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Chapter 41
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2024-10-29 19:42:56“Take care of yourself, okay?” I told Hannah and hugged her tightly. She had let me and Clara sit and wait in their secret little hideout, and kept any ill-wishing people away from us with her extensive vocabulary of curse words. Some of her… Coworkers also greeted us kindly, one even sang a lullaby for Clara.
This was what I would miss about the neighbourhood. In the news prostitutes were either portrayed as horrible drug addicts or as numb girls, no one ever showed this kind side of them. They were just people, like the rest of us, trying to make the best of a shitty situation.
“You too Dalia.” She smiled at me and patted Clara on the back. I had picked her up, there were a few too many needles on the ground, and she was battling the exhaustion with all her might. Occasionally I would feel her body relax in my arms, but she always woke right back up and tried to stay awake again.
I said goodbye to some of the other gi
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The adrenaline had worn off with me. Instead I just felt tired. Tired of having to juggle everything, tired of making choices. I wanted nothing more than to just curl up into bed and sleep the month away, but I owed Robert the bare minimum of an explanation.My heart was pounding in my throat when I approached his door. Though we were definitely closer now than we had been a few months ago, I still knew that he would rightfully so chose the baby over me. The very same baby I had been impacting with my dumbass choices.“Come in,” I heard his low voice say when I knocked on the half open door. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his hands hidden away in his pockets. The sheets on the bed had been discarded to one side, the pillows were messy too. I had definitely disturbed his sleep.“I am so sorry.” I said. I really was, I hated needing other people to depend on. I hated being this much of a liability.“What happened?
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I dreamed that I was standing on a high tower, with an entire crowd of people watching me from the ground. They were screaming things at me, but I didn’t hear what they were saying. All I heard was Robert telling me to jump.I opened my eyes, but I wasn’t greeted by my yellow walls and sleeping sister. I wasn’t lying on a lumpy mattress with the sound of the TV from the other room. I had woken up in this bed before though.Why was I in Robert’s room?It all came back to me in pieces. Saying goodbye to my home, having a panic attack for the first time in years, I would really have rather just forgotten all about it. It felt like waking up to a bad hangover, I just wanted to turn back around and let my dreams distract me again.When I did turn around though, I caught sight of his alarm clock. It was already ten o’clock, and Clara’s school wasn’t exactly next door to this place.I shot
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I definitely did not raise Clara to know this.We were seated at the large dinner table. The private chef still could not look me in the eye but did give Clara a friendly wave. My head was playing an endless loop of Clara knocking her glass over or spilling her food all down her shirt. We weren’t even in a restaurant, but it still felt like this place was way too fancy for her to do that.Robert was at one end of the table, while I was on the other. Clara sat to my right, looking either silently at me or at the silverware in front of us. Things certainly did not look this shiny at our place, though I saw that she had a special kids’ set where the knife wasn’t that sharp.This time, the silence was awkward. I had at least informed Robert that Clara thought he was just a friend of mine, so we couldn’t discuss any pregnancy stuff. I was the one link between the two people, but I was coming up empty on conversation starters.
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Her long blonde hair was cascading down her back. She wore a light pink dress with high heels and smiled a pearly white smile when she saw me.“It’s good to finally meet you,” she said and walked up to me to shake my hand. “I’m Emily.”She was a bit taller than me, with the most impossibly light blue eyes. That seemed like a family trade apparently. Robert was still standing near the door, watching this play out with interest.“It’s nice to meet you too,” I answered and got up from my chair to greet her properly. “I’m Dalia.”“I’m Clara.” Clara budded in, looking at Emily with big eyes. Even though she now knew that Robert wasn’t a vampire, this newcomer was definitely a strong contender to be one too. She was stunningly gorgeous and very pale, a perfect match to what we had seen on TV.“Well, it is very nice to meet you too Clara.” Emily smi
Million Dollar Baby Chapter 46
I laid in the comfy bed, staring up at the perfectly white ceiling. Clara was softly mumbling in her sleep beside me, her body all curled together in a fetal position. I placed my hand on my bump.We had spent the last three days here, but tomorrow we would leave. I found a nice apartment in a better neighbourhood than before. Robert would be paying rent while I was pregnant, but even after I would still be able to afford it. It was in a great and colourful neighbourhood, with loads of (legal) street art and even a little flower shop right outside our building. It was perfect.I patted the bump. It really was perfect, but it would still take some time for it to become our home like our last house was. It still hurt me that I would never get to see it again. There was already some furniture in the house, but buying a new mattress was high on the priority list.I quietly got out of the bed. I was never going to fall asleep. I could postpone it every other ni
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My last apartment didn’t have a doorbell. It kept getting stolen off the wall and I grew tired of paying $30 every time to replace it. That’s why every time someone ran my doorbell in my new apartment I figured it must be on TV.“Sorry,” I apologised to Kiara after she had to ring three times until I realised. “Come in.”Kiara still smiled when she saw me, but it wasn’t her usual bright smile. She was unsure, because she had seen the tabloids with me and Robert in it. She didn’t know he was a billionaire, and the tabloids had certainly kept digging up things about my past.Over the last two days, I had looked through some nearby thrift shops, another pro to living in an artsy neighbourhood, and found a wooden dining room table, a closet for in my bedroom and some new toys for Clara. This was the first time she had her own room in my house, and we were determined to make the most of it.“Oh,
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I massaged the side of my bump. The weird pains popped up every now and then, mainly when something stressful was happening. Today they almost didn’t stop.I could see Clara playing through the glass. She had a blonde barbie in her hand and pointed to it when she spoke to the woman. The entire room was decorated like a playroom, with colourful walls and a soft floor. The only thing that wasn’t decorated as though a rainbow threw up over it was the woman. She wore a black pants suit.She was from social services. I was told to bring Clara so they could talk to her on ‘neutral’ ground, rather than at her school or the new apartment. I watched as Clara handed the woman the barbie she had been talking about while she went to grab a new one herself.I smiled to myself. That was Clara. The woman was incredibly patient, but even I could see that Clara was way too easily distracted by all the shiny toys to answer any long questions. Clara w
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The weather was slowly getting colder as fall was setting in. I was glad that the warm weeks of summer were finally over, it made wearing baggy clothes a lot easier.The driver had the airconditioning cranked up to freezer setting though. I knew that I should probably say something if it bothered me, but he had to spend all day in this car and I would only be here for fifteen minutes tops.
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Clara had never been one for lullabies, she preferred bedtime stories even before she could understand what the stories were about. Flynn was the opposite in this. If you spoke to him, he cried, but if you sang to him he would fall asleep.I finished the third Disney song, all three coming straight out of Tangled because I lacked originality, and stayed for a few more moments to watch if he wasn’t actually faking me out and was still awake. Not that I minded whatsoever, I could look at him every minute for the rest of my life and never get bored.His chest rose and fell, his face all scrunched up to deal with whatever dreams he was having. He had taken to Robert’s old crib like it had been his own for years already. He was only a few weeks old and already smart enough to know that he should not fight his father on this. God, this baby is going
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“Drive slowly.” Robert warned him. “Or face her wrath.” The driver smiled politely at the joke, probably not realizing how much truth there was in it and that it wasn’t a joke whatsoever. The baby and I were finally both cleared to go home, but that did not mean that I was feeling fine and dandy again. I had a big c-section scar on my lower stomach, one that would surely turn into an ugly scar later on. The doctors had encouraged walking and moving around far quicker than I really wanted to. I could walk out of the hospital myself, but at a slow pace. After placing the baby carrier in the car, Robert helped me sit down. I felt like I was eighty years old with how much help I needed with everything, but Robert never once complained about it. I must have really scared him with the whole ‘my heart stopped beating’ moment in the operation room. He was never
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In books and movies, they always depicted unconsciousness as this great dark abyss. Like it was a black hole with me floating around in the middle. I thought it would be similar to being underwater, floating around like I was weightless and free. But as always, the books and movies were wrong. They gave me the false hope that I would receive some sort of tranquil experience in the middle of this chaos. In reality, it felt like I blinked. I remembered looking up at the bright white surgical lights with plenty of doctors by my side. I couldn’t feel anything, even if I did see the occasional blood soaked gauze come by. It didn’t register that that blood was mine. The room was spinning, until I finally heard my final call to let go. I heard the sharp cry of my baby, my first born. I allowed myself to close my eyes. I wasn’t allowed to rest for long. T
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Robert POVThe night my child was born happened in heartbeats.The first beat, I was at home. Dalia and I had a fight, even though I knew we shouldn’t have. She was important to me, but my child’s safety was at stake. We both knew it was just weeks of frustration and worry building up and overflowing. Tomorrow I would go back and we would make up again, and I would sit through another day of complaints and silence.I was reading Clara a new book. Dalia had reread the same ones to her a million times, so in her absence I decided to outshine her and buy the young girl some new ones. Tonight she wanted to hear about farm animals going on an adventure, even though she had already heard it last night. I wasn’t in the mood for another argument, so we got to reading.
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Sleeping was so difficult. My mind was in turmoil, my body was in constant pain. I could never get comfortable enough to fall asleep and even if I did, one kick from the baby caused sharp pains to wake me right back up again. I thought that was what had happened when I woke up again. I opened my eyes and tried to turn a bit to the right to get comfortable again. That was really all I did these days, slight adjustments in the hope that it would be enough to fall asleep again. I had been in quite a deep sleep for once and I wanted to return to it, but something else was bothering me this time. My mind was half asleep so it took me some time to figure out that I could hear some sort of obnoxious beeping, and then even more time to realize that the beeping wasn’t coming from any of the neighbouring rooms, it was coming from the machine next to me.&nbs
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I stared up at the grey ceiling. And then I stared some more. The pain was pounding through my body and it felt like it had been months since I had last been able to rest comfortably. Any movement made it worse, laying still did nothing to fix it. I just wanted it all to be over already, nothing could cheer me up anymore. Robert placed a kiss on my lips, but I wanted to slap him. It was his fault I was in this position anyway. If he hadn’t wanted a baby, then I wouldn’t be pregnant, then I wouldn’t be in this much pain. It was all his fault, not mine. “Doctor Ward is coming this afternoon.” Robert said when I didn’t respond much to his kiss. It had been a few days since Mr Price’s visit and Mahlia had confirmed that the FBI case against Robert
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The pain never really went away. Though the doctors reassured us, and with us I mean mostly Robert, that both the baby and I were safe, it still did not make for a very comfortable stay. I was either high as hell on pain meds, or cranky because of the pain. It was very much taking a toll on my psyche, and then being told that I would need to stay here until I gave birth only made everything seem worse. “There is no need really,” I said. “Nothing exciting is happening, and Robert is constantly watching me like a hawk. Honestly, I never even have a moment to myself anymore.” Robert smiled at me and flipped me off, while I heard my brother laugh. In the spirit of our renewed relationship, I figured that I should probably tell him I had been hospitalized. He was luckily not brave enough to ask if he should take care of Clara, because that was really not a decisio
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Robert POVThe examination room was more spacious than I had expected it to be. It clearly was designed for a pregnant mother who needed to bring her child along, as it featured both a bed with stirrups and a small play area for the child. The doctor’s chair was now occupied by a woman with light blonde hair and a windbreaker jacket that read ‘Child Services’, while Clara was in the play area, but touching nothing. Her head snapped to the door when I walked in. Her big eyes welled up with tears and she got up from the floor. She didn’t dare run to me, as she would run to Dalia. Instead, she hesitated, waiting for me to make the first move. I got down on my knees and opened my arms for her. She realized it was okay and ran to me. She was clearly in hysterics, her eyes were red from crying and rubbing her eyes so often and her hair was half in a ponytail, half like she had been in a tropical hurricane. She only cried more when she hugged me. I
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My mind was broken into a thousand pieces. I could usually be calm and collected in the face of stress but now I can barely will my legs to move. “The driver will be here in five minutes.” Steph said to me. “Too late,” I responded. “I will drive myself.” Steph nodded and turned back to her own desk to continue working from there. I was almost at the end of the hallway when I forced myself to stop and turn back.“Steph?” I said. She looked up from her desk, as calm and professional as ever. “I am leaving you in charge. Dalia is my priority right now.”“Yes sir.” She answered and went right to it while I headed for the elevator. The truth was that even in a building filled with Harvard educated lawyers and the best business people in the world, the only person I would entrust my life’s work to was Steph. She knew how I ran it, she knew my vision for it and most of all: She was fie
