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TWO

TWO

Everything was a blur.

As they wheeled her year-old son into the theatre, she could only see as much, what with the tears clouding her vision. Internally, she kicked herself for having made the one mistake she swore never to make.

"Eleanor Fortin?" she heard a grim voice calling her name and turned to see two officers waiting for her, wearing disappointed expressions on their faces and she wouldn't expect less from them. She too would've been disappointed in herself had the tables been turned.

"Hi, I'm Dr. Chase-Miles Desjardin, I'm Damien Fortin's doctor and I'd appreciate it if you could give my patient's mother a little time with her son, at least until he's out from the operating theatre. Please, at the very least she deserves that," Chase said promptly when he saw the officers approaching Eleanor.

Eleanor nodded gratefully, tears rolling down her cheeks as she began weeping.

Chase brought her to a separate room and sat her down, offering her some water. "They're assessing your son right now and I'll be in with them in a bit but I need to know that you're going to be here if, or when, he wakes up, alright?"

Eleanor nodded, drying her tears with the back of her hand. "Please, please just help him," she managed.

-

Mondays have always been traditionally busy for the Fortin household. Eleanor had precisely eleven minutes to have breakfast, gather the kids and ready them for daycare before she rushed off to the law firm she was working at.

Her husband, Luke, would give his wife a kiss and leave her with an "I love you" before taking the kids to school. This was their morning routine and it had been this way for the past year since Damien entered their lives.

That was up until Eleanor was assigned the case she had been hoping for—the billion dollar Tremblay family settlement that every law firm in Montreal had only dreamt of being a part of—and Eleanor Fortin had been assigned as the lead in the case.

"You don't understand. This is not only going to propel the firm to higher grounds. I'm thinking a promotion is in the works once I win the case," Eleanor said, preparing little Damien's milk formula on autopilot, the same way she always had.

"You mean if you win the case," Luke said, folding the clothes, his eyes glued to the soccer game on the telly.

"I mean when I win the case. I've got this in the bag," Eleanor said, walking right in front of the television so that Luke's full attention was on her and what she was about to say. "I'm looking at a hefty increment, Lucas. This is all I've been working for. This case, right here."

"How'd I marry such a capable wife?" he grinned, folding the last of their freshly-washed laundry.

"I wonder that too, sometimes," Eleanor joked while their son began crying in his nursery. "Someone's hungry," she said, rushing out of the room but not before Luke called out, "Hey Ellie, before I forget, could you drop Damien off at the daycare tomorrow? I would, but I've got to be in early tomorrow."

She had mumbled an "Okay, just this once though" as she fed her son, pushing his fine hair off his slightly sweaty forehead. "I guess mummy's taking you to daycare tomorrow," she cooed, planting a kiss on his forehead.

"How lucky is mummy because she gets to spend extra time with this cute one tomorrow," she added, rocking him gently as he was being fed. She committed the details of his features to memory, willing for him to never grow up and to stay this little forever.

It's funny how the mind pushes autopilot memories to the back of the brain, assuming that its handler would automatically remember everything. And when autopilot memories mix in with freshly-made ones, it typically isn't much of a problem if its handler happens to forget ever making them.

It's typically the little things.

You forget to swing by the laundry on your way home from work because you made some last-minute plans to go to the movies. Or you forget to grab your earphones on your way out the door because you slept through your screaming alarm clock and groggily rushed through your morning routine.

But some things can never be forgotten. Some things should never be forgotten.

Like how Damien sat quietly in the backseat of his mother's car, asleep, as she drove to work on autopilot.

Or how Eleanor heard the wailing sound of alarms going off and instantly recognized it as that from her car.

Like how she was told by her company secretary that the firefighters had broken the windows of her car and she should come downstairs now because her son isn't breathing.

Or how she realized that she had forgotten to drop Damien off at the daycare, leaving him in the car in 30-degree weather for the longest twenty minutes of his year-long life.

Like how she is sitting here now as her son was left between life and death because she made the dire mistake of forgetting...and how she'll spend the rest of her life trying to forget that today ever happened.

-

She committed the details of his features to memory, willing for him to never grow up and to stay this little forever.

And now, he never will.