Mother Dear
A/N: Please read and REVIEW! This is my first fic. ever and I like to hear what people think. I don't care if you love it or hate it, just please review and be honest.
DISCLAIMER: Anything you recognize, I don't own. Oh, and 'Barbie' isn't mine either.
~*~
By the time Abby had reached Ashley's school, she had worked herself up into an angry fit. She looked around the play-ground of the school for the familiar little bundle of pink. She couldn't see Ashley anywhere and it was starting to worry her. Her bottled up angry quickly melted into fear and nervousness. Her eyes skimmed across the playground again, desperately searching for the little girl. Abby's breath was becoming short and ragged, her heart felt constricted in her chest and her stomach was churning. She felt nearly sick.
"Ashley!" she called out. The other parents outside the school stared at her discerningly. Abby couldn't believe their lack of emotion when she was clearly despairing.
"Ashley!" she screamed again. She ran up to the large red, brick building and heaved the door open. She looked around- Ashley was still nowhere. Her eyes were flicking in and out of classrooms as she sprinted down the hallway. Her skin was hot, her coat was suffocating her and her scarf was strangling her.
She saw a sign just down the hall that said 'Office' and she quickened her speed as she approached it.
"Mommy!" a smiling Ashley called to her from a chair just inside the office door. Abby turned to the happy little girl who was sucking on a lollipop. She bent down and wrapped her arms around the little girl pulling her off the chair into a standing position and rocking her back and forth in her arms.
"Ashley, why weren't you outside in the playground with the other children?" Abby asked her, relief apparent in her ragged voice.
"I got a boo-boo, Mommy," she stated simply. Abby chuckled softly as the little girl showed Abby her bandaged knee. The little girl smiled proudly,
"And they told me I was a brave girl because I only cried a teensy bit," she stated.
"Miss Lockhart?" came an amused voice from behind Abby. She turned around to face a woman whom she assumed was the secretary.
"Yes?"
"We tried to reach you. You didn't respond to your pages. We're sorry for any inconvenience we've caused you." Abby gave the woman a fake smile.
"Oh, I was just worried when I didn't see her in the playground," she stated simply leaving it at that. Abby didn't want to deal with this woman. She obviously didn't have any children of her own.
"Come on, Ashley, let's get you bundled up, it's cold out."
Abby helped Ashley into her little pink coat. She grinned when she thought of Ashley's insistence on wearing only pink and purple. Abby pulled down the leg of Ashley's corduroy overalls, and she gave Ashley a kiss on the cheek when she winced in pain. Abby pulled Ashley's hat securely over her curly brown hair and she thought of Ashley pulling her hair straight whenever she got out of the bath in an attempt to straighten out her corkscrew curls. Abby finally pulled a mitten onto each of Ashley's hand, wiping off each of the sticky palms and throwing out the lollipop.
"All ready, then?" Abby, as she took Ashley's hand and led her down the hall, holding Ashley's 'Barbie' knapsack in her spare hand.
~*~
At home that night, after tucking Ashley into bed, Abby sat at the kitchen table reading the paper and sipping a cup of hot chocolate. She couldn't believe that she had been so awful to Carter- Dr. Carter- John, whatever he went by now. She thought about her paralyzing fear when she couldn't find Ashley today. She didn't know where she'd be without that little girl, probably at a homeless shelter somewhere, drunk and penniless and depressed. How could she have purposely hurt Carter using his lost family as a weapon? That was vicious and cruel.
Abby couldn't take it. She dumped the rest of her drink into the sink and folded up the newspaper before dropping it into the garbage with the Styrofoam cup. She should finish packing, but she didn't want to be alone right now.
She knew she'd just wallow in her own self-remorse, so she curled up in bed and tried to fall asleep only to dream about walking into the hospital looking for Carter, but not being able to find him. She went from trauma room to trauma room, but all she encountered were the disinterested faces of the parents from the schoolyard and all-too-sweet laugh of the school's secretary.
She woke up in a sweat. It was seven o'clock and her alarm clock was beeping loudly in her ears.
