Thirteen - Past (.019)

Warning: There is some talk about child and sexual abuse. Mature audiences only.

Faven grazed her hand against her cell phone, but never removed her eyes from the screen itself. Her mind was racing with an overwhelming amount of questions.

Everyone else in the house didn't seem to be too worried about who Ellyn actually was, but it really seemed to bother Faven that she honestly had no clue who was living in her sister's home.

She wanted to know her. What were her siblings named? Was she allergic to anything? Did she have nay children outside of the one she was pregnant with? All of many questions that raged on into her mind as she stood in the middle of the waiting room. Finally, she decided to put the phone back into its designated pocket and walk back to Ellyn's room.

When she entered the heart monitor was beeping like it should and only a single lamp on the wall gave off enough light for Faven to get the chair in the far corner.

Ellyn's face was peaceful, although Faven knew that her facial expression wasn't anything like the thoughts going through her mind at that very moment.

Faven rested in the chair and carefully watched the girl's chest rise and fall. The only noise came from the heart monitor, which Faven noticed was starting to pick up as the seconds passed.

Time ticked on, and the moon was at its highest. Nurses entered the room every so often, fiddling with cords and taking notes on their pad, and then they would leave to return to their normal nurse duties.

Ten minutes after the last check up by the nurse, there was a spike in the rate of the heart monitor. Ellyn started to move as if she was uncomfortable with the position her body was currently laying in. A slight irritated moan came from her lips and the sound of the heart monitor spiked once again.

Faven immediately jumped the girl's aid. "Ellyn? Ellyn can you hear me?" She looked over her shoulder at the door to see if a nurse would come rushing in to save her, but no one came.

"No! Stop! Please!" Ellyn whispered in deep, hard gasps. She was still unconscious. Seconds later, Faven stepped back when she realized that was happening. "No!" Ellyn cried again. Her shoulders moved to the left and then to the right before her eyes finally were lifted from the dream she was having. The heart monitor started to beep uncontrollably, but eventually it calmed down at the same time Ellyn did.

"Are you ok?" Faven whispered, rubbing her hand across the girl's clammy forehead. She was burning up.

"Yeah. Just a really bad dream." Ellyn whispered. Her voice still filled with sleep.

"Tell me." Ellyn looked up at Faven as if she were about to speak, but she immediately turned her head in the direction of the window. She never answered the question.

"Come on. You can tell me Ellyn. It can't be that bad."

"You say that now," she turned her head toward Faven, "but when I tell you..." Ellyn shook her head and looked back at the window. Faven sat down on the bed. She knew that Ellyn was no longer just referring to the dream anymore.

"Ellyn, listen to me. I'm the last person that will judge anybody. It's not my right to judge, but sweetheart, you've got to tell me something. With this baby, it isn't just about you anymore. If you want to move forward with this, then Shirley and I are behind you every step of the way, but you gotta tell me something."

Silence.

"Give me something. Anything. If you want, nothing that you tell me will go past the walls of this room unless you want them to. I mean that." Faven pleaded.

But Ellyn kept her focus on the window and never looked in Faven's direction. Giving up, Faven sighed and walked over to the chair in the corner of the room and sat down. Although she was disappointed, she accepted the fact that she probably would never know the truth.

"You think it's so easy," Ellyn began. "To just trust someone so easily. Well I'm here to burst your bubble. You can't trust anyone in this cruel fucked up world."

Faven quickly perked up. "You can trust me. You can trust Shirley. Ellyn we are here to help you."

"STOP! Ok? Stop calling me that! I'm not Ellyn!" Her body shot upright. The tone in the girl's voice rose, and Faven feared that if she wasn't careful, the nurses would come and sedate Ellyn, ruining all chances of knowing the truth. The girl's face was red and angry, but slowly the shade of red turned into pale ice.

"What are you talking about?"

The girl bit down on her lower lip, fighting back every tear that was building up in her big bonze eyes. "I wasn't born Ellyn Granger. It was a name he gave to me."

"Who is he?"

"...I trusted him." She spoke through her tears. The mood had suddenly went from tense to depressing. "He was supposed to take care of me. Protect me." She was no longer looking at Faven. Her focal point resided on the stitching of the blanket on top of her. Faven sat back in her chair, realizing that the girl in front of her was no longer talking to anyone specific.

"I thought I was supposed to trust him. He was all I had. What else could an eight year old do if both of their parents were murdered? He was my father's best friend, and he was all we had left that reminded us of home back in Canada."

It was killing Faven that she couldn't ask the many burning questions raging in her mind, but she knew that if she spoke a word and interrupted her questionable behavior, all hope would be lost.

"It was so hot. I can still feel the heat of fire, so close to my skin. My parents told me to run and that they loved me, but I couldn't see them. It was so much smoke. I was so scared." Her voice cracked at her last word, but she continued.

"He pulled me out of the fire just before the second floor collapsed. It was like he knew where I was, and he knew exactly how to get out. Why couldn't he save my parents too? They were right there! Just inches away..." She paused, still staring down blankly at the blanket.

What happened next? Faven wanted to scream but she retained the monster within her.

"I trusted him." She said again. "He betrayed me. He took away so many things from me. My childhood, my happiness, my virginit—" The girl stopped mid sentence and looked up at Faven. She had never seen so much pain before in her whole forty-four years of life.

"I wanted to leave. So...badly. But he said that if I left, the people my parents worked for would find me and kill me. I didn't want to die. I want to live! I want to be free from him. I hate this. I hate myself for letting all of this go on for so long. I should have tried to leave him sooner. I should have tried to save my parents that night." She shook her head and wrapped her arms around her stomach. The girl looked away from Faven and stared out the window. She let out a "pft" noise in the heap of the silence she let fall before them.

"And no matter how hard I try to get away from him, he just keeps coming back." She looked down at her stomach and then back out the window.

Faven rose from the chair and went and stood next to the bed. The girl kept her focus on the window. "Ell—I'm so sorry that you had to go through this as a child, but you cannot blame yourself for anything that this man did to you. That man was wrong for abusing you and you are not to blame for the death of your parents. You have to let it go in order to move forward, because if you hold on to the past then you will never be able to trust anyone."

The girl bit down on her bottom, still staring out the window, as a tear escaped from the corner of her eye.

"Have you decided on—" The girl shook her head swiftly before Faven could finish her sentence.

"I don't know what I'm going to do Faven. I'm really scared." She finally gave into the tears she had been fighting as she turned to look in Faven's direction. Her damaged face was too much for Faven. She wrapped her arms around her and held the fragile girl in the embrace for what seemed like forever.

"I have a monster's child growing inside of me." She mumbled into Faven's shoulder. "But I can't kill it. He doesn't deserve to be killed before he even has a chance to live. It's not the baby's fault that his life is all fucked up before he even gets here. It's not his fault..." Her sobs consumed her words, but she continued to mumble, "It's not his fault."

She continued to cry into Faven's shoulder until they heard the door creep open.

"Just here to check on everything and see how she's doing. I couldn't stay away." Gabriel spoke aloud instead of using his hands to sign, because they were to buys holding flowers and a bag.

"That’s very kind of your Gabe." She said aloud as well, since her hands were still wrapped around the broken girl. Faven knew that Gabe was very capable of reading lips.

Faven leaned back to look at Ellyn smiling and blushing into her shoulder. She released her from the hold. "I guess I'll run up to the cafeteria and get something to eat. Haven't eaten anything all day!" Faven smiled at Gabriel and removed herself from the bed.

Before she walked out, she looked over her shoulder and smiled as Gabriel placed the flowers on the table and walked over to the bed to give Ellyn a kiss on the forehead.

He'll save her. She thought to herself.

Next--->
<---Previous

_______________________________________________________________________________

I apologize for the low quality of the picture, i seriously have no idea what when wrong...and I'm too lazy to go back and work with this thing so this will due for now!
I guess I fixed it, and whatever it was seemed to effect all the other chapters so now I have to go back and redo the pictures for them. *Sigh*