❝ PICKET FENCE! ❞ → GRAY ✓

→ iii.xiii

Act Three, Scene Thirteen

→ ❝ i've lost her! ❞

             "The doctors say she'll live," Tommy nodded, his hands crossed solemnly in front of him. He and Polly were stood beside Michael's hospital bed (the doctors had strictly instructed him to rest after popping most of his stitches back open), though the room was more crowded than it had been previously. Michael didn't know how his cousin had managed it, but after surgery the unconscious body of Carol had been moved into his own hospital room, and lay in a bed mere footsteps from his own, tucked up to her chin by a thin blue blanket.

             "Well, that's a good thing," Michael furrowed his eyebrows, "Isn't it? Why are you talking like she's going to die?"

             "Michael," his mother sat beside him, placing her hands on his. Michael pulled it away immediately; the only hand he wanted to hold in that moment was his wife's. "The doctors say that she bled a lot on the outside, and internally."

             "So?" he looked over at Carol, wishing for nothing more than for her to open her eyes and sit up, laughing at him for being so serious. He tried to picture her laughing, but found himself disappointed; the memory was never as good as the real thing.

             "They're calling it amnesia. They don't know how bad it will be, but they think she'll have lost at least some of her memory," Polly went on to explain, biting her lip. The whole idea was relatively new, and nobody knew a lot about it; the ambiguity of Carol's suspected condition was almost the most difficult part.

             "That's fine," Michael shrugged nonchalantly. It felt like rocks were tied to his arms and the threat of losing his wife sat heavily on his shoulders, weighing him down, "I'm her husband, she'll remember me, and then I can help her remember everything else."

             "You're not stupid, Michael," Polly's tone was harsher than she intended. She softened her words, sighing when he refused to meet her eye, "You know it doesn't work like that."

             Tommy said something after that, though Michael paid him no attention. His hearing faded out as he focused on Carol, whose chest was rising and falling far too slowly to be comfortable. The light that shone through the window hit her perfectly, causing her to glow with a celestial beauty that Michael had never seen before, and her hair shone like whiskey in the sun's rays. His wife truly put the angels to shame.

             He wondered what his life would be like if he never met Carol. He couldn't work out if a life without her would be better than the pain he felt in his heart seeing her in such a vulnerable state, dead to the world that had become so familiar to her. Since moving away from Sheffield, Michael hadn't given God much thought, but he prayed that He would save his wife, who didn't deserve the rejection of a figure that she had dedicated her life to.

             Michael wondered if Carol regretted seeking him out. He wondered that, if she could, she would go back and never get on the train from Sheffield Station in 1924, ultimately being the one decision that dragged her into the world that she had so despised. He wondered if she had really accepted the Peaky Blinder lifestyle, or if she simply put up with it in fear of losing him once and for all. He wondered if she wished she had never met him, on one sunny day in 1909.

             "Her mother will find out, Michael," Tommy's mention of Janet Goodwin brought Michael back to the room, and his gaze shot up to his cousin. His blood began to bubble at the mere thought of Mrs Goodwin, and all that she had subjected Carol to throughout her short life, "One way or another, she will find out and she will come here and demand that Carol goes back to Sheffield with her. She has a right, just as Rosemary did, Michael."

             "That woman's the fucking devil, Tommy," Michael wanted to raise his voice, but his fear for Carol's safety resorted his tone to a quivering whisper. He bit back tears, exhaling slowly and shakily, "You can't let her go back, you fucking can't!"

             "If she asks, then we will have to let her. We can't deny-"

             "She's a Gray now," Michael furrowed his eyebrows, biting the inside of his cheek, "She'll stay near me, her husband."

             "Her daughter almost fucking died, she-"

             A wave of power suddenly travelled through Michael as he interrupted Tommy again, "She isn't fucking leaving! I'll never see her again. You saw what happened last time!" he pointed at her vaguely, as if he was trying to throw the three of them back into the past, "If she goes back, her mother will never ever let her from her sight, and will never talk about us. Carol going back is the same as her fucking dying."

            Placing a hand on her son's shaking hands (which he had unknowingly balled into fists, the skin turning a bright white), Polly looked at Tommy, nodding towards the door. With a sigh, as though he wanted to side with Michael but couldn't, Tommy obeyed his aunt and left, taking one last look at Carol before closing the door behind him and leaving the hospital.

             They sat in silence for a moment while Michael held his tears back, staring at the ceiling that was almost as white as his knuckles.

             "None of us want her to go, Michael," Polly admitted after a few minutes, pursing her lips, "Carol is one of us, and will always be one of us. Fuck, she was one of us before you even married her-"

             "Why has this happened, mum?" Michael's nostrils flared, in a mixture of sadness and anger, "Carol wouldn't hurt a fucking fly, she doesn't deserve this."

             "Look, nobody is saying she will have to leave, Thomas just can't choose his fucking words well enough," Polly was lying through her teeth; she knew enough about Janet Goodwin to believe that she would come back on the hunt for her daughter, "All we're saying is that you need to be prepared in case it does happen."

             Carol was like the daughter that Polly had been separated from so many years ago. Though she could never fill the void that was left by Anna, she was just sweet enough and just innocent enough to thaw the woman's heart and bring a sense of purity back to the family. It hadn't been the same since France, with the men never truly returning and the kids growing up much too fast, but Carol carried a pre-war charm with her that warmed even the coldest of men. She was good enough for Michael as well: in the two years that the two were apart, Polly had never seen her son as happy as she had seen him around Carol. They were destined to be together, she believed that will all her soul.

             Michael pulled his mother close, hiding his head in her elbow as he let his tears fall and dampen the woman's blouse. Polly's shaking hands stroked the back of his hair as she kissed the top of his head, not bothering to hold back her own tears for any longer. In her 40 years of living, she had managed to lose two daughters and now her son was slowly slipping from her grasp.

             "Mum," Michael sobbed, hiccupping over his own breath, "I just got her back and now I've fucking lost her again. I've fucking lost her."

END OF ACT THREE.