Just to let you all know I think this fic will be coming to an end over the next couple of chapters. It feels like the right time for it to end for those that are still reading. I promise I'll wrap up the storylines properly and thanks for sticking with it!
And as soon as I can hold you once again I won't let go of you, I swear. We live through scars this time but I've made up my mind, we can't leave us behind anymore.
It's been 6 days, 5 hours and 32 minutes since Carla gave birth and she's hardly left the hospital. She cannot bare to leave the side of her tiny new born baby girl, scared she'll disappear if she even blinks for a second too long.
Her emotions are all over the place. She's filled with a love she didn't know possible and yet she is terrified. She is a mother and all of a sudden she doesn't feel ready. She watches now as Peter holds Macie in his arms for only the second time, she's getting better and stronger all the time but Carla will not touch her. She cannot let herself hold her. "No, Peter I told you. I don't want to hold her." She stands with her arms folded as she watches them, her lips pursed and shakes her head.
Carla loves the little bundle in her husbands arms and yet she refuses to bond with her. She will not let herself touch her or hold her or speak properly to her. Her daughter being so ill only seems to make the matter worse, further fuelling Carla's beliefs that she is not good enough to be a mother.
Peter feels his heart breaking every time he watches his wife with their daughter. His baby girl needs her mummy and yet he cannot seem to persuade her of this fact. It is killing him. It his killing him because he cannot seem to find the words to show her how important this is. How desperately she will regret missing out on the early days. Peter can see the aching in Carla's eyes each time he catches her watching Macie. He knows her arms feel heavy and long desperately to feel the weight of her baby girl sleeping in them. Finally their baby is beginning to get better and soon she will be allowed home. Their fight is nearly over now and yet Peter knows it's just begun.
"Carla you can't keep doing this love. You need to bond with her."
"Will you just stop? I don't want to bond with her, Peter. I couldn't even get her through the pregnancy properly, what kind of mother am I." Her words say something so different to her eyes as they fall upon her slumbering daughter. A piece of her.
"So what, what are you suggesting. We leave her here and go home as if she doesn't exist?"
"Don't be so stupid!" She barely has any fight in her anymore.
Peter cannot raise his voice because he tenderly cradles his daughter against his chest but his eyes plead with his wife. "Well then what Carla. You tell me, because I am all out of options." He stands up slowly, carefully and walks towards Carla before she can back away.
"Look at her. Look at our daughter Carla." She shakes her head and looks anywhere but at the little girl but Peter is relentless, "Look at her."
Carla's eyes fall to Macie and her breath catches in her throat "I'm no good Peter, I'll break her. I'll destroy her.." He wishes he could wipe the tears from her eyes.
"Hold her."
"No."
"Carla, hold our daughter."
She shakes her head and rubs her lips together as she tries not to sob but the tears keep coming and before she has a second to realise, Peter us laying their sleeping angel in his wife's arms and it is too late for her to pull away.
Instinctively Carla pulls her closer as she almost gasps, needing to protect the most precious thing she has ever known "Peter take her back.. I can't.." but Peter steps away and shakes his head "you can my love. You are. There's no user guide to this, no instruction manual. You just need to love her, baby."
Carla's eyes fall down to the baby in her arms as she sinks down into the chair, defeated. Macie lays wrapped in the softest of cream blankets that Carla and Peter brought before they even knew whether she was a girl or a boy. She doesn't speak now. She can't. She simply watches the sleeping form of her daughter and pulls her in slightly closer.
The little thing in her arms has soon become her world, despite her determination not to bond With her. She is her entire world and that is what so desperately terrifies her. She is the dependant one. She is the one that relies on others and she is not used to the responsibility of being so incredibly relied on. Not when she is such a mess of a person herself.
How can she be expected to look after sombody so perfect when she is so far from a good person. How can she teach this little girl rights and wrongs and morals. How can she teach her manners and give her happiness and love when she knew so little of it growing up.
And yet as she does what she did minutes after the birth, placing the smallest of kisses to Macie forehead, she knows she will do everything in her power to try.