallow the golf-ball sized lump in his throat but to a vain extent. When his voice came out, it lacked both its strength and its usual briskly pace.

"Maria ..." his hand covered the one laying on her tummy as he shook his head, hot tears prickling his eyes as he struggled to get any sound out of his mouth other than choked breaths, "... you see th-"

"Please don't, d-don't say it ... I know" she confessed being aware of this too.

Of course she knew, of course.

How could have he not thought of it sooner?

She had experienced it on her skin, she had felt life abandoning the tiny creature growing within her.

Of course, she knew.

The realization dawned on him as a nightmare, the idea of her facing so many things at once and all alone making his guts turn.

Georg perched himself further on the edge of the chair and gathered his wife into his embrace again, soaking her head with tears as it was cradled into his chest with delicate movements of his hand.

"The day you found me …" her voice was muffled against his soaked shirt, she sobbed and backed from it just enough for her voice to be heard, "I was cramping and withering with pain, it was then that I realized I might be miscarrying. I prayed it was either the lack of food in my stomach or the moldy bread they gave me, but I knew I was bleeding even if I couldn't see it" she sobbed again, "I begged God that the baby could make it out alive, but it was all in vain, Georg, I ... I- ...".

Words spilled out of her mouth as a river in flood until her voice would only come out in the form of weak little whimpers, silenced when she buried herself back into Georg's shirt and cried more

"Oh Maria, darling, darling, darling" he soothed a deep kiss to her crown.

Now everything made sense, it seemed.

Only now he remembered he had seen her bleedings already. The car seat was a pool of blood when he lifted her, her skirt was soaked in it too, that's what had stained the sleeve of his coat. And, of course, now he knew it couldn't have been altitude to make her throw up while they were climbing those mountains several days before.

Maria had been pregnant all along and he had been always too focused on something else to notice the most important thing of all.

His heart ached at the thought that she had to go through this too all alone.

"None of this is your fault, darling" he whispered again when a tear slipping down his cheek pulled him away from his thoughts

"I had to protect it, Georg!" the tone of her voice rose.

He hadn't heard her yelling since the day they had argued before the lake, and it broke his heart. Back there she was taking it on him, and rightly so, but now she was blaming herself for yet another thing she had nothing to do with.

"Darling, look at me, please look at me" his hands cupped both her cheeks as he tried once more to have her eyes back to him, "never again I want to hear you chastise yourself for things you are the least to blame for, it's a too heavy of a burden and I don't want you to carry it on your shoulders, okay? I should have known whe-"

"But if I could have just done something more …" she interrupted him, her gaze losing focus again

"No buts, Maria. You couldn't have done nothing more than what you have done already, you were in no position to. Your body struggled to keep it alive, the very fact that you're here proves it".

She seemed to open her mouth to speak but she discovered herself wordless, tears seemed to be the right answer to his words.

He took advantage of her silence, and resumed his own flow of thoughts, "… and you are here to heal, something nor you or your body can do if you don't rest as you're told and don't follow the doctors' instructions".

His hands accompanied her back to the lying position she settled into once he had adjusted another pillow behind her bandaged head, yet another tug to his chest when she released a whimper of pain while turning on one side.

God, he wished he had the power to take all that pain away and carry it himself, seeing her in such a state was unbearable.

So much on her weary shoulders, so much on her broken heart.

He ached for her with all that he was.

"I hate him" Maria's little cry filled to room as she vainly tried to wipe a new deluge of tears off her face

"I- …" Georg couldn't find the voice to answer.

Would that have helped?

Of course he hated him, he wouldn't have slept serene until each of Zeller's men including him had been put to a life sentence, if he was being kind, or brutally killed, if they got back what they actually deserved.

But what sense did it make to mention it? Bring her memory back to those days? Sunk her deeper into the ocean of agony she was already in?

No, it wasn't about them, it was about her.

And she needed a husband to be by her side and make sure she didn't have to face the darkest depths of her fears all by herself.

His hand took hold of hers, trembling and cold as he brushed soothing caresses against her knuckles with his thumb.

For how much it pained him, she needed to cry it all out.

"I am here" he whispered, doubting she had heard at all.

But he truly was there, body and soul.

Never, ever letting her go.

Author's Note: Hello everyone ... gosh, this was a tough chapter to write. Putting Maria in such conditions absolutely tears my heart in halves but it's going to be worth it, I promise. Let me know what you thought of this chapter with a review, things are going to be difficult for them for the time being but there'll be a lot of tenderness and affection which I hope you'll be interested to read. Thank you again and I'll se you all next week!