Chapter Text
He found that some part of him had truly died that fateful night. The part of him that saw the colours in the world. The part of him that relished in his ability to wake up every day. He couldn’t tell if he missed it or not.
He was certain however, that there was no part of him that would have been happy with where he stood. His buzzed head taking the full force of the relentless sun’s rays as they beat down. His brown eyes squinted, even though they were directed toward the drab ground. Anywhere but at his Father and Mother. Anywhere but her.
He hated to think that the speck of dirt on his otherwise perfectly polished boots had more visual appeal than her. Yet his heart sang it was the truth and he hated it. Hated how abnormal it made him feel. Like some queer freak. Like there was something so wrong with him that not even military school could stamp out of him.
They had tried, oh there was no doubt about it. Day after day of morning drills that spanned into afternoon spars that fell into evening tactics. The rigidity of the days structure didn’t irk him as it should and he found that overall, nothing meant much to him. There were only a few good things. One, he could be a cold bastard without anyone hating him for it, he was even praised for it by his sergeant. Two, it gave him more physical strength, he could tell, even without looking in the mirror, that he had larger biceps and his typically lanky frame had filled out quite some. Third, his dad was no madder with him than usual, he was even starting to warm up to him a bit. Four, he was able to stay away from her.
It wasn’t that he hated her; more so what she represented. What it pressured him into.
For all intents and purposes, she truly was a magnificent woman. Two years his senior, a scenario that would have many boys his age drawling and had been first introduced to him in his eighteenth birthday. He first laid eyes on her when he entered the foyer. He had looked up from the ground to see a nervous young long haired brunette stood awkwardly in between his parents.
His immediate reaction was a flood of sympathy, he understood her trepidation more than anything. Followed by a sense of overwhelming dread that stole the bottom of his stomach and kicked it into the abyss. He was many things, though he’d come to feel that to become less true as the days dragged on, but not stupid. He understood what was happening immediately.
They day passed in a haze of soul shattering disappointment and cranium compressing numbness. His food tasted like dirt and the multiple speeches his Father gave at multiple intervals washed over him like the sea to a sandcastle. One thing did stand out to him, however, his burning hatred for his birthday falling in the semester break.
But none of that mattered much when he was embraced by her, her arm digging into the dampness of his back. He reflexively went to kiss her on the head but the rapid arrival of his Father stopped him halfway.
“Congratulations, son,” was all the man said, holding out a hand. Neil took and shook it, nodding in response.
“Thank you Father,” he replied stiffly. He could smell her floral shampoo and it was really off setting him.
“We’re so proud of you, Neil,” his Mother added, looking almost murderous at the sight of the young woman clutching her son.
“Thank you,” her son repeated, she smiled thinly.
The proceeding silence dragged on to the point that his ears were beginning to ring, to which he decided to counteract by bending down his neck and kissing her crown. In response, she tightened her grip on him. If he were a better man, he would have smiled, but the lesser man he was now couldn’t even find the desire in himself to want to.
Before he knew it, he was being pulled into his parents’ car where he encountered a fairly normal silence before arriving back at the place he would be confined to for the coming months before being shipped off to Harvard School of Medicine. It didn’t annoy him at all, not even a twinge of mild irritation, and he couldn’t find it anywhere inside to hate himself for it. For doing his Father’s bidding and becoming a mindless cog in the machine of war.
Three years later, he was stood in a similar position on the imposing lawns of Harvard School of Medicine from which he had graduated a year early due to his extreme focus on studies a taking third and fourth year classes simultaneously. Many of his peers referred to him as a robot, many of him called him that to his face. It always left a bitter taste at the back of his throat. Not because it degraded him so extremely but because it always brought up memories of an incident that had occurred during his freshman year.
It was when she had visited him in his dorm and told him that his father requested he propose which lead to him getting blackout drunk and saying so much more than she even thought him capable of. He couldn’t remember most of what he said but he remembered saying she was a lovely lady but not the right fit for him and he resented being gay so much more than normal when in her presence.
To her credit, she didn’t seem to mind his thoughtless words, spending the morning after tending to his needs, softly whispering her love for him of which she didn’t care if it was mutual or not while his head was in the toilet bowl and her hand was cradling the re growth along his head. The memory always cut through the haze he lived of much of his life in and reminded him of the crushing feeling of guilt, pulling at his internal organs.
Once again, he was shaken from his reverie by the arrival of her arm this time, around his neck. She had him in such a tight grip that the diamond in her engagement ring cut into the back of his next, between the collar of his suit and bottom of his hair.
Like last time, he was swiftly approached by his parents. They offered the same empty platitudes but this time allowed him to skip driving in their car for favor of having some drinks with his graduating class of 1964.
He didn’t want to go per se, but he wanted to be in the presence of his parents even less. Besides he hoped the drink would help to show them that he wasn’t a heartless bastard or at least, he hadn’t always been.
That plain failed. He, however, did manage to avoid his parents but he got too drunk to do anything other than froth at the mouth and seize. He was truly lucky to be surrounded by a group of doctors, even if not officially practicing, or he would’ve died that night. Strike two.
When he awoke, he felt like shit, yet as he became increasingly aware of his surroundings, he felt a sense of relief. The weeping figure at the edge of his bed managed to pause her silent sobs and inform him that his parents were none the wiser. Then he remembered he was never going to see most of those people again, at least not until his residency placement at Presbyterian Hospital in New York.
Within the month before he was due to start, he proposed to her. It was predictable and uninspired but he supposed it was a nice enough ring and she seemed happy enough, even going as far as to rush over and cover his face in kisses. And because not even rapids were fast enough for his Father, they were wed before he started his placement.
Those coming four years, followed by an internship in the same hospital, were the worst of his life, somehow beating out military school by far. He’d always been a bright kid and had quite the aptitude for absorbing lesson content like a sponge but there was something about the delivery of the on site education that really threw a wrench into the works. Many times he had come home, too tired to eat and crawled into bed with her, before waking up at dawn and repeating it all over.
He had to remind himself that his chosen field was an up and coming scene and was making extraordinary leaps and bounds in research and development. If he stuck with if, there was a chance he could publish a famous study and become a respected doctor. Maybe then it would be worth it. But now it was only her that got him through his days.
She was his main cheerleader from the long days into longer nights to his first row with his father in three years that left him feel almost as he did that fateful night. Strike two and a half.
Apparently there was something shameful about choosing radiology as his field despite taking so many neurosurgery classes. The argument lasted a good while longer than necessary and he nearly collapsed under the wait of unmet expectations. Only because of her, did he make it through, and led him to reminding his Father that his field was also up and coming and he could be quite the household name if he stuck with it.
However, when he finished his fellowship and joined the radiology team at the same hospital, his parents weren’t there to offer their empty platitudes. But she was.
She was there with him later that night in bed when he needed to feel something. She was there when they were both laid on their backs panting. She was with him in the shower and there again the next night. And the night after that. And the night after that.
One day she was alone in the bathroom throwing up last nights dinner into the toilet bowl. He was by her side then, holding her hair back, softly rubbing the back of her neck and whispering sweet nothings over the sounds of her gags.
He was again by her side not even a week later when she learned of her pregnancy. He felt so much more in that moment than he has in the last ten years. The slight upturn of her lips was all the invitation he needed to pick her up and spin her around. In that moment, he felt true, unmistakable joy. He was already mentally drafting a letter to his parents to inform them of the joyous news.
A month later he heard back. Nothing that really meant much to him, they offered the same ‘congratulations’ this time with an invitation for them to bring the baby to meet them. He tossed it immediately into the fire with a grimace as he prepared her craving and looped through his work day over and over again in his mind.
As the months passed, he got more into the flow of his balanced work and domestic life. Many of his colleagues said it was womanly of him to allocate much of his time to his wife. He didn’t care, she was experiencing increasingly worse symptoms that grew alongside her stomach and the baby resulting in her being put on bed rest at four months. Which meant he needed to call in their well meaning neighbourly widow to look after her when he was at work.
By month six, she was almost too nauseous to eat much else besides weak soup. This worried him and their doctors as it meant the child would have a low chance of being born at a healthy weight. He knew she thought about it too and it only added to her misery.
By month eight, she had suck extreme Braxton hicks that the agony clouded her for days at a time and even ate into her sleep. He felt useless on those nights, all he could do was hold her and try and draw her attention away by telling benign stories of his work day. Distantly he wondered if that’s all he was now, a boring doctor with a boring life.
Then, just before month nine, her water broke. The following eleven hours were the worst of their life. Her labour was wearing and she only had the strong hand of her husband to cling on to when she experienced strong contractions. Eventually the nurses decided that she would require a C-section and wheeled her out of the room, telling Neil to wait outside in the corridor. Which he did, and spent much of the time thinking of nothing and nodding his head disjointedly at his colleagues when they gave him sympathetic glances.
Finally, he was allowed back into the room. He was immediately handed a screaming baby and told he would need a high protein diet to get up to a healthy weight but other than that, he was perfectly healthy. He nodded and looked down at the bundle of life in his hands and wondered if the feeling that was bubbling up inside was love or resentment. He was too distracted to focus on the somber faces on the surrounding nurses.
It was only when he felt a soft hand on his shoulder did he look up. Her eyes were drawn down in sympathy as she told him the sad news in a quiet voice.
The screaming child in his arms faded into the background as a cloud of quiet descended. He barely registered being handed several useful pamphlets about grief, how to take care of a child and where to get the breast milk from.
The next thing he knew, he was outside clutching the swaddled baby boy in his arms with a bag of medical equipment strapped to his back. The November air chilled him slightly but the memory of her blanketed him and their child as he robotically made his way back to their house.
He was a Father now, he had no time to mess around.