The White House - Book 6, The Porth Kerensa Series

Epilogue

The days after her fall were hazy and Elise felt as if she was floating in the ocean, barely able to stop herself drowning under the black waves that kept closing over her head. Time meant nothing to her as she drifted and waited to finally sink to the bottom. Eventually though the surf spat her out onto the hard shingle of reality. Oh, how she longed to be back in the waters of oblivion for the pain was immense, the lights too bright and every noise reverberated loudly in her head. The hushed whispers of the people around her were amplified, as if they were shouting in her ear and she wished they’d go away and leave her alone.

Leave her alone to die.

She heard doctors and nurses discussing her and she listened to James next to her, pleading with her to please come back to him. She heard the words ‘swelling on the brain’ and ‘broken spine’. She knew they were talking about her and she wondered why James thought she would want to come back to a life confined in a wheelchair. So she closed her mind to their words and concentrated on dying.

But she didn’t die.

One day she woke up and realised the lights weren’t so bright and the noise had quietened to a normal level. She opened her eyes and focussed, blearily, on James sitting next to her bed, holding her hand, gently.

“You’re awake,” he said, smiling, happily, relief shining in his tired grey eyes. “I’ll call the nurse.”

“Not yet,” Elise croaked, huskily. “Talk to me first. How long have I been like this?”

James squeezed her hand. “Eight weeks, El. It was touch and go for a little while. The doctors put you into a coma and they said I shouldn’t get my hopes up, but I knew you were strong enough to fight. I told them if anyone could do it then it was you.”

Elise moved her head, slowly, and looked away from him, staring around the bright busy ICU. When she spoke her voice was low. “What about the baby?”

“Oh El,” he whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?”

She hated the fear that threaded her voice when she said, “Just tell me, James, please.”

“The baby died,” he replied, sadly. “It was a little boy. They delivered him by emergency Caesarean, but he didn’t make it.”

Elise closed her eyes and swallowed down the nausea that washed through her. The baby was dead; her baby boy. She had killed him. She should be relieved that she’d done it, but she felt as if she had cleaved a massive part of her soul away and she suspected she would never recover from that.

“Where is he?”

“I had him cremated, El. Your mother and I went to the service and I have his ashes, safe at home with Noah. I named him Nathanial.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, although she didn’t know what she was really apologising for. Was she sorry because she had deliberately killed their son, or was she sorry that she hadn’t died too? Perhaps it was because everything they had ever tried to create was symbolised with the urns of two baby boys' ashes.

That was what she had given James.

He stroked her face and said, “What happened, Elise?”

She could never tell him the truth. How could she ever say she’d killed their child because she knew she couldn’t live a life wondering who or what she had given birth to? There were no words that would help him understand the weight of fear that had churned inside her from the moment Val’s things had arrived in the post. So it was yet another lie she would add to the mountain of untruths they had built the last few years of their marriage on.