"Charm, I'm coming to you on a plane tomorrow. Your husband should be there taking care of you!" Arie's voice growled darkly, stressing the word husband as a shot at Isaac.
Dahven stared at the phone in her hand. Angry that he could even suggest such a thing. "You are not my father!" She shouted angrily. "Don't act like it either!" Her voice echoing in the tiny library.
Milliseconds passed before she continued. "Don't you dare talk about Isaac like that! You're not coming, and I'm staying here. So deal with it!" She shrieked before she slammed the phone down.
Pain consumed her heart as she slumped in her chair. "He can't control me." She reminded herself as she rocked back and forth slowly.
She started rubbing her now large stomach, and felt the familiar kick of their child inside her womb. She was over eight months along, but she was due in two weeks.
Suddenly a sharp cry of 'mommy' disrupted her train of thoughts.
"Oh my god. ANGEL!" Dahven shouted worriedly as she tried to run to her room across the hall.
Angel was sitting up in her bed and crying loudly. Her face was red from such horrific strains on her little body.
Immediately she was scooped up into Dahven's arms and was being rocked gently as she danced around the room slowly.
Voices carried on through out the house. Causing the sudden sharp pains in Dahven's head. She ignored it and took care of Angel. After a few minutes, Angel had calmed down reasonably. Still sniffling back tears and talking incoherently.
Herb watched from the doorway. "You should break, ma'am." He said softly.
Dahven's head jerked up, then she looked back down at Angel in her arms. "I don't need a break. I need people to stop telling me what to do." She said softly as she stared back up at him.
He nodded his head. "As you wish." He said crisply before he walked out.
"I don't need anyone but you, baby, and daddy." Dahven murmured brokenly.
Sighing, she sat down slowly in her rocking chair. Then she ran for the bathroom. Retching violently. Blood mixing in with her vomit.
"So doctor, how long do I have?" Dahven asked tiredly, her eyes heavy from the constant force of being kept open.
She heard the loud sigh from the man in the corner of the room. "Dahven, you took too much time to get here. I don't know what I'm supposed to say."
"Say that I can live then!" Dahven shouted. A fire burning deep inside her.
"I can't say that." He murmured.
Dahven nodded her head. "Then tell me what I've got."
The doctor shook his heads. "A few months tops. This cancer you have is dangerous and often fatal if not treated immediately." He sighed again. "You could lose the baby." He warned her gently. "Or we can try and save you instead."
Her eyes slanted into angry coals. "Try and save me?" She said hotly. "You are willing to kill my baby… to try and save me?"
He nodded his head weakly.
"Burn in hell!" She retorted loudly. "I'm not killing my baby to be selfish, doc!"
"Then why didn't you come sooner? Why didn't you come when you noticed blood in your vomit?" He questioned.
Dahven could only shrug her shoulders at that. She only knew that she didn't want what her mother had. Which is exactly what she got. A bad heart and cancer. "Look I'm not here for sympathy, okay?" She questioned sharply.
"I'm not coming back." She said trying to stand up. Looking down at her large swollen belly, she added, "I'm not going to be some lab rat." With that stated, she walked out the door.
"Is she okay, Doctor Emerson?" The nurse asked cautiously, walking into the small room.
The old man shook his head maddeningly. "No, Nurse Scots. Dahven is dying. She's going to probably go slow and painful."
The nurse frowned at the news. "Do you want me to call her family?" She asked gently.
"No." Doctor Emerson replied. "I know who I'm supposed to call. I'll call them." He answered as he started back to his work, looking for the numbers he needed.
The next day Isaac walked angrily up the driveway. He swung the door open violently and saw Herb and Rosie hurrying towards him. Each were dressed in civilian clothes and held bags in their hands.
"We've been dismissed, sir." Herb answered sullenly, noticing Isaac's questioning gaze on them. "Something's wrong with her. She's closed down everything."
Shock etched Isaac's face. "Where is she?" He asked sharply.
Rosie shrugged, "We assume she's in her room, sir." She said in her heavy Spanish accent.
Giving a short nod, Isaac let himself into the house. Following the steps that led upstairs. He knew exactly where she would be.
When he got to his destination, she wasn't where he thought she would be exactly.
It was then he heard it. The sounds of someone vomiting in the bathroom.
He walked to it and pushed the door open slightly. Dahven was sitting in front of the toilet hurling what seemed to be everything in her stomach.
When he walked over to her, he noticed the blood dripping from her mouth. The thin shoulders that shook violently under the strain and the thin arms that tried to hold herself upright.
Hurt, anger, and regret pained Isaac's face as he went to her side.
Dahven could only stare at him. "Doctor Emerson told me he called you." She whispered. Her voice was almost completely gone.
Isaac could only nod. Hollows mimicked Dahven's once open and loving grey eyes. Thin pale cheeks hid the dimples that were once there. And thin lips marked where a carefree smile belonged. He could only think of the old Dahven and long for her to be the one that he held fragile in his arms. And not the ghost of a human that he was holding.
Her face molded into one of extreme pain, "Isaac." She panted tiredly. "My water just broke."
That sent him into a fit of action. Instantly picking her up, he carried her through the house and down to his car still in the driveway.
Racing towards the hospital, he kept glancing at her lying down in the backseat. "We're almost there." He assured her.
Dahven nodded weakly, and closed her eyes. When she opened them hands were grabbing at her and pulling her out of the small car and placing her on a stretcher. She gave her husband a small smile when his worried gaze fell on her.
Reflexively she grabbed his hand and squeezed it before being wheeled away inside.
Isaac sat nervously next to Dahven in her room. Waiting for the contractions to be closer.
Her eyes strayed onto him when she woke up from a small doze. "I'm not losing this baby, Isaac." She told him sternly.
He smiled weakly at her, "I know you're not."
"I may die." She said softly.
He grabbed her into his arms, "You're not going to die." He warned her fiercely. "I won't let you."
Dahven nodded her head then, but her eyes showed her doubt.
The contractions started again and she wailed loudly, and Isaac started counting them. And the nurses and Doctor Emerson appeared. "Okay, it's show time." He told them smiling confidently.
Not being able to stand being in the room, Isaac waited in the hallway with the rest of his family. Taylor and Zac smiling and joking away with him, teasing him endlessly about more diapers and walking the floor.
Isaac had laughed along with them, picturing it all in his mind, with Dahven walking there beside him. Humming the lullaby he would sing along with him.
A commotion inside the delivery made him nervous though, and he went to the small window in the door and peered in.
He watched as his child was born. But as it was taken away to be cared for, doctors still hung around his wife.
Pounding on the door, Isaac screamed to get their attention, but no one even turned their heads once.
When the entire running around had stopped, a doctor looked up at him. The look scared him and he ran into the room. A nurse pulled a blanket over Dahven's lifeless body.
"Oh, God." He begged. "No."
"You have a beautiful baby girl." Doctor Emerson told him quietly. "Dahven wanted you to name her."
"No, no." Isaac repeated over and over again as he shook his head. "No." Suddenly, he collapsed, falling down hard on his knees.
Dahven had passed away after the birthing of their daughter Dahven Charisma Hanson. Her soul was a great thing missed terribly among friends and family.
"Ashes to ashes dust to dust." The priest said in a slow voice.
Isaac watched with unseeing eyes. He held his little girl tightly in his arms. He kissed her forehead after he laid the roses in his hand on Dahven's casket.
Tears were stinging his eyes and burning his cheeks when he saw Angel do the same as him.
His brothers watched him doubtfully and concernedly. Questions were already being asked. Asking if he was okay, if he needed anything.
'I need D!' He wanted to shout at them. 'Don't offer me your services because you cannot give me what I want. I want D!'
After a while the casket was lowered into the ground and Isaac watched slowly, carefully. Half-expecting Dahven to pop up and say it was all a mistake, a misunderstanding. She couldn't leave yet. She had so much to do still, so much to live through. She had a daughter to raise with him! And Angel too!
"You would have loved you mother." Isaac murmured to Charm quietly.
Zoë looked around the mourners in curiosity. "Why is it raining?" She whispered to Angel quietly when a light drizzle started to fall.
Angel looked up at the man holding her hand tightly, she had come to know him as 'daddy.' "Because even God is crying for my mommy." She whispered back.
The rain started to thicken and become heavier.
But Isaac had heard her, and he looked down at her, then looked at the headstone. His tears fell faster, racing against the rain itself. Against God's tears.
Dahven had her "perfect" life. She grew up, married her best-friend whom she loved "more than anything" and she had a child with him.
But not every life has the "pefect" ending.
She left behind a whole world, and only so few people knew her.... They were the lucky ones.
