Chapter 28
Though Sully continued to stroke his wife's hair, he knew that she could feel his body stiffen. He didn't know quite how to react to her last pronouncement, as it had been the one thing that he had most feared when beginning the conversation and the one thing she had promised she would never do. Sully realized, however, that he had cut his wife off before she had been able to qualify her statement about the circumstances under which she would leave him and that perhaps his actions were those that fell under the unspecified category. Now, he wondered what to say, what to do, and what to feel as he tried to persuade his wife not to do the very thing that had theoretically been the impetus for his abandonment of his family. "'Chaela, you…you…you…don't mean that…you can't mean that. Why won't ya just realize I made a mistake? You're not lettin' this go, are ya? You're not ever gonna let this go?" He said that more to himself than to her.
"So I can be made a fool of again? Sully, I can't."
"I didn't mean it. I never did. I never should've said the words, Michaela. I've always loved you. I've never stopped, no matter what I said. It was just the fear and pain talkin'."
"You may think they were just words, Sully, but something happened here." She touched his chest, then her own and cut the air between them with her hand like a knife. "Our bond is broken, Sully. You don't say those words and expect our bond to ever be able to heal, especially when you said them without asking me about what you saw, and instead go around and read my writing, my personal writing."
"But Michaela, we've always shared personal things and we've always been there to comfort each other, to whisper loving words to one another." her husband said quietly
"Yes, Sully, we were and did and that's why I can't believe you would've ever thought I would say something like that to you in a letter without talking to you first and trying to remedy the problem. How could you say it to me with such venom in your voice as though I were a stranger? How could you, after all the things we've said to each other?"
"I meant all those things. I still do."
"That no longer matters, Sully. All that matters is what we decide is best; and what's best for me is to move on. I think it's best for you as well. We'll still have the children. I won't keep them from you. They love their father, and they need you in their lives, all six of them. I just think it best that we go our separate ways. Maybe our hearts and minds know us and our feelings better than we think we know ourselves and maybe they had you say those things and had you think that I said those things for a reason." Michaela's eyes were brimming with tears, but her voice was firm and decided, though her heart was breaking at the prospect of never seeing her soul mate again, at least not as her husband. She made up her mind then and there that once the divorce was final, she couldn't stay around Colorado Springs. Her practice was important to her, as were Dorothy, Grace, Robert E., and Loren, and she knew she would miss her older children terribly, but seeing Sully everyday and knowing the hurt he had caused would be too much, especially since she knew she still loved him and couldn't be without him, unless she wasn't reminded of him at all. She was vaguely aware that she would have to bring her youngest children with her when she went home and that their faces would remind her of her one true love each and every day, but she couldn't think about that now. She had to go.
For his part Sully was too overcome with pain to say anything. He could feel his heartsong slipping away from him and he had to swallow several times to keep from letting giant sobs rack his body. For he knew that if he cried, the one person who had always held him, besides his mother, would turn her back on him as he wept and he could not weep alone, especially not for the woman who was still right in front of him and yet so far away. Through his immense sadness, he realized that he would have to find the courage to fight, to beg, to plead with her to change her mind and to stay with him. "No, Michaela, you can't. Listen to me, don't ya hear what I'm sayin'? I love you."
"Sully that's not what you said when you went on your journey," she sarcastically quipped, "and that's what matters. All the things you said before that day were lies if you could say something like that without so much as a second thought, Then again, you always do things without thinking, like participating the Indian uprising, or how about when we were courting, with Catherine? You must've meant the kiss back then, too, I was just foolish enough to believe you when you said you were sorry then. Perhaps if I had not followed my heart, I wouldn't have been alone with four grieving children and pregnant with two more. You hurt me, Sully. I'm a doctor. People put themselves in my hands…they give themselves to me. They trust me. I'm not use to giving myself to anyone. I gave myself to you. I trusted you."
Sully remembered his wife's last words from when Catherine had come into town when they were first courting and it struck him that she was reverting back to the shell she had placed herself under after he had kissed the other woman or rather, he thought to himself, after Catherine had kissed him. He had never meant for anything to happen to his and Michaela's relationship then, but he had let confusion, doubt, and uncertainty cloud his judgment, and he'd pulled away from her then. Now he knew if he wanted to save the marriage that their relationship had become since then, he would have to try and show her that he wasn't willing to give up that easily anymore. "I'm sorry," he whispered quietly, trying to break her out of the spell and gently ease her into a discussion where he could possibly convince her to do something other than that which she had planned. Her next words stopped him in his tracks though, and he realized that no matter how hard he fought her mind was made up.
"I am, too…but I can't be with you right now."
Sully's anger overcame his pain and instead offering the acquiescence he had to the disillusion of the relationship over Catherine, he lashed out. "Stop replaying the past, Michaela, we're not courtin' anymore, we're married and that's how we're gonna stay! I love you, you love me, and that's all that matters. We can get through anythin'." His once strong and defiant voice had now broken and the last part of his sentence had been barely audible, but she'd heard it.
"I'm not replaying the past, Sully, I'm merely fixing the mistake I made the first time around. There is no us. There never should've been, after Catherine or before." After Michaela finished her sentence, she began to sob heavy sobs that racked her body and soul. " We're just too different, Sully. I should never have tried to change you."
"You didn't change me, Michaela. Any changes that I made within me were because your love inspired me to be a better man."
"Sully, you were a good man before, and I want us to part on good terms for the children's sake."
"Good terms, Michaela? Who are ya kiddin'? You're breakin' my heart, you're walkin' out on me and on our three older children, who, as you so carefully pointed out in my case, also still need their ma. You're breakin' your vows and you're denyin' your heart. Perhaps you're not the strong woman I thought I married or perhaps you're too strong for your own good. For once, think with your heart and not with your head. I thought you learned that your heart is where ya gotta lead from, else everything else gets to be too cold, too practical, too medical, but as ya keep remindin' me, you're a doctor and you can never let go of that, can you Michaela? Not even to show me how much you love me. Practicality always comes before love with ya. I thought you'd changed, but perhaps I was a fool to try and change ya."
"Perhaps we were both fools to let this relationship go on."
"Michaela," Sully said, his voice breaking from anger and hurt over everything she'd said and all that she'd done to strip their relationship away to nothing but lust between her and the heathen she had basically called him. "I don't know you. I thought I did, but maybe I don't and if this is who you really are, then I don't love you. I truly don't."
Michaela realized at that moment that the tone of his voice was different than when he said the words at the homestead months ago. The difference between the utterances were clear, Sully hadn't meant the first one, but he clearly meant this one and the totality of all that she'd lost hit her full force, but ever-ready to erect her shell against all that could hurt her, she vowed to be the last to speak. "Thank you for finally being honest, Sully," she said with an eerily pained smile. "It's always best to tell the truth and the truth is I don't love you, either, and I wish that we'd never had children together, never married, and never met." Without another word, she strode purposefully toward the horse they'd ridden to the campsite on, got into the saddle, and galloped away from the man she would soon make her ex-husband.
Sully could only stand there and watch, sorrow overcoming him in a grief so deep that even that which assailed him after Abigail and Hana's deaths could not match it. He felt like dying, in fact, the pain in his shoulder told him that he'd ripped the stitches and he thought seriously for a moment about slowly letting himself bleed to death. He'd promised Michaela, however, that no matter what happened in his life, he'd always be strong for their children. And so he set out for the house that he had built to honor his now shattered marriage and family, and prepared to face the repercussions of the one thing he never wanted to grant his wife, a divorce.
Sending a cry to the spirits in hopes that they would hear him and convey his message to Michaela and his children in a way he could not, he spoke" "I am sorry, nemehotatse." before bursting into tears
This is my first fan fiction and I would appreciate any and all feedback, so please feel free to review the chapter and any subsequent chapters if you think they are of interest either here or be orginal and comment on the "Stand By Me" thread of the fanfiction section of the Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman forum The link to the thread is: http/forum.drquinn.us/viewtopic.php?t3949
Thanks, Corinna
