Denial

[TelephotoMarigold]

Title: Denial
Type of Story: One Shot
Main Characters: Bianca Scott, Heath Braxton
BTTB Rating: G (Angst/Strong Emotions)
Genre: Drama, Romance,
Does the story contain Spoilers: No
Any Warnings: This story deals with the after affects of losing a loved on and contains strong emotion.
Summary: Bianca Scott is dealing with her grief in light of losing her baby son.



Denial.

Blank.

Nothing.

Inability to comprehend.

Emptiness.

Still as a statue in the quiet dark, listening to the silence. Too cold for tears, too full of fears. This is not how it was meant to be. This is not what was meant to happen. Reaching out for something that wasn’t there anymore and the remembrance of loss assaulting her brain. No. shut down. Don’t think. Don’t think. Blink it away. The tear in her eye. There gone. Marble. Be like a statue. Don’t let it in. Don’t.

“I have to go home,” words ruptured from her mouth, desire to run, to flee. To. Get. Away. From. The. Place. Where. Her. Heart. Stopped. Beating.

(The place Rocco died.)

He leads her to Irene’s. Treating her like glass. She knows she wants to reach for him. But can’t. To succumb to the comfort of his touch will break her. It will shatter her soul into a million pieces. She knows this so she avoids his touch. She can’t meet his eyes because in them she’ll see the truth, the pain of loss. She can’t do that. She can’t accept it.

Doesn’t want to.

Doesn’t want it to be real.

Because if this isn’t some kind of sick nightmare that she can wake up from then how will she cope with never holding her baby again.

He gives her a look, again, expecting something from her. She has no words for him. No kindness in her. No softening of the edges that will make her want to ease his pain. She should do. She should turn to him. Hold him. Help him. He’s trying so hard to help her.
So hard in fact that she wants to scream at him to stop. And then she does. She tells him to leave her. ALONE. Because that is all she can stand right now. Not the hugs of well-meaning friends and family, as April comes to see her. She watches as April’s perfect tears fall on to her perfect face but they mean nothing to her. The jewelled droplets trickle like crystals down her sister’s pretty cheeks. She can’t help her sister understand this loss because she didn’t understand it. She can’t join in and cry too. She just can’t. Because that way she’d have to admit that Rocco really was dead.

The funeral is arranged. She didn’t even do that, begging Irene to do it for her. She doesn’t even question how Irene knows how to arrange a funeral as she remains in her little sheltered space. Not letting things in is working because now she can go whole hours without remembering how cold Rocco was when she last held him. How he’d stopped breathing. How. He. Died.

Bargaining.

She lays in the quiet hearing nothing. Knowing that she is listening out for his cry. For when he needs her again. But there is nothing. NOTHING. There will never be anything again. No little cry that tells her that he wants her or that little noise he made when he was happy. She can’t get used to the silence. She hates it. She hates laying there waiting, endlessly waiting. For the cry that never comes.

She knows she’d do anything to hear him again. She’d be nice to absolutely everyone. She’d never complain about anything. She’d mark the kid’s papers on time. She’d take the evening detentions and even the lunchtime ones. She’d do anything. She’d give up Heath and Irene and April. She’d spend the rest of her life alone if only this wasn’t happening. She’d literally say and do anything, anything, if someone would just walk into her bedroom right now and say there was a terrible mix up, that Rocco wasn’t gone.

That she’d never hear his cry again. That she’d never hold him again. That she’d never see his first steps, hear first words.
She’d do anything just to hold his hand again. To feel his tiny fingers wrapping around one of hers. She’d do anything, sacrifice anything, say anything, just to have one more single moment with him. That is how desperate she is not to have to deal with the pain of this loss.

Because she knows she will never be the same again, she’ll never have the old Bianca back.

And she’d even be ok with that if it meant that she could hold Rocco again.

Anger.


Promises mean nothing.

He said they were a family.

He gave her something to believe in.

He lied.

She offers him the same expression. The same nothingness in her eyes as she looks at him. She wants him to guess what she is thinking. Of course he can’t. But she punishes him for it anyway. She wants him to take charge and then shouts her rage at him, her spite.
Heath handles the funeral better than she can. She sees him carry the too-small coffin and hates his composure. He helps Darcy through it. Is supported by his brothers. He doesn’t need her. She is not part of his life and that is the way that she wants it. He lied after all, there are no happy-ever-afters in Summer Bay.

Heath takes it. He lets her shout at him and curse him. She doesn’t know why. She tells him is is over and is angry he doesn’t fight back.

She is angry at him for letting her walk all over him. For letting her push him away. For breathing.

She is angry he is still breathing when Rocco isn’t.

She is angry she is still breathing.


Depression.


Dark.

She can’t see anything except the darkness.

She can’t feel anything except this overwhelming weight pressing on her chest, robbing her of breath, of hope, of light.

This pain makes her want to retreat into that numbness and shock of the first night but she can’t do that. She can’t get away from this.

She could wear black, she could drink, she could do other things but it can’t take away any of this pain inside of her and maybe she deserves it. Maybe she could have done things differently, been a better parent, a better mother.

She cries now.

The first tears.

Slipping down her face in an endless trail. They splash on to the sand in front of her. Wracking sobs shake her and she clutches at herself rocking back and forth. No-one is there. She cries alone. Maybe she deserves that too.

Bitter hurtful tears.

Tears of regret, of pain, of sadness.

But it doesn’t help.

It doesn’t break the bonds of unhappiness that clutch at her heart. At the darkness that is sucking her down.

Everyone is expecting her to talk. To say something about how she is feeling but she knows they won’t understand. She knows they can’t understand. They didn’t know Rocco. Her precious boy. They didn’t hold him or feed him or tuck him in at night and spend ages just watching him as he slept. They weren’t his mother. She was.

He’d fought so many times. The rush of his birth. Catching that infection that was resistant to antibiotics. And then after all that, after all the heartbreak only to slip away in his sleep. It wasn’t fair. NOT FAIR. Why did he have to die? Why was he taken away from her so soon? She barely got to know him, to know what he liked and didn’t like. He was so small. So helpless.

More tears.

Again. They flow as though they are never going to stop. She can’t stop them. How hot they feel to her, scalding down her face these slalom tears. Faster, faster, racing to be free. She can no longer deny them, she can’t control them anymore. And they just don’t ease anything anymore because she still feels this weight of darkness pressing down on her heart.

And she knows that it will never leave her.

Acceptance.


Months later.

It doesn’t rip her heart out now. She can just about get through a day without falling apart. She knows that it’s still going to take time.

For now she can manage not to cry when she remembers Rocco and thinks that’s ok.

She knows she’s not going to forget him. She’s never going to do that. Even in years to come she’s going to remember what he felt like when he was in her arms. What he smelt like. What it felt like to know he was there, just within her reach. That is always going to be with her. The memories of him.

One day there might be other children, she’s not sure though, but still, it’s a possibility and she knows that if it happens she’s going to take so much more care of them and when they can understand she’ll explain that he or she had a brother once. She’ll try to do it carefully of course, and not let her child feel like they are a replacement or that they have to be sad about Rocco but even so she knows that she’ll still shed some tears. Along with all the tears she cries in private because, just because she’s accepted that Rocco’s gone doesn’t mean she has forgotten him.

Heath was there for her. Liam too. Irene of course and April. And others. They helped. Brought her back to some kind of norm. It was realising that they didn’t expect anything from her that finally broke through the shell of her grief. Realising that she could cry. She could shout. She could be silent. Accepting her in whatever state of mind she was in and just being there. That was important, that her grief was accepted, that she wasn’t forced to move on and just get on with things.

And she, well she did something for Heath, finally.

An apology for the way she’d acted towards him sometimes, maybe. On the anniversary of Rocco’s death she’d gone out with him and his brothers on to the morning tide. Paddling along with them on a borrowed surfboard. With the sun rising in the distance she’d held hands with Heath as they’d released a small green wreath on the outgoing waves. They’d stayed there in silence for a time seeing the small green circlet bob up on the tide as it moved slowly away from them. No words were needed.




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