This Love

by Anna Bloom

  Clutching at the torch, I wave it up high, making the beam dance into the night sky. I haven't been by myself long when I spy Henry running towards me. “Where's Isaac?” he asks as he drops down next to me.

  “Freddy,” I say simply.

  “Are you hurt?” I don't have time to respond, he grabs me in his arms, holding me tight as he lifts me from the ground.

  “Thank God.” Grant rushes into the clearing. “What were you doing, Amber?”

  Dizziness and vertigo are making it hard for me to focus on him. “Ten year olds,” I say even though I'm not clear on where he's standing. “Isaac's not going to make it.” I state simply. “Hurt.”

  “Freddy's got him, he'll do anything to save his son,” Henry tells me gruffly.

  My eyes fly open up and I look up into Henry's face. “You know.”

  “We all know that you're family.”

  As we work our way through the dark forest, I close my eyes and think about my unexpected family who I know I will lose again if Isaac makes it through and we leave. I can’t bring myself to think of Freddy, the man who found me in the dark, nor the pain I will feel at leaving him.

  The hospital is so startling bright after my hours in the dark that my eyes screw automatically shut when we hit the reception fluorescents.

  My legs are barely working, one foot dragging after the other as Grant and Henry flank me from either side, holding my weight between them. The car park empty of all other cars told them that Freddy had decided to drive the few miles to the hospital rather than ring for an ambulance and wait for it's arrival. It was the same decision I would have made.

  Waiting for us inside the sliding doors are Danni and Charles. Danni rushes for me, nearly knocking me off my feet. “Amber, I'm so sorry I couldn't come to find you.”

  “How did they know where to look?” It's been hours since I marched my son out of the race and put him in the car.

  “Freddy drove and drove until he found your car.” She hesitates. “Amber. They are in surgery.”

  “They?”

  “It's complicated. The doctor needs to tell you.”

  The doctor doesn't need to tell me anything. I know what the problem is instantly. Instinct tells me that the rare blood Isaac inherited from Freddy has lead to a complication.

  On cue, a doctor in a white coat walks down the hallway, “Mrs. French” he asks. Why is he asking for my mother?

  “Oh, no, I'm Mrs Williamson, uh, Amber. I'm Isaac's Mum.” I stutter. My life of tangled mistakes laid out bare in that one simple sentence.

  He claps my arm in his hand, a reassuring grip. “Everything is okay, Amber. Isaac is okay, he's going to wake up any time soon, your jacket and quick thinking saved his life.”

  I know it wasn't me who saved his life.

  "Thank you. Where is Freddy?"

  The grey eyes of the doctor smile at me. "Lucky to have a AB negative donor so close to hand."

  “It's not luck. They are father and son.”

  Charles steps up and winds his arm around my waist, possibly to hold me up.

  “Freddy is through there, he's fine, we took as much as we could, but he'll need iron supplements for a while to bring his own red blood count up.”

  “Thank you. Can I be there when Isaac wakes up?” I ask the doctor.

  “Sure thing, come this way, recovery is right down here.” He leads me away from the Bale family. My family. "Now, his break was severe and there will be a long recovery time, and we grafted skin from under his other knee to patch the exit wound."

  I can't really hear anything he's saying, my focus is on the double doors ahead. Recovery.

  The room is humming with activity and the gentle beep of machines. I see Isaac instantly, my feet turning for his bed. By his side is Freddy, pale and drawn.

  “Oh,” exclaims the surgeon. “You shouldn't be up yet.”

  Freddy is gripping Isaac's hand tight in his own and I think that speaks far louder than any words he could say. I sprint across to him, my feet squeaking on the floor. Collapsing by Freddy's feet, I pick his spare hand in my own. “Thank you, thank you.” I gush over and over again. I want to tell him more, I want to say that I’m not just saying thank you for finding us but also for saving my son with the one thing I couldn't give him, blood, but my words strangle in my throat and I just stare up at Freddy mute.

  Freddy's fingers work their way free and lift my face to his. “Anything.”

  I don't have a response to that. Not at the moment, my heart is too full to be able to take much more, it beats and grows with every passing second for these two, my entire life.

  The nurse standing the other side of the bed starts to talk to Isaac and for the shortest moment I'm transported back eleven years to the time I heard nurses trying to wake Freddy form his coma.

  “Isaac, your parents are waiting for you, wake up and I'll see if I can find you some ice cream.”

  Isaac pulls a face.

  “He doesn't like ice cream.” I laugh. Clambering to my feet, I drape myself over the small form of my boy. “I love you so much, please forgive me.”

  Isaac makes a mumbled sleepy noise. I just kiss all over his face, my tears raining onto his skin.

  "What you saying, Lovey?" asks the nurse when it becomes clear I'm too busy kissing every inch of him to listen.

  "Where's my Dad?" Isaac hoarsely whispers.

  My heart comes to a complete standstill. Freddy doesn't move, he is frozen to the spot, his ocean blue eyes wide.

  "Do you mean, Freddy, Isaac?" I move closer and whisper, brushing the fair hair off his forehead. His face is still streaked with dirt and grim but he looks beautiful to me.

  "Dad." He bites out.

  Freddy gets up, although his body shakes as he leans in. Our heads touch as we stare down at Isaac, both of us holding our breath.

  'It's not just blood is it?" Isaac asks his eyes closed.

  Large droplets of tears splatter from Freddy's eyes onto the sheets. "No, Isaac, it's more than blood."

  “Isaac, I made you a promise and I will keep it.” I lean over. I want him to know that I will always choose him.

  Isaac’s eyes search my face. “I’ll make you a promise that I won’t run away again.” His face crumples. “I’m sorry, Mum.”

  My legs shake with his words, my whole body vibrating with their jerking movement.

  My glance meets Freddy’s and we offer each other an optimistic smile. I know I will spend the rest of forever making up for the mistakes I've made with these two loves of mine.

  Freddy's eyes glint. “Remind me though, Isaac, when your leg is fixed, to teach which trees are good for climbing and which ones not so much.”

  Isaac's eyes flutter open and shut but he has a smile on his lips.

  "I love you." I direct my words at Freddy.

  "I love you." The dark blues hold me firm, keeping me in their sights just like they always should.

  "Thank you for finding us." This doesn't cover it, but his fingers search for mine across the bed sheets.

  "Amber, I will never let you go again."

  * * *

  I’ve been away from the hospital for fifty minutes. That was a fifteen minutes drive either way, five glorious minutes standing under the steaming shower in Freddy’s bathroom washing away the dirt from my night spent on a woodland floor, and then the remaining ten minutes leant against the kitchen counter, a cold mug of tea in my hand while I tried to unravel the nightmare that was yesterday.

  Freddy and Isaac were kept in last night. Isaac is on a continual antibiotic drip to prevent any nasties from creeping into his wounds. Freddy, they just wanted to keep an eye on after borrowing so much of his blood. The hospital manager came and apologised to us that they didn’t have the right amount of blood in stock to help Isaac without Freddy offering his own. Apparently, they could have had some sent from a neighbouring hospital but when they suggested this to Freddy he stepped up.

  Danni tells me it was all very manly and s
exy when he literally ripped his sleeve off his arm and said, “Take mine.” I’m sad to have missed it.

  Gently, I pull back the curtain to Isaac’s bed and then let my mouth fall open when I spy Freddy wearing just his undies and a T-shirt, showing Isaac the backs of his legs.

  “What are you doing?” I’m shocked and rightly so.

  Isaac begins to giggle, “He’s showing me his scars, Mum, and they match mine."

  Out of all of Isaac’s injuries, the one he is most obsessed with is the skin graft on the back of his knee.

  “Really?” I peer down and investigate the back of Freddy’s perfectly formed leg. As promised, there is a small faded line along the back of his right leg. “I thought you said all your scars were inside?” I raise a questioning eyebrow.

  “I was being poetic, you shouldn’t take me so literally.”

  Isaac grins at the two of us and the angry young boy that ran away from me yesterday is nowhere in sight. Stepping up to the bed, I sweep his hair out of his eyes and check that his water jug has been slightly depleted of the healthy stuff along with the bottle of Lucozade that Bailey insisted on bringing him in, because apparently, when you drink it and eat chocolate at the same time it makes your heart race, which is super cool — in the words of a ten year old.

  There was this moment when Isaac and Bailey realised that their relationship had been upgraded from friends to cousins and they both went super shy. It was kind of cute. Then they made up a cousin handshake which in my humble opinion wasn’t that cool at all.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper against Isaac’s forehead as I press my lips to his skin.

  His hazel eyes focus on me sternly. “You won’t lie again, will you, Mum?”

  “I didn’t lie, I just wanted your life not to be too confusing. I know I made a mistake. I just thought that if you and Freddy could become friends in your own right, then any relationship you had would be unique to you. I know I got it wrong.”

  How wrong did I get it? There is no scale to measure it by.

  “Anyway,” I straighten up a little and address both of them. “I spoke to Elliot when I was home and he’s on his way to see you.”

  Isaac flinches a little at my words and his eyes hesitantly flit to Freddy. Freddy looks confused but I can read Isaac’s thoughts straight away, and this is exactly why I made all the wrong choices I did. Isaac’s a good boy and he doesn’t like hurting people.

  “It’s okay, Isaac. No one is expecting you to just turn your back on the people who are important to you.”

  “But Freddy is important and I don’t want to upset him.”

  “Yes, but you can see whoever you want for however long you need.” I lean down and kiss him again, my beautiful son that I thought I was going to lose. “This love we have, all of us, it’s complicated, it’s messy and it’s going to take hard work, but if we trust each other, then we will all be okay.”

  I get that now. It’s so clear to me. Love isn’t meant to be easy, and our love never has been, but real love, the true love that I feel for both my boys in that room will survive anything.

  Freddy steps up and grabs both of our hands, turning my band of two into a family of three. “Isaac, can I borrow your mum for a moment?”

  Isaac scrunches his face. “Ugh, sure, go kiss somewhere else.”

  With a roll of the eyes, Freddy pulls me for the exit. “Not like that,” he laughs.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, as our fingers naturally slide together.

  “Just a long standing promise I have to keep.” He grins with his words but doesn’t explain any further, pulling me this way and that down the hospital corridors.

  I’m taken aback when we walk out into a courtyard garden, I’d completely forgotten that it existed but the moment we are through the doors, the memories of Valentines Day eleven years ago come flooding back. Another memory I’ve deprived myself of for too long. That was the day Freddy first got the slightest sensation back in his legs, it was the day that I felt hope in my heart that all would be okay. That day, heart shaped petals floated down from a cheery tree and filled my heart with joy.

  Now, all these years later, I realise that everything did turn out okay, even though it took us a while to get there.

  “What are we doing here?” I ask, followed by a screech, as Freddy pulls me up into his arms, cradling me to his chest.

  “This is what I wish I could have done that Valentines Day, and I promised myself that I would.”

  I look up into his ocean blues, watching the faint lines crinkle around his eyes, so different from all that time ago when we had youth on our side.

  “You remembered that?”

  “Amber, I’ve never forgotten anything about you. You’re in my soul, my heart, and mind.”

  “Okay, put me down so I can talk properly.” His lips find mine before he releases me. It doesn’t ever feel like I stopped being kissed by Freddy Bale. The last ten years of being a single mum and then being in the wrong marriage just don’t even exist when I’m with him. It feels like I never left, that Isaac and I had always been here, with him.

  Freddy must be reading my mind. “You know, every day I wonder what life would have been like if you hadn’t gone. If I hadn’t turned up at that dance and tried to do the right thing, which turned out to be wrong. A couple of weeks later we would have found out about Isaac and our entire lives would have changed, we could have been everything.”

  “Freddy, we are everything, but that’s now, right now. Back then, I mean, don’t forget that I thought my parents didn’t love each other because of me, I would have panicked whether I had been with you or not. You are not to blame for what happened. It's life; what is, just . . .is.”

  I lean into him and find his mouth, kissing him firmly, showing him everything that I’m feeling. When we pull away, his eyes are on me again, still trying to read me.

  “What you said in there about this love, did you mean it?”

  I look up at the tree and watch the petals spin in the breeze, hues of pink and red, all the colours of love. Our love.

  “I meant it.” I squeeze his fingers, and the tips of his gently twist the ring on my own.

  “I know you have the ring, but I do still need to ask. I could scourer the earth looking for a place better than this and never find it.” Freddy lowers to his knees, a minor wince making me bite my lip to stop from smiling. “Amber French, will you spend eternity with me?”

  I pretend to think. “Have you asked my dad?”

  “Better, I asked our son.”

  Tears well up and spill from my eyes. “Well in that case, yes.”

  In a fluid moment, Freddy steps from the floor and pulls me into his tight embrace, and we start our eternity together with petals of hearts falling down onto us, cementing our love forever more.

  Our love.

  This love.

  EPILOGUE: TWENTY YEARS

  “Come on, we’re going to be late. Again.”

  I pull my head out of the kitchen cupboard and look up at Freddy stood by the kitchen door. He’s holding a helmet in his hands and has an expectant look on his face.

  I grin up at him from my squat on the floor. “I can’t go anywhere, I can’t find Elsa’s Tupperware.”

  “Amber Bale, you’re making excuses and you know it.”

  I groan and stand up, in two long strides, Freddy is across the room, his arms winding around my waist. Looking up at him I can only admire the awesome attractiveness my husband still maintains at nearly forty. I’m a lucky woman, there’s no denying it. Today is the twentieth anniversary of the day my car died outside his garage and I stomped my soggy boots all over his workshop floor.

  Also, today is the day that Isaac, our son, is going to race for the first time. I always knew he would, it’s in his genes and in his blood, I just wish he’d wait a while longer, like another ten years, maybe twenty. Actually, I just wish he’d wait until I was no longer around to see it.

  Now I’m wasting time so
I can try and miss most of the race, something that Freddy apparently isn’t going to allow.

  “He’s messaged, read it.” Freddy grins his intoxicating smile as he hands me his phone. I skim the messages. They are all directed at me and all assuring me that everyone possible has checked the car, including Bailey, Isaac’s best friend, right hand man and cousin. Bailey shocked the family by not following his mathematic genius aspirations and instead joined Isaac playing with cars everyday. His father was so proud. Not.

  “Okay.” I grumble, turning to grab any old container out of the cupboard ready to fill with carrots and cucumber batons.

  “Elsa!” Freddy hollers through the house and we hear a heavy-footed response as the girl in question races down the stairs.

  “Time?” A blonde head ducks around the door.

  “Yep.” I grimace.

  “Mummy, be okay.” My three year old comes up and squeezes my legs. Laughing, I sweep her into my arms and rain kisses down onto her fair hair.

  “Elsa Bale, the knower of all things.”

  “Exactly!” Freddy smiles as he lifts her from my arms into his, positioning her on his hip. She’s a daddy’s girl and will happily be carried all day. I can’t blame her. I’d have Freddy carry me around in his arms of steel all day as well, if I could.

  My heart gives it's usual skip when I see them together. I spend a whole lot of time walking around feeling very proud and smug. Elsa also adores Isaac, he’s a god in her eyes and I’m quite concerned about how she's going to take it when he leaves for University — there are going to be tantrums galore and that’s just from me.

  It took us a long time to get Elsa, it was a shock no one was expecting after the fact I fell pregnant at eighteen so easily. But that’s life, we got there in the end and now we get to live a little slice of perfection everyday.

  “So, Mrs. Bale, are we going to trust your car today or mine?” Freddy leans in and plants a quick kiss on my cheek.

  “Very funny.” I glance at the skies out the window and see that they are blue and clear, perfect for racing and no snow in sight. “My car.”