Chloe sat on the cold, hard, plastic chairs and stared down at the face of her friend. Tina looked so peaceful in her artificial sleep, like she had no worries and nothing to fear. She didn’t have anything to fear, for as long as the anaesthetic worked and her mind remained numb, while she didn’t remember anything she had nothing to fear. Numb, Tina was numb because of the operation but Chloe was numb because of the shock. She couldn’t believe what was happening though she was seeing it with her own eyes. As she got up and walked around she saw Lou playing dolls with some young nurse, barely out of school by the look of her. Looking at the young girl she saw a lot of Tina in her. It wasn't just the fact that they looked so alike but the way they acted; the way they moved and even their laugh was so similar that it made Chloe want to cry.
She knew that she was the only one who would see the similarities between Lou and Tina's personalities because they were no longer part of Tina. She no longer had that lovely bubbly personality that Chloe had always adored, her sense of humour had worn thin and her smile that could light up a room could no longer be seen on her face. She'd become old before her time, tied down to a man who Chloe new she loved but wasn't sure loved her, had a child she adored but who took up all of her time, meant that she couldn’t have any time to herself, that she had to give up the job she loved (well work part time) and meant that she was too tired to stay up later than nine in the evening let alone go out any where. She knew Tina would say she was happy but at what price? If to be happy you had to give up everything you love and become a different person then Chloe thought she would rather stay with what ever it was she had.
She was quickly brought out of her thoughts by a phone ringing, for a while she wondered why people were staring at her until she realised that a) it was her phone! B) You weren't allowed mobiles in hospitals and c) Her phone was still set to 'we wish you a merry Christmas' even though it was the middle of February. Going bright red she gave a small apologetic smile to all the people around her and made a dash for the nearest exit. Once outside she breathed a small sigh of relief and pressed the green button.
"Hello?" She asked suspiciously because she didn’t recognise the number on the screen.
"Hi Chloe?" A male voice asked
"Yeah."
"It's me… Sean. The receptionist said you left an urgent message for me to call you back."
"Oh yeah…. Umm."
"What is it? What's wrong? Is Lou ok?"
"Yeah she's fine but can you just come down to the hospital."
"Why I thought you said Lou was ok."
"She is but will you just get down here, now."
"But…" Sean managed to stammer before she cut him off. She shook her head and walked back into the building, wanting to see if Tina was awake yet.
As Chloe once again sat down by her friend's side she gently wiped the sweat off her fore head. As she did Tina's eyelids flickered.
"Tina?" She asked gently, holding her hand.
"Yeah?" Tina said as she opened her eyes "Where am I?"
"You're in hospital, do you remember?"
"Oh yeah, were is my baby?"
"Umm…" Chloe said, looking around for a doctor but as usual there was never one around when you needed one. "Umm… I'm afraid they couldn’t save the baby."
"What? Why?" Tina shouted as tears formed in her eyes.
"I don’t know exactly but they said something about complications that they couldn’t see on the scan. I'll go and get a doctor for you if you want." She said already starting to go.
"No you don’t."
"What?"
"This is all your fault."
"No, no it's not. What do you mean?"
"You, turning up out of the blue like this, trying to split me and Sean up. Making us fight, putting all this stress on me and my marriage. It's no wonder my baby died. You killed it!"
"Tina I know that you're upset but you can't blame me. I never meant to do any of this. I don't want to split you and Sean up and I never have. I didn't mean to do anything." She was crying now but Tina didn’t stop.
"Yes you did you lying little b***h! You know that Sean loves you as well as I do and then you come in here with all this, making him hate me and making me loose my baby. Then he'll leave me and you can go off and live together with your baby that you don’t even want."
"Stop it!" Chloe shouted, running out of the cubical and straight into Sean who was coming the other way with a bunch of flowers in his hands. She apologised under her breath but didn’t see who it was through her tears. She didn’t hear him ask if she was ok or, when he got no reply to follow after her rather than go and see his sick wife. But Tina did.
Part seven
Chloe walked steadily into the toilets. She tried hard to control her breathing and stop this panic attack she was having but she couldn’t. People around her stared as she clung onto the side of the bowl gasping for breath. No one bothered to help her. There were only a few people in the toilets but the ones in there gave her the strangest looks, probably thought she was just a hysterical pregnant woman who couldn’t control her hormones. What ever the thought it didn’t really matter they eventually all left leaving Chloe how she wanted to be: alone. She looked up into the mirror on the wall and saw Chloe. The same person and the same face that had been staring back at her for over the last 3o years. It was hard to tell that it was Chloe and if you only knew her from her days in Holby you may not have recognised the blubbering mess that stood before you now but it was still Chloe. Under all the make-up and the bags under her eyes, the wrinkles and general mess that covered her face there was still Chloe. But now Chloe saw someone else in the mirror, someone she didn’t recognise and didn’t want to know. She saw a husband stealer, a baby killer, a home wrecker and a lousy friend. Tina was right, she was all these things but she had just been to blind to see it. Even if she didn’t know it at the time she probably had come over to steal Sean, I mean she had loads of friends she could call on and why should she choose to call on Tina after all this time unless there was an ulterior motive going on some where deep in her sub-conscious. And it was her fault the baby was dead. She had been putting so much stress on her that it was inevitable that something bad would happen to the baby and maybe that was what she had wanted. For Tina to loose her baby just as Chloe had been made to loose hers. Sure Tina hadn't actually forced her to have the abortion but what choice did she have? No choice at all. She could bring a baby into the world who's father would resent it for breaking up his relationship, who's mother would resent it for loosing her a friend and making her stay with a man she didn’t love and a baby that was born out of a fling, a one night stand gone wrong. Or she could do the decent, the expected thing and get rid of the baby. Then she would be expected to get on with her life as if nothing had happened, and she had. Or had she? What if all the time she had just been waiting. Pretending to move on and get over it while all the time she had just been waiting for the perfect time. To get back at Tina and Sean for doing this to her: for putting her life on hold for all these years.
Maybe, maybe not. Who could tell? Chloe certainly couldn't and neither could Tina. As Chloe stared into the mirror searching deep within herself to try and find out if she was a cold-blooded calculating bitch or just someone with more than their fare share of bad luck Tina sat alone wondering weather it really was all Chloe's fault or if she was just looking for a scape goat to blame all her problems on. Sean on the other hand didn’t know what was going on, he'd seen Chloe leave in floods of tears and had been told by one of the doctors that Tina had lost her baby.
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