A/N: Another chapter. Still unsatisfied with this. But I owed it to you guys! Thank you so much for the reviews, faves and alerts! This is more of an interim chapter. I know where I want to go, but this was the big swampy middle I had to cross to get there.
Special thanks to LaJoyMechell, for her lovely, long reviews!
As it somewhat ironically turns out, loving her daughter is so, so much simpler than Erin had thought.
Clara is the brightest spot in her life. Even when she has one of her grumpy days and simply cannot be comforted, she is the most perfect little being Erin has ever seen.
The tough days at work, the filthy humans she has to take down, they all disappear when her bundle of perfection snuggles into her neck at the end of the day with a sigh.
She grows fast, too fast.
One moment she sleep curled up in a little burrito (swaddling blanket, Jay corrects her), and the next she has grown too big.
She may have shed a few tears when she folded it up.
She realizes how much things have changed when Jay dares to suggest Clara sleep in her own room (all the way down the hall) instead of on Erin's chest, as she had been for the past several months.
Erin now counts some of Clara's therapists among her friends.
The physical therapist, Lisa, comes once a week and gently works on the infant's flexibility and muscle strength, bending Clara's tiny feet up to her face and cooing gently at her.
She insists on the importance of "tummy time" to strengthen her daughter's muscles but Clara takes great issue with being laid on her belly, and is not shy about expressing it.
Her daughter has Down Syndrome, Erin sees it all the time.
She sees small children point to her daughter's almond eyes and ask their mothers what is wrong with her.
She notices when her daughter flops into her, no control over her own body.
She notices when she speaks with other mothers. Rarely, but when she does, she can barely stand hearing how their baby is already holding their head up, easily, as if it's no trouble, when she has seen her daughter try so, so hard to get her head up on her own, breaking into tears when her weakened muscles just can't handle that yet.
And she notices when Clara is 4 months old. They're shopping (what is it about a baby that doesn't even eat regular food that means they burn through groceries twice as fast?)
The baby is strapped to Erin's chest, contentedly sucking on her fist, when an older woman lays a hand on Erin's arm, stopping her from grabbing a pack of spaghetti.
"I just want you to know," the stranger tells her, "I think you are so brave to be raising her anyway."
And Erin is absolutely confused as she looks at the woman, which must show on her face, because the stranger clarifies.
"You know, because of the…..." she waves her arm to indicate Clara's bright green eyes, and it hits Erin all at once.
Clara has Down Syndrome. This random woman thinks Erin is brave because she is caring for her daughter. Her daughter with Down Syndrome.
Her world freezes.
At home, Erin unstraps Clara (she gives slight protest, would be content to lie on Erin all day, every day if possible). Leaving the groceries where they are, she takes her daughter to the couch and inspect every inch of her little body, breathes in her sweet baby smell, and realizes two things.
Her baby is perfect. Absolutely perfect in every imaginable way.
And this random woman had to remind Erin that her baby is, in the eyes of the world, imperfect. She is chromosomally imperfect. And yet, for a brief moment, Erin had forgotten.
Tears spill over, land on her baby's soft hand, as Erin smooths a hand over the wispy, beautiful hair on her perfect daughter's head. She bends down and whispers in the child's ear.
I love you.
I love you so much.
I'm so sorry.
I'm sorry the world doesn't see all you are.
You're perfect.
It seems patently unfair, not for Erin and Jay, but for Clara. Why should her child have to try so much harder at what comes so easily to others?
And it isn't like life is tough for Clara. No, she has parents who adore her, a "grandpa" who they literally have to pull away from her at some points, and aunts and uncles who, while not biologically family, are as good to her as if they were tied by blood.
No, her daughter's life is good. And Erin wouldn't wish away the therapist visits, the CBC counts, the countless specialists for her own sake, but for the sake of her baby.
Still, life is better than it was before. Now, she can do her job and still come home to her boyfriend and her beloved daughter (Jay had once joked that if they were locked in a burning building and Erin could save either him or Clara, her exact words would be "well, it's been nice").
The months fly by.
Clara lifts her own head at 4 months. A small victory, in others eyes, but to Erin it feels like she has just taken home a Nobel Prize.
Her daughter learns to sit up at eight months old. Erin cries (she seems to do that a lot lately).
Then at eight months, another milestone, albeit one that Erin tries very hard to forget.
The worst day of her life so far, by a wide margin.
And that's saying something, because Erin Lindsay has hid in a toilet stall for six hours waiting for the coast to be clear of girl who will tear her apart.
Erin Lindsay has scored drugs from dealers for her mother.
Erin Lindsay has had days long periods of no food.
But this, no question, is the hardest day of her life.
When she hands her wailing baby, who is holding out her arms for mama, to a doctor, to cut her soft skin and cut into her baby's chest and operate on her heart.
That is a hole in her soul that has never been there before.
Her knees buckle under her and Jay barely catches her in time before they are rocking back and forth together on the hospital floor, tears mingling.
And to see her baby girl after, still, swollen, with her blood-crusted wound….Erin would have taken her place in a moment, no questions asked.
She recovers and they take her home, of course.
But Erin comes back with a firm hate of the hospital and the resolution that they will never be back.
And looking back on it, from now instead of then, she still wonders if she cursed herself into what happened next.