Protected by the fire dragon

All alone

*Lawrence*

Not my daughter. Clementine was cheating on me. I feel like I can’t breathe. Faye, my pride and joy, the apple of my eye. She isn’t mine, she was never my daughter. I can’t believe this. And to top it off she gets pregnant by god knows who. Is she lying about the incident? This could just be a case of ‘like mother, like daughter’. My throat burns as if I had been shouting and my anger flares up from my center. She’s not mine! How could Clementine do this to me? How dare she cheat on me! I’ve looked after and loved a daughter that was never mine and was born through a clandestine affair. I can feel my heart breaking over all the memories I had with my daughter, which are now proving false, for the last nineteen years.

“Oh, I always knew there was something off about that girl,” Georgina huffs, holding my arm firmly, “And here we have paid for her school and given her a home, and what did she do in return? She went and got pregnant at eighteen.”

I just stand there, my hands balling into fists, not knowing what to say. How am I going to deal with this? I feel that I just lost my daughter.

“Lawrence?” My wife steps up to me, touching my arm.

“I... I need to go,” I walk swiftly towards the door, knowing if I stick around any longer I am likely to do something that I regret. I need time to think, “Stay Georgina! And handle… this.”

*Faye*

I feel my eyes blink, light starting to bloom in my vision, then blinding me. I struggle to sit up. Then hands help me, and the bed is raised, so I can sit, “Thanks.”

“Oh do not thank me, you little w***e,” My stepmother’s voice sounds.

“Georgina!” I look at her in shock, she can be harsh, but she has never talked to me like that, “Where is my father?”

She sends me this cruel, cold smile, “That, you have to ask your skank mother... oh right, you can’t,” The words are dripping venom, “But my husband left when he realized he isn’t your father, your hoax is revealed.”

“What? Not my father,” I shake my head, absolutely bewildered, but too exhausted to react much, “What do you mean?”

“He wanted to donate blood to save your sorry life, it turned out he wasn’t a blood match, it seems mommy was trash just like you,” She huffs, “You are no longer welcome in our house.”

I look for my phone, “I need to call him, I need to call dad.”

“Do not even try. Also, you don’t have a phone anymore, we paid for that,” She stands up and leans closer, “Do not try to contact my husband, he does not want to see you. If you come around, if you call, if you ask him for any kind of help, I will have that little bastard taken from you... do you understand?”

My baby! I look around and spot a tiny baby wrapped in a pink blanket. My daughter. I am a mother now and she has to come first. I then realize that my Stepmother has indeed the powers to take my baby away from me. Her friends from the charity balls, she’s so fond of going to, have positions in social health care and services. All she has to do is put in a word that I am struggling and that the baby should be taken into care or adopted out and it would most likely happen.

My skin rises up in goose pimples and my heart starts racing. My baby, she is not begotten of love but I already love her, I don’t want to lose her.

I turn to look at Georgina angone,y firmly, “Yes… now please leave.”

“Oh, I am,” She strolls towards the door, “I just wanted to have the pleasure of telling you myself.”

When she is gone I let myself fall back on the pillow with a sigh. Then I take my little daughter into my arms, her eyes blink open and she looks up at me. She has violet eyes, just like me, “Hi there little one, what are we to do.”

5 hours later:

“But what am I to do? I have nowhere to go and the weather is horrible outside,” I look up at the large man. Hospital security his name tag says. And snuggle my daughter a little closer in my arms.

“Not my problem. You have no health insurance and no money to pay, this hospital is not a charity,” He leads me towards the exit with a hand on my back, “You have been discharged and I was told to nicely follow you out.”

I feel my throat close, but I refuse to cry. I refuse to let these people see me as weak, “I hope you can sleep, knowing you have thrown a young mother and a newborn baby out into a storm.”

He doesn’t answer. His face is stoic and unkind as he makes sure I walk all the way outside, then he walks back inside, shutting the doors firmly if I had any intention of going back inside.

I try to shield my baby from the wind and rain, looking around for a place to go. The weather seems against us as I try to pull the blanket that swaddles her more into my warmth or what’s left of it from giving birth.

“Miss... Miss Milbona,” I hear someone call and I turn to see a nurse come running. She looks worried as she hands me a bag, “I wish I could help more. I will pray for you.”

She is swiftly gone before I can thank her. So I look in the plastic bag, there are diapers and some wet wipes, and a blanket. I pull out the big blanket, wrapping it around us both.

I snuggle my little girl into me, stumbling down the street, tired, dizzy and weak from the birth and blood loss, trying to find a place we can hide, “I am so sorry. We will find a way. I promise you that we will get through this my little star. We will be okay.”