Jen's Legacy.

They drove home in silence as Claire’s grandmother held her hand. It had been an unwelcome surprise for Claire to learn that Royce had been called away, and really had no choice about going. Why hadn’t he woken her and told her? She would have understood. Or would have tried to.

There were a thousand unasked questions from her parents sitting in the front of the car, burning the oxygen out of the air:

’Who is he? What’s his full name? What does he do? We’d like to thank him for saving your life. Why were you in a motel room together? You could have called us last night and we would have picked you up….’ They were worried for her.

Claire carried Royce’s back-pack up to her room, ignoring her parents’ questions, and put it out of the way in her closet. She didn’t want anyone else taking an interest in it. She would see to it later when her parents were no longer so intent on asking about him.

She returned downstairs to help her grandmother get breakfast while her parents were busy preparing for their day. They had to pick up their schedule again from having their European trip interrupted; calls to make. They would learn more of this when they got back and find out who this man was that had intruded into their daughter’s life and whom no one wanted to talk about. The only comforting things in what they were learning, were that Claire seemed unharmed, though clearly was upset, and that Claire’s grandmother knew him well, but neither of them were talking.

Claire stood and looked out of the window across the grounds as her grandmother busied herself. The kitchen and household staff had most weekends off. She turned to help her gran.

“What am I to do, Gran? I feel lost already without him and don’t know what to do with myself. How will I survive not having him with me?”

She was like this after knowing him less than a week, and with him gone from her for only an hour? Her grandmother wiped her hands on her apron and took Claire into her arms.

“There... there. I know it will be difficult for you, but the key to surviving this until he gets back, is to be busy; take your mind off everything.

“You can even help me. The media are going to be all over this accident, and I’ll have to deal with them on behalf of the hospital.

“Royce needs to get on with what he knows best, and so do we. He’s feeling the pain of this moment just as you are, maybe even more, so you can guess what he’s suffering. However, he is not going to have time to stop and think about anything.”

She patted Claire on her shoulder.

“This will be a few days out of both of your lives. The trick is to look at it positively. He will be helping so many people; saving lives, which is what he knows how to do, and you have to be just as busy, but in other ways.”

He knew how to save lives alright. He’d saved her life, and now he was saving others. She’d also saved his life in turn by being as decisive as she’d had to be with her virtue and her reputation that second night, she was sure of that, or he might never have got here to do this (the world owed her, big-time for that sacrifice; though it had not been a sacrifice, but had been needed), so what did it matter if there had to be a little further sacrifice on her part.

Jen wouldn’t have allowed him to do what he’d planned for himself either, yet Claire hadn’t been conscious of Jen pushing her along that second night to become intimate with him as she had tried to do for herself; though Jen had certainly intruded, to give her guidance on that third night in that dream Claire had after they’d taken shelter in that gully. And then Claire had taken the glorious initiative again, and got him fully into her on that Thursday morning; a lifetime ago now, but only three days and three wonderful nights behind them.

“We are going to keep ourselves busy, you and I, my love. I’ll be busy with my work for the hospital, collating and issuing bulletins for the media; feeding them in the midst of tragedy, and keeping them informed of what happened; what is happening; getting other hospitals to take some of the less seriously injured, and putting appeals out for blood donations. They are always needed at a time like this.”

She turned to Claire.

“You could start a journal covering the last week and make sure that not a single detail of everything that happened to you will ever be forgotten. No one else needs to see it, so you can capture every event and every detail before you lose them.” And they had been many, from what she had seen of her granddaughter’s physical and mental condition just an hour earlier as she’d sat naked on that bed, with evidence of everything they had done, being so obvious.

Claire began to see how she could distract herself for a time, but the night-time would still be lonely and the worst time of all without Royce beside her.

She had spent the first twenty-one years of her life, sleeping alone; unaware of what a certain man coming into her life could do to so change her, and then had spent only one week with Royce; yet that latter, brief time, with its deepest emotions and wonderfully intimate processes as they’d constantly grown closer together in every way, was all she wanted to remember and to experience again. Thinking of it made her breathless. Twenty-one years of preparation. It had been worth it.

Nothing of her life would ever be the same after that.

But then he’d gone without saying anything to her! She wanted to understand why, but it was difficult.

She wanted to tear her hair out in frustration. He should have awoken her, told her that he was going, and why, except he’d left that for her grandmother to do!

Royce must be feeling the same way she felt; the same deprivation; the same deeply discomforting frustration. She wanted to sit down and just cry, but knew better than to give in to that.