Anne Shirley Blythe
Glad you enjoyed the past three chapters, while torment is my specialty I don't want to overload anyone with it, or bore people with it so eventually it does get happier and and not so tormenting of poor little Rilla.
I do love writing Minnie Anderson that is for sure, and she is a lovely friend to give Rilla through this whole situation. doesn't care about social standings and genuinely caring.
And yes depending on Rilla's mood, she switches from Yours to Your Rilla. But a long way to love of course, but it will come eventually I think.
Also overjoyed you love this Kenneth, he's fun to write because I never want to make him truly that knight in shining armour, but he can be for sure!
It's late at night as she walks the house, her mother pokes her head out of the master bedroom, but Rilla mainly waves her off. No need for Mother to lose sleep as well.
Her new journal opened on her desk, something Ken had sent her. For whatever thoughts she might have, but doesn't have the courage to tell others.
'Ken sent this to me, hoping that I gain something from it. But what is there to write about? I do the same thing daily, I see two people outside of my family and the Church is brutal. While my sisters are sewing and working for the cause of the war at Redmonds Red Cross society, being happily patriotic…I am not.
Nothing of that will change.
Not really anyway?
Sometimes I feel so angry that I feel my heart race and blood boil.
I miss my friends, I miss my life before that night.
Still, they are everywhere, their voices, their hands…ruining everything without a single regret.
How they laughed as I lay huddled on the ground, cold and broken. Torn?
When the weeks previous I had been laughing gaily with friends, swimming and shopping?
I think I will go hunt for those monkey cookies that Susan made earlier….
Which Rilla does, wrapping her robe around her as she gets up from her chair. Monday looks at her sleepily yawning. She may be unable to sleep, but he needed his sleep if he looked after her during the day.
She wanders down the hall in the dark, not bothering with a light. She doesn't see the pet toy that was left on the stairs, the old ball that Dr. Hyde had found on Dog Mondays. All she feels is a shot of pain fly up her leg from her foot that makes her shriek as she feels herself tumbling on the old wooden stairs, head first her arms trying to catch anything that they could but pain radiants through her arm when the slow motion of falling and tumbling seem to come to an end. She can't cry too much in shock, but the lights are flicked on and father is racing towards her in his pyjama bottoms
Her hand and arm are radiating as she gaps for air.
Deep breaths, breathe, deep breaths she hears her father tell her. Mother is watching as he checks over her legs before he manages to pick her up and carry her to the office.
"Call Doctor Parker, tell him it's an emergency, and I'll need help," her father tells her mother who nods her head.
"It's okay, it okay," he soothes her, hands going through her hair and grazing over her scalp, trying to make sure she wasn't bleeding or had any bumps to her head that might be sensitive or might prove a concussion if she did.
It feels like forever before the other doctor comes, Father had already given her something to take the edge of the pain off. She doesn't even think or care if it's good for her…the child only wants to not feel the pulsating reaction of her arm that is broken.
Broken.
"I can't do it alone," her father explains. It's broken twice from what I can tell," he explains in her drugged haze.
She is still only in her nightgown, the pain causing her to sweat and for the cotton to stick in areas.
"She's pregnant," Doctor Parker says looking her over. "We'll have to do this the old-fashioned way."
"Like hell we are, I have ether," Her father says.
"She's pregnant," the other doctor repeats, as he doesn't understand the why or how in the first place.
"If it was Alice you wouldn't argue with me Dick, do not make me regret calling you," Her father snaps at the older man. "They'll talk enough about her having a fall, just think about it for a moment."
"Of course, my apologies," the older man nodded his head.
Her father speaks to her, but she barely focuses enough, only hearing something about pain relief and knocking her out. It is sickly sweet in its smell but fades her completely too black and the pain leaves her mind.
When she wakes up she is in bed with her father watching over her. Her arm is bandaged and has a plaster cast on it.
It still hurts, but the acute pain ebbed away as it throbs.
"Careful," He tells her, helping her sit up slightly, leaning against pillows. Water for her mouth, and then a long drink. Her good hand runs over her stomach.
Still there.
"Rilla, I need to ask you something but I don't want you to take offence to it because I will understand if what I ask is true," Her father says gently, she looks at him with hazel eyes, meeting the original hazel eyes. Here's a touch more green, but hazel all the same in the name of colours. "Did you…this an accident or this wasn't pre-meditated?"
"I couldn't sleep, I was hungry…so I went to find the monkey cookies. I turned to start down the stairs," Rilla says frowning. The slow motion of her fall flashed back at her, "I think there was a pet toy on the stairs somewhere. I didn't see it, and it hurt and I lost my balance?"
"There was a ball at the landing," Her father says nodding his head and sighing. "I'm sorry about the question, but I had to know, I had to make sure that I hadn't missed something else in all these days of healing?"
"I don't think there is any healing, I don't like any of this. I've ruined so much." Rilla whispers.
"No one likes what happened, but you've ruined nothing, none of this on you," Her father rushes to say to her. "I just needed to be sure that you weren't…you weren't in a place that made you want to harm yourself in hopes of harming or ridding yourself of the…" He can't finish the sentence, even as a doctor.
"Is that even?" Rilla asks quietly, "Possible?" Horseback riding was questioned, and strenuous lifting. But they never posed it as an option in the books to rid of something unwanted.
"There's still a heartbeat, and you haven't started bleeding from what I can tell," her father explains. "But shock and trauma, a fall as you had, the drugs I had to give you, combine it all." Rilla nods her head solemnly.
Miscarriages happen according to the book he gave her. Yet this one seems set on leeching off her body, an evil foreign thing that takes what it wants from her, much like its technical…
No! She wouldn't use that world, Fathers were kind caring men, loving and stern all at the same time.
"Did you telegram Ken?" She asks unsure if her parents alerted Ken about her tumble down the stairs.
Father looks at Mother and shakes his head. "I haven't gone into town yet, and not something I want to say over the telephone."
"I'll write to him, telegramming him will only make him worry and he exams coming up," Rilla tells them.
"He should know…" Mother speaks up.
"I'll okay though, minus the arm," Rilla argues back. "He doesn't need to worry about me right now, he worries enough already."
"Very well," Father nods his head and lays his hand on Mother's forearm to let it go.
She stays in bed for a day or two, eventually going to church with a broken arm. Whispers fly loud enough she can hear them easily, but no one approaches her. That is nothing new though, she was used to that by now.
She took a tumble, her father had been meaning to fix that stair for weeks now, her mother tells people.
No one believes it, even if it is just the truth mostly.
"No one just falls down the stairs Anne, but I suppose it's a sign to continue with that gown I have been making for Rilla. I don't see her being up the sewing, and the poor soul will need something to wear."
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves Cornelia," Mother says warning slightly. "Should trustworthy and nice people be found?"
"Mary's previous guardians supposedly were nice families as well," Miss Cornelia points out the flaws.
"What has been discussed and decided is not anyone's business but my family's?" Mother's eyes narrow, her voice quiet as it can be.
"Of course," Miss Cornelia says and looks to Rilla who is sitting with a cup of tea with Una Meredith behind her mother. Eating a biscuit would have made her ill to even think of the weeks previous, how things change so quickly.
Sometimes she wishes Mrs. Anderson would come to church, but she isn't quite ready enough to tackle that. Though father sent word down and she came for a small visit with Little Jims as Rilla was resting in her room. It was strange for the woman to be there, she looked out of a place in the little white room.
She didn't know how long she sat in the bathtub, washing away the blood that was leaving her body. She was crying through the pain of it all, trying not to wake her parents. She read enough to know exactly what was happening to her.
She woke up to cramps, ones like before that achy pressure-filled cramp, something oddly normal as well as her body changes.
What she didn't expect was the feeling of wetness.
She didn't know what to do, but the steady stream of crimson that trickled down her thighs told her that this wasn't the harmless sort of cramp. This was…this was…relief.
Her arm is wrapped in its waterproof covering, carefully protected not wanting to hurt it more.
She should feel sad, but she feels relieved through the pain. She groans feeling her insides twist and slouches off her womb. The door isn't locked and when the door opens suddenly and her blurry eye father stumbles he almost takes a double take.
He almost goes into doctor mode straight away. He held her hand for the longest time, not shocked about her cold wet nightgown, that was stained with blood. He didn't shuck at the sight of the blood, the clots. If anything he kept watch and made sure it looked as it should be, even if it meant catching larger clumps before they hit the drain.
If it's anything other than blood, he doesn't say. She doesn't even know what to expect other than blood as the books told her about. Sure her stomach had been rounding slightly, but how big could a fetus be? Her stomach cramps painfully, contracting in a way that she didn't think was possible.
She doesn't know how long he stayed with her, or when Mother joins them. The sun was beginning to rise when her father looked at her and her mother. Nodding his head solemnly to his wife. How her mother stayed and washed her body with fragrant soap and put her into a clean nightdress and menstrual garments.
She could bleed for another week or two, but should keep watch and any sign of a fever or weakness should be told about immediately. After that, she would resume her regular cycle, but that would come in time.
"The worst is over," her father says as he tucks her back into her bed. "Do you want us to message Kenneth?"
Message Kenneth? How many times she had wished for this to be over with…but couldn't and now she still feels more relief than sadness through all the pain she has endured.
The only guilt she feels is when she looks down at the ring on her finger.
"Did I do this?" She asks quietly.
"You're young, your body may have not felt qualified to carry it to term." He says all too carefully. "You feel over a weak ago, if it was from the fall it would have happened earlier," Father tells her after a moment.
She shakes her head quietly. "I'll write to him as well, my dominant arm is still working fine, I can send it express?" She asks quietly.
"Fine, but rest Rilla, you lost a good amount of blood it will take a bit to replenish itself," Father tells her and kisses her head. "Write your letter, rest and I will mail it a priority."
She watches him, looking ashen, but…relieved just like how she felt.
Relieved.
November 16th 1914
I lost the…baby…(She writes on a single piece of paper.)
I shouldn't feel so much relief and guilt at the same time. Father says these things happen, that my body was too small, too young to support such a thing, most likely. Given the time of my disastrous fall down the stairs and setting my arm. He feels like it's separate events, but who knows? My writing arm is fine, though my left is broken. I had meant to tell you, but… I haven't felt like doing much. They offered to telegram you, but I didn't want to disturb your studies because I stepped on a pet toy rolled my ankle and fell down the stairs. Which is the honest to heavens truth of it Kenneth…I didn't do this on purpose I promise you that. Even if that is what everything thinks.
Either way, Mother says it's better this way sometimes. Especially given the circumstances?
No child should be born of such a thing. No Mother should look at a child and see their nightmares in their eyes. Still…I…can't help be feel something of sadness, despite everything…despite me not wanting it at all…something inside me mourns a small part of it.
They say in the bible you reap with you sow, but I cannot imagine a level of disobedience to warrant such punishment. Yet, if it is god's will, why did he choose me?
I hope school is well for you, and that you don't regret your decision your offer to me now, especially since there'll be no child. I plan to learn how to be a proper wife for you one day, to learn how to cook and clean, and how to run a household on a budget. I will make you proud of me, some way, somehow. It's the least I can do, as you are going to be defending our country one day.
I just hope you don't feel like your offer was in vain now.
Your Rilla
As always comments and questions are always welcome and hope everyone is enjoying this story.