Temporary Secretary

Part 41

Sorry for the wait, boys. I tried to draft up to part 49, but decided to just edit the chapters I had finished. Kinda why I started my arc strategy in the first place.

This took so goddamned long to edit. Was supposed to be a brief chapter, but became forty pages... oh gee.

28 May 1981

4:00pm Thursday

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It was a Thursday afternoon.

You'd fallen into a routine by now.

It was quite simple, but maybe that's what made it nice.

You liked simplicity.

There were some aches, some faintness, and shortness of breath, but you weren't straining yourself. So that was a lie, it being the golden period. At least you were functional, though. If not spacy.

Though, Paul's stance on that was pretty clear from the beginning, that you ought to take it easy in such a state.

You were always the stubborn type. Masochistic, maybe. In any case, your mind seemed wired to get off to struggle, perhaps some sort of sick satisfaction in martyrdom, at your own expense.

Maybe you weren't content with being content before. You didn't trust it. You felt as if you were cheating, in a way, if things were too pleasant.

But hell... you were pregnant. That was enough of a martyrdom, sacrificing bodily comfort for the sake of creating a child.

Maybe you were a masochist. If you didn't feel any aching, it wouldn't bring you that satisfaction. If you didn't feel anything, you wouldn't imagine that anything was actually going on in there.

But, you certainly preferred it to the nausea. This you could whinge about, but being nauseous was a horrid thing you were very glad had passed. Nothing pleasant about that. It wasn't even pain, just a disgusting, unsteady feeling you can't escape. You'd never liked it.

But regardless, you found yourself enjoying life as it was.

You had part time shifts at the library. It was very relaxing, that. You'd always felt relaxed in such settings. It was always quiet, but with slight ambient noise. You liked the scent of books, and the expanse of information. You would never run out of things to find, as it was impossible to read every single book within it.

But your job wasn't simply sitting and reading... that was more of a hobby. You mostly helped around the place. You'd always liked organization too, shelving and compartmentalizing... You even worked the desk at times, offering assistance to people looking to find things. That much was quite familiar, too.

Of course, it didn't pay very much, but considering... Paul hadn't wanted you to work in the first place. That was fine, you supposed... beyond his traditionality and sense of duty, he was right about the office being no good for you.

And... even if it wasn't a lot, it was still security. If things did go south.

Who were you to complain? Lots of people wanted that, didn't they? To be given a free pass such as this. You must be fortunate, it panning out the way it did. Not only did you not have to give up your child, it would have the support of both parents, and a secure start to life. Now that the worries from earlier had more or less dissipated, the future didn't look so bleak. The opposite, maybe.