The Tattooed | Completed | ✔

Chapter 13 - Ruled in Fear

Today I was being discharged but I had to wait on Dimitri to get off work. My fate for the next nine months would consist of bedrest and more gossiping women in my house than I'd like. Dimitri wasn't really at work today, he was really back at the house packing away anything that had to do with our cover and Escaped status. He needed to contact the council in Fuga and tell them what was going on, if we needed to change or mission, if I needed to go back.

Eddy's birthday party was being held tonight. Dimitri is going to pick me up and then we'll get Eddy from her lessons. Our neighbors have been kind and took care of party planning for me, saying I had enough to stress with a baby on the way. Ester was admitted to the hospital in the Providence heart, I won't see her again until she returns home with the new baby.

Ester offered up her house for the party, kept telling me I needed all the rest I could get and if I so much as thought that I was letting four plus children run through my house, I was insane. Everyone said that she was the insane one, she wouldn't even be there for the birthday party in her own home. Howl said they would rather have Eddy's party in his home than that of someone giving birth soon, she didn't need the extra stress of a messy home.

I stood in the small bathroom of my medical room, the mirror larger than I expected. My shirt slide off my shoulder, it made me feel small. The shirt was Dimitri's, he didn't feel like finding my own clothes when he brought me something to go home in. I stare at my reflection, four years can change a person, four years can really make someone feel different. I looked older than I had, I feel older. My black hair has dulled, loosing all the shine I remember being there only days before, it could be the stress or it could be that I haven't bathed properly in nearly a week. Green eyes stare back at me and when I realize they are dull too and I know it is the stress.

Lifting my shirt, I stare at the scar that sits just inches above my bellybutton. I don't remember when it had come through my skin but I remember the day it happened. I run my fingers along it, remembering the car accident. The scar runs three inches long, ending just before it reaches my core. I know there is an identical line on my back, running parrel to my spine. I remember that I almost died that day, I lost more footage of intestine than most people can fathom and I wonder how a child will grow inside me if I am missing important things.

Then I picture her, playing with Eddy in a yard I do not recongize. They sit on swings, an outside play toy for children in Suden, not common in any other Providence. Her hair is dark, like mine, but her eyes are light and her smile is crooked, like Dimitri's. I do not see her nose so I can't compare it to either parents, her height is short but that could be of her age, which I'm not sure of. I hear their laughter but then I realize the laughter is coming from beyond my room, from somewhere within the ward.

I hope that it is late enough for Dimitri to be here, I've grown tired of the medical smell. The nurses here give me knowing looks as if they know I am Tattooed or not truely married, either way I feel their eyes boring into me. They are not like the people on our street, they do not blindly believe our story, they suspect and it is not comforting to know I am to entrust them with my care. They often come into my room when I am sleeping and I wake in terror, I have nightmares of my father walking in that door each time it opens.

My father is a man I do not love, a man I wish was dead. I cringe at the thought, I'm not suppose to wish death on someone but then he took the my mother away from me in a time I needed her most. Staci Lynn had to grow up without her and I am sure that she can no longer remember mother's face. I can still remember the way his dog smelled that night, a mix of bad breath and blood. The thought causes my stomach to kick and my body leans for the toliet. The doctors say I have a rare medical disorder that occors with pregnancy, I hate it because I can not keep anything down.