Thanks to everyone who have reviewed. Here are answers to reviews. And then when this chapter's up I'm going to go through the reviews and delete ones… again.
Well. Here they are.
Guest
THIS IS SO SAD U MADE ME CRY :(
Answer
There are many sad stories as how the children ended up in care. I just take what we know from the series and make a chapter out of it. Sorry for making you cry.
Guest
Type your review for this chapter here ...
Answer
It seems you accidentally sent the review without writing anything. It will be deleted.
Roxy
That was a good story well done ! :) Can you do Candi-Rose next please her past just seems so interesting as in the dumping ground her past isn't mentioned that much only that Candi-Rose isn't her real name I wonder what it is ? I wonder if it will tell us when she leaves ?
Answer
I don't choose what order the chapter will come in. I write them in the order they came into the series in. Then sometimes when there's more characters coming in at once (such as when the Burneywood- kids came in at the beginning of TBR season 3) I put up a poll on my profile about what readers wants to see next. I've had loads, but there's no point with writing reviews about who I should write next. I wonder too, I hadn't even seen the episode when I got this review so I was really confused… I wonder what it could be… hmmm. Oh, and thank you.
Depressed
I am depressed
Answer
I'm sorry to hear that. If you are, there is help to get. I suggest you look it up, because I can't help you and I hope you get some anyway.
Guest
A .M. A. Z.I . N. G story
Answer
Thanks, I'm glad you like it.
Guest
Good story but what the hell is this stuff about u being CYBERBULLIED ? :(
Answer
After putting up a chapter I started getting loads of weird reviews. Some were hateful. And some were calling me things I'd asked not to be called because it was making me uncomfortable. So yes, it did feel like bullying for me at least. But thanks, I'm glad you like my story.
Guest
Hi BABE it's been a while ...
Answer
You must know by now this chapter will be deleted. This isn't even making me uncomfortable anymore but now it's just annoying.
Guest
I love these stories ! Your so talented with writing ! :)
Answer
I'm so happy you like my story. Thanks for reading and reviewing. But it should be you're or you are.
Your Sister
I love you sister , you the best person ever
Answer
You are not my sister, I am not yours. Please leave.
Guest
When r u doing Finns chapter
Answer
If you write a review like this I can't answer if you're doing it anonymously. But if you want I might answer and update on my Instagram page- Linneagbfanfiction… Anyway, I'm putting it up now. I hope you like it.
Grace
oh shit
Answer
Well that's a weird comment. Can you explain to me why you'd say that and it will make the comment make sense at all.
Guest
To Linnea ... The person who said " oh shit " probably just ment "oh shit " by something that happend in The story she won't have said anything bad about the story cause it's good x
So like " oh shit Bradley had to go back to the house " so don't think the worst love X
Answer
I know what "oh shit means" but with only that the review didn't make much sense. Thank you anyway for trying to explain it.
Justin little wo
Well good job of feeding Tracy beaker they worm
Answer
Well, as far as I know Justine Littlewood didn't feed Tracy the worm. But of course I had nothing to do with it. And I'd appreciate if the comments were actually written to me and not for characters.
Tracy Beaker
You are my best character out of Tracy beaker returns my name is Scarlette xx
Answer
Who is? A character? Me? Tracy beaker?… I don't get it. Nice name.
Scarlette
So sassy
Answer
This comment was written for chapter four- Maxy's chapter. Who was sassy?
Scarlette
I like it when you laid on Jody
Answer
Who? When? Where? Never mind that's just sick.
Guest
Supercaligfrishdeliticespaladosues
Answer
Oh isn't that that word, the word from the song? Julie Andrews? Hold on "Goes to check". No it's not and this comment doesn't make any sense. But I hope you like my story.
And there, finally that was all of the reviews to be entered. That is unless I have more reviews before the chapter's finished and up. Because I actually haven't started the chapter yet when I'm writing this. Although, when the chapter's up and you're reading this it's finished.
So I hope you like it
Amos is portrayed by Oli White.
Finn McLaine
Amos McLaine and Lacey Lucas were engaged. They had never been as happy as when Amos got down on one knee and asked her to marry him…
That was until Lacey didn't get her period and took a test. When it turned out she was pregnant and she was happier than ever and so was Amos. They decided to move forward the wedding for a bit so their child got take part in it.
Yet Lacey had been so nervous, there was so much that could go wrong. And she- if anyone would know everything
Lacey Lucas did have two older siblings. Twins, they both had Down's syndrome.
Lacey Lucas had never been as nervous as minutes after she had given birth to her first child. How she and her fiancé Amos had dreamed about having a child. How they had planned their wedding while buying a huge, purple, stuffed gorilla they just couldn't leave be.
How they had talked about what would happen if the baby was like Lacey's two older siblings- that she had since a couple of years ago broken all contact with. And how rare it was that Down's syndrome was genetic.
But Lacey had just had such a strange feeling…
Lacey was used to having to put other's needs in front of her own. That's what it was like during the whole time she grew up with two siblings with special needs. The only time she had been able to make her own was telling their parents that she never wanted to see them ever again.
And she thought she had left people- family members with special needs behind her.
But that was until she had just given birth to a baby boy that seemed healthy at first.
That was until the doctor who was going to check his weight and height suddenly scooped the small and fragile baby on two kilos and a half and rushed out of the room without a word or as much as a look towards the parents.
"Look." Amos- the dad and Lacey's fiancé tried to calm her down and assure her not to believe the worst. "We talked about this- Down's syndrome being genetic is super- rare. And we don't know what the doctor saw when she suddenly left. He's a bit premature and so little. Maybe it just had something to do with that."
"No…" Lacey said, exhausted by giving birth and crying. "…I know what this is. I just know it. I've seen it. I've seen this happening to Eleonora and Ethan. Discrimination, heart problems, bullying… And I can't see it happening again. I broke contact with my family when I met you for a reason and I… I can't go through this all again."
"You won't ha…"
In the middle of Amos trying to assure her it wasn't what she feared the door to the room flew open. He barely noticed- but he held his breath when he saw it was the same doctor as before came back holding the baby in her arms.
"There's something you two need to know."
The doctor's expression was serious. As if she was to come and say the baby or Amos or Lacey wouldn't live for long. Or to tell them they were badly ill.
"When I was looking up his weight and height I did notice the line he has in his hand. The one where the skin bends when he clenches his hand. And that is very typical for people with Down's syndrome. So I decided to check it as soon as possible. If we want to run some blood tests or more tests you're going to have to make the decisions if we should do them or not. But before then, there are criteria's called Hall's. They are twenty…"
"I know what they are." Lacey cried. "How many did he have?"
"I don't." Amos said before the doctor had stopped talking. "What are they and what do they mean?"
Lacey pouted, but at least she silent while Amos rocked the baby slightly.
"It's when… we might suspect that a baby has something called Down's syndrome. There are twenty different criteria of the most common symptoms. And if four or less then we leave it, it means they don't have it. If between five and twelve we look it up…"
The room was suddenly way to quiet for Amos's liking while he tried to put together one and one.
"…If twelve or more then we can say for sure that he or she has Down's syndrome. But we still take some tests to make sure…"
"And how many does… he have?"
Amos's heart beat so loud he could feel the pounding in his chest. The doctor looked from Amos, to Lacey and then on the baby again before she answered.
"Thirteen."
As if they knew what they were talking about, the baby gave a slight whimper. At the exact same time that his mum- Lacey gave another, louder whimper and Amos just say looking from the baby, to Lacey, to the doctor and then around again.
Meanwhile the baby whimpered and then started screaming louder and louder.
"Oh dear. Come here little guy." Amos stood up and took the small baby wrapped in a bright blue blanket in his arms. "It's okay. It's okay." He stood up and rocked the baby towards his shoulder. "We love you anyway. And we're going…" Lacey sent him a death glare. "…I'm going to take care of you." She sent him another glare. "Come on. Let's go for a walk."
Amos first carried his son out into his hallway, they were at the end of the hallway so Amos carried the baby walking slowly and rocking him in his arms towards his daddy's shoulder.
By the time they were at the reception the baby had calmed down slightly. At least he wasn't screaming at the top of his lungs anymore and Amos turned him slightly so the baby could see what he saw.
What he saw was a big wall full of flags.
"You see?" Amos asked and pointed. "That's brazil's flag. And that's Germany's. And that blue one over there with the yellow cross, that's Sweden's…" The doctor from before came walking up to them. "What are all these flags for?"
"This is a big hospital." The doctor answered- as if Amos didn't already know that. "We sometimes have women… sometimes whole families with other nationalities. And then there was one dad from Somalia who… he barely spoke any English but he was just so happy. And he wanted us to know where he came from and he showed us his flag…" She pointed to a blue flag with a white star. "And when he and his wife went home with twin girls he was so happy he forgot that flag. And we didn't want to forget him and get rid of it. So we put it on this wall and the rest is history…. You seem to know a number of these flags?"
"Yeah… I'm a football fan so… well. That's the whole explanation."
But as the doctor walked away again there were more flags that caught his eye. One that he just couldn't figure where it came from.
Sure there were a lot of flags he didn't recognize. There was one white with a blue cross that he recognized but couldn't for anything in the world remember where it was from.
"Well. What do you say?" The baby was now almost sleeping. "Should we go back to mummy? Maybe she's calmed down by now."
Lacey hadn't calmed down. Not anywhere close.
"You can choose okay." She shouted out with tears streaming down her face when Amos returned into her hospital room. "You can take your pick- it's him or me. You can take our r*traded baby with you but I'm not having anything to do with him- or you, ever."
"Don't call him that."
"IT'S WHAT HE IS!"
Amos looked down on the baby in his arms, then up on his girlfriend in front of him. He wasn't saying a word but as he turned again towards the door and walked out into the hallway. Trying to ignore Lacey's words still ringing in his ears.
He knew Lacey. He knew she meant every word she said.
"I'm going now." He mumbled. Lacey acted like she hadn't heard a word or neither when he left the room and walked out of the room. But instead of walking up the hallway to the wall of flags like he had before he turned in the other direction where there were large windows and he could see all the way up into the night skies.
"Look. Kid…" Amos pointed out the window. "There's the moon, and there's the stars. And there are billions and billions of stars. And for you- I'd go around and around, billions and billions of laps. If it was to protect you." He pulled a deep, shaky breath. "But I can't. Okay? I can't protect you for what's coming. And neither can mummy and that is why she… why she… she wants you… she just doesn't want to see you breaking- and it's too hard for her."
He took another deep, shaky breath. And for a moment he held it and watched his son, lying sleeping in his daddy's arms. But with another, shaky breath he knew what he had to do, walked up the whole corridor and to the doctor he had seen earlier who stood there.
The question he had to ask was harder than any other question he had ever asked before.
"What do I do if I want to give him up for adoption?"
The doctor now reacted, flinched and looked up at him, then took off her glasses and just watched him for a second. Amos was just about to ask one more time when she finally answered.
"We give a call to the social services. If you want to you can stay and meet them. If you don't want to. Then I can fill up some answers for you on a sheet of paper and then you can go."
"I don't want to stay…" The doctor nodded and pulled out a notebook and her pencil, wrote down the current date and then looked up. "…No… I just… Just take him and leave."
"Do you want your baby to be able to look you up and come see you when he turns eighteen?"
The doctor's voice was calm but firm. Amos hesitated for a moment, he would have preferred to be shouted at. Then he shook his head.
"It's too hard."
"You know…" The doctor looked up from the sheet of paper she was filling up. "…You don't have to make all these decisions today. They are hard and nonetheless important decisions to make. You can stay here. If you don't want to stay right here or with your girlfriend then there's a patient hotel where you can stay."
Amos looked down on the baby once more. But Lacey didn't want him and there was no way he could raise a child on his own. Let alone a disabled one.
"I can't…" He shook his head. "Let's just get through this."
The doctor smiled in distress at him but didn't say anything at first.
"What's his name?"
Amos looked up. Thoughts were spinning around his mind? A name? Why on earth would he have to put a name on a guy he didn't even want?
"We can give him a name if you don't want to."
"No… no… I just can't come up with… something. A name is something he's going to have to live with for his life so it's an important decision…"
Amos looked around the hospital hallway. Everything that caught his eyes was the wall of flags and then that annoying blue and white one that he couldn't…
"Finland."
He had said it before he even knew he had realized that he'd remembered. How could he have ever forgotten when he…
"Sorry. Did you say something?"
"I'm a great, big football…" Amy said, wondering if this was a good idea or not. "The first big game I went to. It was England vs. Finland… I don't want to name my baby just something random. I want him to have a name that is referring to me or something I did… The first big game I went to was England vs. Finland… Finland won…"
"And?"
"Finn… I think his name is Finn. Finn McLaine."
The doctor glanced to the wall with flags and the white one with a blue cross. If it hadn't been for the situation she could have laughed.
"Well that's creative!"
"I know." Amos bent down and kissed Finn's forehead. "I think if there is some higher power up there then he'd be quite creative, only to creative children like these. You're the best okay?" He raised slightly. "You'll always have the biggest place in my heart…"
Before he then had the time to change his mind he lowered his arms to the doctor that was noting the time of birth, height and weight.
"Make sure he's well taken care of."
Amos McLaine then turned and walked away, with the first steps of the rest of his life. A life that he'd never know where his child was.
"Hey…" He walked back into Lacey's room. "They asked me to name him… There's this big, great wall of flags out in the hallway. An English because there has been English people having been treated here. And then American, French and all kinds of flags… They asked me what his name of the were…"
"DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?" Lacey shouted. "I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT HIM ANYWHERE. I WANT IT TO BE LIKE HE NEVER EXISTED."
Carefully Lacey rolled over on her side so she wrapped herself in the blanket she had and turned her back against Amos. She wasn't crying, not screaming anymore- she wasn't doing anything except for breathing and looking through the window and onto the dark star- spangled skies.
Amos did the more, he flew onto his feet when he couldn't sit still. He kicked the door open with a bang and then ran through the hallway out from the ward. He then ran up the nearest stairwell he could find, and didn't stop until he had reached the top floor.
Well there, realizing that no way could he run from his own feelings he sunk down to the floor with his back against the wall. He put his elbows towards his knees and then buried his face in his arms and cried as his heart was breaking.
He cried for ending, as the clock passed midnight and turned into the day after Finn's first birthday. He cried until he saw he was outside a storage room instead of a ward- which was why nobody walked by. He cried until he wanted to throw up, and then at last he cried when he felt the rage burning inside of him, and there was only one decision left to make.
"There is big wall of different flags out there." Amos went back into Lacey's room just as the sun was rising outside the window. "English, American, European, African… And there was a Finnish one and I remembered a football game I went to. I remembered the very first and… I wanted the name to refer to something with me- something with us."
"What did I tell you?" Lacey mumbled tiredly. "I never want to act as if he was ever born. And neither do I want to act like Eleonora or Ethan were born. Nor my parents. I'm tired with stupid people." Amos swallowed but decided to answer.
"I named him Finn- for the Finnish football team that was playing at the first game I went to."
"That's a stupid, ugly name. With a stupid story and an ugly baby."
Amos felt the rage burning inside of him, and he'd had enough.
"I made my choice."
Amos said this with a dark tone in his voice as he walked around the bed to be able to sit down next to his girlfriend so he would be able to look her in the eyes. Before he had the time to say anything else she shakily sat up on the edge and started leaning forward to lean against Amos's shoulder. But before she had reached him Amos saw what she was doing, jumped onto his feet and took a step away from her.
"I might have chosen to give him up. But that's for his sake. I can't raise a child on my own and give him the best childhood possible. Not even a good one…."
"What…" Lacey was panting tiredly. "Wh- what. You're no- ot go-nna lea…"
"You're too right I'm gonna leave you." Amos took the ring he had once given her. "You disgust me…"
Amos was at first about to go and flush the rings down the toilets. But as he looked down on the pure silver while they burned in his hand he suddenly looked up on Lacey again. In a way that had her believing he had changed his mind. But instead he pushed the two rings down his pocket he turned and without wasting a single glance on her disappeared out the room and down the hallway.
Pure silver meant too much to only be flushed down the toilet…
Before Amos went home that night he had thrown them on a train track instead.
But from that day on Amos McLaine always wished that he had been able to raise a child on his own. Seeing how his fiancé had already broken down his self confidence into nothing which made him so sure of it.
There wasn't one day when he didn't wish he could wrap his arms around his son, wondered what he was like. Maybe he liked football like his dad or maybe more dancing like his mum…
And when he saw a little child, a baby or a toddler along with their dad…
There wasn't once when he was jealous of everyone that had made the other choice than he did.
There wasn't one single day…
No, it was more often than once a day. And not one single hour that went by for the rest of Amos's life that he regretted the choice that he had made.
And there wasn't a day that Lacey wished she hadn't made him do it.
It's a weird story behind Finn's name. But since Finn is such a major football fan I thought it worked and I quite liked it.
I know that the doctor probably wouldn't have tested those things without telling the parents but I went with this idea- it's not like they ran some blood or anything. They just looked at his palm, at his eyes and checked how much his joints could be bent etc.
As said in the chapter Down's syndrome is also very rarely genetic. But I thought that this could work and I sort of liked the way it turned out.
If anyone wonders why that flag- story starts with a Somalian guy/ family it's got nothing to do with racism or anything. I worked with a guy from Somalia and I could just imagine him being there and being crazily happy and everything. He just acted like that even during another week day. So I decided on that.
(Just making an extra note that the man that she tells Amos about is NOT the guy I used to work with. Only a man that was based on how I think he could be. And then too Somalian… Am I making sense?)
Random fact
I tried to figure what thirteen different criteria's of Hall's criteria's Finn would fill. But I couldn't decide of which ones so that's why it's not mentioned which ones he shows but only a few of what they are.
