Baby on Board

26

I felt uneasy and for once, it was completely justified. Ever since I'd heard the news, there'd been a knot in my stomach, becoming tighter and tighter as the weeks went on and now, it was in such a state that I felt sick just thinking about what was happening. 

"Charlotte, stop overreacting," my sister, Emma, said as we stood in the kitchen. I was nursing a cup of green tea and gnawing on my lip while watching the scene outside. "She will be fine."

I snap my head back towards her and glare. "How do you know that? She'll die, Emma. Why am I the only one that understands this?"

"I think your maternal instincts have kicked in too early," Sophie blurted out as she went about buttering some toast. Smothering one slice, she placed it on a plate and slid it across to me. "Eat your breakfast, Charlotte. You'll feel better after."

Just hearing my sister saying these stupid things spurred me into action. Bypassing the breakfast that Sophie had prepared for me, I threw open the patio door and marched my way across the patio towards the green garden that was just beyond the low wall that separated both areas. My father saw me approaching first and he looked up from the task he was completing, a mildly amused grin on his face.

"What is it now, Charlotte?" He asked, his voice thoroughly bored. He knew exactly what I was going to say because I've been saying it for the past few days, phoning him early in the morning or late at night to express my unhappiness at what was going on. Despite his promises that nothing bad would happen, I couldn't take his word as law. "I already told you that she would come back alive, what else can I say to make you believe that?"

"You could call the whole thing off," I suggest. At hearing this, Martha jumps to her feet and stares at me like I've gone crazy. Knowing that I could reap better results if I spoke to her, tried to get her to understand my viewpoint, I start my Stop The Trip campaign with her. "Martha, you don't know what these people are like. The only outcome is that someone will either end up dead, dying, or disowned. You're going to fall off the cliffside, end up in a coma, and if you come around, I will not be there to nurse you back to health because I will have told you not to go! Do not go!"

The rational side of me knew that I was going crazy, but when someone you love is in danger, you throw caution to rationality. Craziness takes over and that's what I was living and breathing. We knew weeks ago that Dad was taking Martha on a trip but recently, they had been going into overdrive in the planning of it all and now they had set a date, I was becoming more and more nervous about letting Martha go. 

Isaac wasn't worried, though. He was so laid back about it all that he was practically horizontal. He would tell me not to worry about it, that my father wouldn't let anything happen to Martha, and that, anyway, Martha was old enough to make her own decisions. I scoffed at his words, reminding him of the last trip my father had organised. 

It was Daniel's stag party and as I recall, none of the men came back feeling particularly fresh. I suppose going to a live action war simulation with guns and grenades would do that to a person. They were battered for days after and for most of them, their egos were as bruised as their skin. At least Dad never got around to shaving off their eyebrows. He was too drunk to be able to wield a razor. Isaac laughed at his memories of that night.