THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF CAMBRIDGE ARE EXPECTING A BABY
Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are pleased to announce that The Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant.
The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh, The Prince of Wales, The Duchess of Cornwall, and Prince Harry and members of both families are delighted by the news.
The Duchess has been diagnosed with a connective tissue disorder called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, a disorder that causes the body to be prone to dislocation, she has been instructed to be careful for the duration of her pregnancy.
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September 9, 2012
"I can't believe you're still going."
"Nat, how could I not go?"
Even though they aren't in the same room, or even in the same country technically, Jaclyn feels the rippling glare through the phone. It's enough to make her pause from where she's rolling up her clothes and placing them in her suitcase. At least, all the things that can be shoved in a suitcase, there's a few dresses that have to be hung up in garment bags, and the borrowed jewelry will be individually packaged in secure boxes because she's pretty sure they're worth more than her life.
"You just found out you're having a high risk pregnancy. The last thing you should be doing is flying."
"I'm fourteen weeks along," she deadpans, adjusting her cell that's balancing between her shoulder and ear. "Besides, canceling now is practically a smack in the face to everyone who's expecting me to be there. You know I can't do that."
She rolls one more pair of khakis, saying a silent prayer that she can squeeze into them without trying them on, and zips up the suitcase. "I've had several doctors tell me the best thing I can do is act like everything's normal," Jaclyn says as she collapses back onto the master bed. The old bed frame protests beneath her, but otherwise holds firm.
"You've also been told to be extremely cautious."
Jaclyn groans, burying her face in her pillow the best she can. Outside the wind whistles lowly, shuttering the glass panes of the farmhouse. Sometimes the thrum of helicopter propellers sounded overhead, and she would rush outside to lay down in the grass and watch. Even if William wasn't the one flying, Jaclyn liked to imagine he was.
Jaclyn allows herself to gaze out the window, peaking the sprawling green fields, and if she squints hard enough the edge of the beach could just be made out. Her dad always grumbled about the state of the house, pointing out the overgrown ivy on the walls and missing shingles from the roof, but Jaclyn loved every detail. Anglesey was a different world, one magical and romantic, and one she could escape to.
But not all problems could be kept from the fantasy.
"Can we not talk about this?" Jaclyn asks, her hand fluttering over her stomach. She was showing more now, any nutrients she got always going right to the baby while the rest of her body decayed. Dr. Setchell swore for most women with EDS the morning sickness abated after the first trimester, and she was holding onto that desperately. "I already feel like every choice I make is wrong."
Natania falls silent, the only sign she hasn't hung up being the soft breaths she exhales, and the revelation hangs heavy in Jaclyn's mouth. Heavy and gummy and stalling her to silence because it's undeniably true.
If she would've just paused throughout the years and taken her injuries seriously perhaps she could've known, and if she knew then perhaps she wouldn't have coveted her flexibility so much. Who really cared about being one of the most flexible ballerinas in the world when this was the end result?
"Well you can't just say that and then give no explanation," Natania spoke up, her voice teasing, but clouded with concern.
"If I wouldn't have been so foolish for all those years, ignoring doctors, forcing myself into dangerous stretches, I probably could've had a diagnosis before now. I... I could've known and done something about it, but god all I wanted was to dance, and looking back now that seems so small in comparison."
Her stomach rolls, something akin to acid spilling throughout her body in waves of nausea, but she stays still. Gentle fingers rub circles over her belly to soothe the fire inserted into her veins. She takes a deep breath, it's going to be okay, and lets it out.
The affirmation is weak, but the experts swear by it.
The thought alone makes her want to cry and laugh in equal parts. She has a team of people dedicated to taking care of her, each one catering to a specific need, and still she feels horrified and uncertain. Maybe it's that her research hurts just as much as it helps her because there hasn't been a single day where she hasn't been scouring the internet for reports of women with EDS sharing their stories.
Every site she opens, every link she clicks, is horror story after horror story. One woman's doctor didn't believe her and before anything could be done to help her the baby's head was out and she had severe tears. Another woman was told she was making up the pain for attention, but she miscarried five times before someone finally listened to her. A man talked about losing his wife and child to uterine rupture, another case where the woman's problems were minimized until it was too late.
It's damningly frustrating to read, but it makes her hyper aware of how lucky she is. How screwed up the medical system is, and she wants to march into every hospital she can and demand they respect women. Demand they respect people if only to make the situation not seem so helpless.
"Listen to me," Natania's sharp voice snaps Jaclyn back to reality. Where her phone is so harshly pressed to her ear she'll most likely have a red mark. "You can't blame yourself, not when the industry brainwashed us to be like that. Do you know how many sprained ankles I've danced on? How many times I've refused to go to the doctor because all they'll do is give me a boot or brace and tell me I can't dance for six weeks, and the risk of losing a role or favor with our teachers always seemed greater than dancing through an injury."
There's a pause but it's slight, a chance for Natania to inhale harshly and for her words to come out softer. "We were taught as children that pain was good, that serious dancers worked through pain, and if we gave in we were weak. So we deal with it, and we wait for it to go away, but it never does. We just grow numb."
The silence returns like a soft static, and Jaclyn eyes the barre bolted to the wall in the corner of the room. Months ago she woke up every morning to do a brief barre, something familiar for her body, but she's barely glanced at it in weeks. Like the object itself scorned her and not her own genetics and choices.
Before Jaclyn can say anything, before she can drone about how touching the wood fills her with loathing, Natania pushes on. "Leo has a fractured vertebrae in his lumbar spine."
Jaclyn sits up her hand bracing her back protectively as if it were contagious, but she can't fight the crawling shudder. "Please tell me he's alright?" She gasps. His back was always a thing of concern, but never did she think it would go this far. They all thought themselves naively invincible.
How quickly the world was proving her wrong.
"He'll be okay, but he's going to be out for at least three months." Her words grow hasty and clenched as if her jaw tightened. "He at least has insurance now that will pay for physical therapy, but you know as well as I do that most physical therapists don't know how to treat dancers."
"God I'm so sorry Nat, if you need anything at all please don't hesitate to ask." Jaclyn can make out the silhouette of her best friends shrug, a shadow playing on her walls as if she were there in the sun.
"It's not fair," she heaves, and Jaclyn nods along. It wasn't fair to dedicate your life to something only to know it would end in pain and misery. Natania hiccups once more, "We wanted to start a family, but..."
But the world is cruel.
"I'm going to do something about this," she states, hand clenching the device as her expression grows cold.
"What?"
"I don't know yet."
-----
September 12, 2012
A duchess can't have dead eyes.
That's the mantra going through her head the second she's off the plane and in Singapore. No one wants pictures of a frowning royal, her sorrow and struggles won't sell the causes. These people don't want to look in her eyes and see the dull life laid out, not when journalists so easily become poets when describing their vibrant entrapping color.
She came all this way, so once the sun shines on her face she drops into her act.
The first day is the worst. The nausea from flying follows her throughout the day, battling with the humidity to beat her into the ground; but she smiles when she needs to, stands where she's expected to, and whenever she has an audience directly in front of her she fights to not slip.
The second day is better.
It helps that the humidity is down and the clouds are out, and Gardens by the Bay is possibly one of the most extraordinary places she's been in all her years of traveling. Once William helps her off the long golf cart she spends a solid minute gazing up at the supertrees, as the locals call them. The vibrant greenery sprawls up the constructed trunks, that have to span more than twenty meters, and the colorful spindles of branches crawl out like veins at the top.
The people are kind as well, and though she's never met a rude person on a walkabout, the genuine delight everyone expresses when seeing them nearly brings tears to her eyes. Everyone wishes her well, and asks about the pregnancy, and so many people seem genuinely concerned for her.
"How's the baby, Your Royal Highness?"
"Take care of yourself!"
"How far along are you?"
She does her best to answer everyone without giving too much away, and she allows herself to celebrate with these people she doesn't know. Occasionally she runs a hand temporarily over the bump that pokes through her dress. It's still a surreal feeling, to look down and see it there, and it's the one thing that assures her the baby is strong.
"Did His Royal Highness enjoy the orchid garden?" One woman shouts over the rest, and Jaclyn expertly finds her, a head amongst thousands, and takes her hand. "He did, and all of the flowers are so lovely here."
The woman's wrinkled hand squeezes hers, and Jaclyn holds on for a second longer, if only to commit to memory the glassy look of her dark eyes, before the crowd is shoving back between them.
"Hello, how are you?"
"Lovely to see you."
"Thank you for coming."
"Hello, lovely day today."
She looks as many people in the eye as she can, trying to have an intimate moment with as many as she can before her guards usher her to keep moving. William's already further ahead of her, but he moves with practiced ease. While she still is too easily sucked into every person and every word.
She wipes her palm against the floral pattern of her dress, and quickly continues on, but her mind races back seconds before to the woman and the orchid.
It's not the first time someone has asked her about it today, and it wouldn't be the last. The previous day they visited The Botanical Gardens, and more importantly they were the first royals to see the Dendrobium Memoria Princess Diana. The orchid named after his mother. She was set to visit it as well, but died weeks before the trip.
Naming orchids was their way of welcoming important guests, they were even shown their own orchid, the Vanda William Jaclyn. She could only assume that finally having William lay his eyes upon the orchid reflected a sense of peace that Diana was seeing it too for the locals.
"Jackie!" She looks down, a little boy with dark hair falling into his eyes holding up a bouquet of twig like red flowers.
"Hi, are these for me?" He nods jutting the bouquet so the plastic rustles, and sh takes them gingerly. "Thank you so much. I love flowers."
The little boy beams, blushing a burning red as he muffles his giggles in his mother's leg. When he peaks out she waves and he returns to his spot giggling all the same.
"How are you liking Singapore, Your Royal Highness?" His mother asks, her hand combing through his hair as he once again looks out, but now all cameras are trained on them. Hand held, phones, all of them and his eyes go wide before he hides. It's so innocently pure, and Jaclyn's heart clenches. She has to squeeze the bouquet to stop herself from soothing the flutter in her stomach.
"I adore it," she admits, eyes wandering around the scenery and breathing in the aroma of flowers, "Do you live here?"
"We do."
"How lucky you are," she says, but is quickly and gently hurried along. As she turns the guard guides her by the shoulder and it's enough for her to get tangled. Before she knows it her ankle rolls outwards and pops, and if it weren't for the guard, who's able to catch her enough to gently guide her to her bum, the fall would've been worse.
The excitement of the crowd around her gasps in one breath, and slowly it ripples throughout the park until she sees someone nudging William to turn around. He doesn't run, but he paces to the best of his ability without coming across as frantic.
"Help me stand?" She asks the guard, trying to push back up onto her feet despite the numb feeling still in her ankle. "Ma'am you could've broken your ankle-"
"Trust me sir it's not broken. I know what broken feels like, now please help me stand." Just as William gets to them the reluctant man has returned her to her feet, though there is something off about her right ankle.
Her husband opens his mouth to protest, noticing the determined look in her eye, but she points her foot under herself until it pops again. "Alright let's move along." She takes a few tentative steps, William bracing her back while he shoots her a reproachful glare where the cameras can't see.
It's only when they're up on the skyway between the supertrees, with the people around them falling away, that William briefly stops her. "Are you sure you're alright? If you need to go lie down-"
"I'm fine, Will, I promise. Just remind me to ask Kate to buy a few pairs of flats. If my ankles are going to start giving out I probably shouldn't wear heels." He doesn't seem to appreciate the joke, but he drops it all the same.
Jaclyn can't help, but lean over the yellow rails to the ground below. William moves in beside her his hand coming up to rest on her back as if she's truly tall enough to fall over.
Eyes are still on them everywhere, but they're supposed to walk freely about the walkway in the air so the press can catch candid photos of them. It's not as exposing as it should be, not when cameras and people melt away like the skyscrapers in the distance, and all that's left is the lush greenery gathering below her in a swamp of leaves.
"I wish we could stay here longer." She doesn't even mean to say it, the words are for her heart only, yet they fall out. William angles himself purposefully, giving her a pitying stare that says sorry without the words.
-----
Let it never be said that William wasn't wrapped around her finger.
The second they left Eden Hall, the home of the British High Commissioner, and returned to the Raffles hotel he was bidding her to change as he called an unmarked car around to the back. And if she let out a completely immature squeal of delight no one had to know.
It was almost too easy to shed the fine red dress and the Queen's pearl jewelry she had been wearing all day. Trading them in for a Star Wars sweatshirt, jeans, a ball cap, and glasses. William did the same with a zip up jumper, and even though neither one of them needed glasses it made the disguises more fun.
Once back at the Gardens by the Bay, she practically drags him to The Flower Dome. Crowds of people gather around to gape at the glowing trees and the luminescents glittering ground, and she manages to expertly weave them through towards the glass conservatory.
"Thank you," she murmurs, latching onto his arm as they enter the dome. The glass above is pitch with night, speckles of stars dusting the sky in clusters, and the dome is practically empty with everyone outside.
William leans down to kiss her head, and she swoons into his arms as he does. It's a breath of fresh air to be normal, for a singular night, for a singular hour.
They stroll arm in arm up and down the paths Jaclyn pointing out the flowers she knows, and taking pictures of the ones she doesn't to talk about with her dad later. The conservatory glows with light placed within the plants so they light up beautifully, and the art and the scenes transport them to different lands with every corner they turn. One side is Australia, the other California, then there's the South African, South American, and Mediterranean gardens as well.
"I wish my dad could see this," she breathes out, leaning back with Williams' support, to capture the whole display of succulents artistically woven together to create a natural yet beautiful habitat.
William pauses to watch her, blue eyes falling as she stares at the photo on her phone, but before he can ask she's back and dragging him along to the next thing. He pities the guards who have to follow them at a distance, yet keep up with his wife's sporadic surges of energy.
It cheers him to see her bouncing around, yet he can't help but worry at the same time. Her ankle giving out was completely random. What if this was a mistake and instead of seeing the gardens again what she needed was rest?
Jaclyn halts in front of a display of geraniums and marigolds. The yellows, organes, and reds mix to paint a sunset in the dirt, but she's more focused on the trees and structures around them than the flowers themselves.
"Wow!" She huffs, hands on her hips, and he has to softly tug on her wrist to keep her from crawling into the landscape subconsciously.
"What is it darling?"
"Do you see how these trees are placed?" She asks, but William only grows more confused, eyes scrutinizing the display for whatever she sees. "Marigolds are full sun flowers while geraniums need shade, the trees are placed perfectly to shade one while not blocking the other."
"Aren't the marigolds at KP in the shade? Why haven't you ever told the landscaper?" He asks, a chuckle in his question.
She rolls her eyes behind the box frame of her glasses, "Yeah, like they'll appreciate me telling them how to do their job. Sorry Will, but the marigolds are just going to look depressing."
William realizes then how unashamedly happy she is, sees the color in her cheeks glow with the lights, and can't help but compare her to some golden angel from an old wise tale. The way she brushes the petals, or the way she leans with her eyes closed to soak in every detail around her.
Pulling her behind the display of marigolds and geraniums is a move his eighteen year old self would've done, but her illicit gasp and wide eyes are only encouragement.
The kiss is gentle like the scenery around them, and William sighs against her lips as his fingers card through her hair. They pull apart slowly and his exhale is her next inhale.
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Now we're on the tour. I'm only going to do Malaysia next chapter because I want to keep things going, and I hope this chapter is at least a little happier than the last (even if it's more of a filler setting things up).
Teaser for the next chapter: state dinner, petty drama, and talking about baby names. I'm also considering putting a poll at the end of the next chapter to see what names you guys like best because I can't decide between the ones I have, but the gender is going to stay a secret 😈
Let me know what you guys think in the comments!!!