Birth

The contractions started just aftermidnight. Erin, in her seventh month, was setting down to bed beside her husband when she felt the first shudder of pain. Her brow furrows and she pressed a hand to her rounding stomach. She sat there an hour willing the pain to go away. Each time it came, she pressed her eyes closed, gripped the sheets and said a hail mary. Erin could not take the loss of another child. Especially this one who had been moving, and kicking and alive.

"Richard..." Erin's voice was shaky. A little thing in the silence of their large bedroom. He rolled over, his salt and pepper hair ruffling against the pillow.

"Yeah, Er?" He sat up slowly, his eyes squinting as she turned on the light. It only took one look at her before he pushed himself up all the way. "What's wrong with you? You're white as a ghost..." Watching his wife, Richard Dunbridge slung his feet over the side of the bed, moving for the door.

"Ow." Another contraction. She wasn't sure what was happening, really, the miscarriage she had before came much earlier, and was much faster, less painful. But now she had been sitting here for hours, and they didn't seem to be going away. "I think it's best you take me to the hospital, Richard." She said it softly in that tone that he knew meant business. They rarely talked to each other in directives, preferring to dance around the point rather than address it.

"Okay, okay..." Richard moved to the bed quickly, looped an arm under her shoulders, and they were off to the hospital.

-----

Labor had taken ten hours. Erin was completely numb to the entire thing. Blood, pursing of lips, drawing of brows, it all began to feel the same. She was free of the pain now, yes, but she was also free of her own mine. Her head was turned to the side and she stared out the hospital window. It was light out, the sun just reaching its height in the sky. Yellow rays bathed the room she was in with both their light and warmth. It was strange how cold she was, especially since she had been sweating and panting for so long.

Richard had gone to get some coffee. Really he couldn't look at her anymore, and she knew it. The IV at her side was dripping someone else's blood into her arm-- she had lost too much during the birth. Erin was somewhat aware that she must look like a rag doll left in the rain. Her hair was wet, her arms were limp and her eyes were heavy with exhaustion.

The baby, Chrissy, was small, impossibly small. She barely remembered what she looked like as they rushed her out of the room. Erin knew she wasn't going to be able to see her anytime soon. The baby had to stay in neonatal intensive care, and she had to stay in adult intensive care. It caused her to press her eyes closed. The englishwoman had been doing so much praying in the past twenty four hours that she was unaware she was even doing it anymore.

The door to the hospital creaked open and a man was standing there. Erin recognized him as a doctor, one of many that had been in and out of her delivery room.

"Your Majesty Dunbridge?" Erin cringed at the use of the title. She was never a fan of it, even during her honeymoon.

"Just Erin is fine." Her voice cracked as she tried to speak, her throat intensely dry and torn from her earlier yelling.

"Erin, then... I'm sorry to tell you this, but, your baby--"

"Chrissy." Erin knew what was coming next, but there was something important about naming the baby. Calling the baby by name. This wasn't just a fetus that she had lost, this was a person. A person with a fully formulated future in the englishwoman's head.

"Chrissy... didn't make it." He paused, waiting for a reaction, but Erin gave none. She stared at him blankly for a long minute and then nodded her head a touch. The earlier news that her uterus was damaged beyond repair replayed in her mind. She let the air out of her lungs as if it had been knocked out of her.

"Would you get my husband, please?" Erin spoke quietly, but calmly. There was no reaction, and the doctor was baffled. Each time he had broken news like this the woman and screamed, had cried, had done something. Anything. "I think he's in the cafeteria. And if you'd send my mother in..." Erin's voice gave out and she just nodded at the doctor, turning her head to the window and looking out it blankly.

Richard came. Erin's mother came. And though they tried to get something, anything out of the Englishwoman, she didn't talk again. In fact, it was two days before she spoke at all, and another week before she used sentences once more. Richard, when asked about it later in life, would always explain it as the moment his wife died. Because after that, he wasn't really sure who the woman in his bed really was.

Choices

Erin stood at the edge of the park staring at what looked like a window. A careful cut from one side of reality to the other. Reaching a hand out, she placed it through and then pulled it out again. It was real. Days and nights wandering through Regents Park had left her ragged. It had been months since she'd slept, really, and it was starting to take its toll. The small woman seemed to have shrunk away. Bones showing through skin, her miniscule arm fell back to her side once more. She pursed her lips.

Three days now she had come to this spot to inspect the door. On the other side she could see trees, foliage. It blended in perfectly with the periphery of the park, and had she not felt the cool breeze one impossibly hot day, she never would have noticed it. The moon shone on her from both sides of the door, and it was clear to her that it was some sort of portal. Erin was a logical person, sure, but even she could accept evidence, and the more she inspected the more she knew it was real.

Ever since Chrissy, she had been a shell of a person. Unable to eat, unable to sleep, unable to even speak much, outside of a few noncommittal noises throughout her days. Richard, unsure of what to do, just gave up, and they went through their days as if they were living with a ghost instead of each other. The silent meals and careful passings in the hallways had the staff whispering. At times it was as if the house was a museum and the people who lived inside it were afraid to disturb the quiet observance. More and more the unease grew, more and more the couple began to resent each other.

Erin's mother had brought her knitting, just like the first time. But unlike the first time, something was irrevocably broken inside of Erin. She just couldn't care. Couldn't function. Life had stolen from her both the promise of a daughter and the hope of another. Her purpose was gone, and she was unsure just where to go from here. Each part of her raising had been bringing her to this place. The place where she managed a household and raised children. With just the house left, she was empty, uncertain. There was no grand plan she was a part of anymore. Erin felt reduced to the manager of the house, and even that she couldn't handle any longer. There was nothing left.

The door, wherever it led, was the closest thing to an out she had seen in the long weeks since they released her from the hospital. All she had to do was step through, was walk, and she was saved. Wanting so badly to run away, to forget it all, it was as if God had finally been listening, had finally given her the gift she so needed. Her eyes closed and she took a long breath, letting the freshness of the air from beyond the door wash over her. Leaving her family should have been unthinkable, but she was beyond reason.

With a slight bend in her knees, Erin reached for the suitcase she had packed. Simple things, her Grandmother's dress, some money, photographs and a few simple possessions. It was all she would need for her new life, wherever it may be. Erin hadn't given much thought to that, actually. Where she would end up could be nothing worse than where she was coming from. If no one knew her name, her failure, they couldn't judge her for it. It was the perfect plan. The perfect escape.

Turning slowly, Erin surveyed the park. She could see Anna's house in the distance, the townhouse that bordered the park just beyond the duck pond. Small white ducks wandered aimlessly on the path, and a jogger completely unaware of the monumental decision her Princess was making, moved past almost soundlessly. Erin moved her lips but made no noise in her quiet goodbye to London. It had been a place she had grown to love in the past weeks. Her midnight wanderings, though a cause for embarrassment for her family are all that had kept her alive. Shaking her head, Erin gripped the suitcase tighter and set her lips in a line.

One more breath and that was it. She was done. Head turned back to the door, she looked straight through it at the trees beyond. Without letting her eyes stray, Erin stepped towards and through the door.

The choice was made.