you have a lifetime before you, I'll adore you, come what may

[intheruins]

The child is a boy, just as Serena told George from the start, small but stubborn as his mother and determined to live.

She names him for his father – the father he's unlikely to ever meet – and gives him her maiden name as his middle. She figures it's the last chance she has for her family's name to live on, long after the rest of them were lost to her.

A week or so after she delivers him she's told she can leave the hospital but he's not ready, yet, and that's a reality she doesn't easily accept. If she were back in North Carolina instead of this strange, forward place, she might have more sway in bringing him back to the apartment that she's been assigned, but neither the doctors nor nurses will hear any of it.

So she leaves the hospital without her son – a day after Mother's Day, of all days – watching him through glass before she heads on. She'll be back in the evening, she tells them, although once she's outside she's not sure where she'll find the strength. She has two scars, now. The one burned in her back and one on her belly, each telling a story of survival against all odds.

Nothing to her name except a few clothes the nurses had given her and an envelope that has cash, a key and the strangest phone she's ever seen, she lingers outside the hospital for a few minutes before asking for help hailing a cab. Someone tells her it's 2017 (a fact she's still struggling to believe) and to use something called an app.

For the first time since she was a young girl, covered in ash, Serena feels totally at a loss.

[Dated Monday, May 15. Find Serena either outside the hospital or arriving at Chelsea Cloisters.]

Comments

[doeinbloom]

"Merlin," Lily mutters to herself, shaking her head. She could only imagine the trauma of giving birth while arriving to an entirely new city away from where one is supposed to be. "Well, I'm glad you found your way to a hospital, though I doubt it makes any of this less shocking."

Lily nods, sympathetic. "I can imagine. Is your son still in the hospital?"

She guesses he must be, if this woman doesn't have him with her. She doesn't want to think of the alternative possibility.

[intheruins]

"They won't discharge him yet," Serena answers. She understands the reasons behind it but that doesn't set her stubbornness at ease or make her feel like any less of a failure. She ought to be able to care for her son on her own. "He was born early, too small."

Back in North Carolina, a lot of children wouldn't have survived being born so soon. Prayer and wives' tales were used where medicine is here. "They say he's healthy but his lungs aren't quite developed."

[doeinbloom]

"Oh, well, I hope he has a speedy and thorough recovery, while he's here," Lily tells her, sympathetic. She knows how much it always pained her whenever she had to leave Harry behind, whether for a date night with James or to an Order meeting. She can imagine how the woman must feel.

"I'm sure you'll be able to see him every day though, right?" She asks. She knows if it were her son, they would have to drag her away from his bedside.

[intheruins]

"Thank you," Serena says. Though she's had doubts over the past few days, her son has proven himself to be a survivor. It's in his blood – Serena has made a life of defying odds.

At the woman's question, she nods, trying not to let the guilt bother her too much. It wasn't like she agreed to be discharged without a fuss. "They have visiting hours," she says. "There are a lot of infants a lot more ill than him in there. I told them I'd be back in the afternoon."

[doeinbloom]

"That's good, that you'll be able to come see him," Lily says softly, a little bit sad as she thinks of the son she's missed, not just once, but twice now. The first time to spare his life, and the second because Darrow seems to think it amusing to bring in families at different points of time.

She shakes out of it, just as the cab pulls up.

"I think that's our ride, if you're ready?"

[intheruins]

Serena's not ready. It feels like the moment she gets into this car and finds her way to her new home, all of this will be real. No North Carolina. No timber camp. No Pemberton.

And for a few more days, no son.

But she nods, as stoic as she is stubborn. "I am, thank you," she says, then thinks to extend her hand to shake the other woman's. "I'm Serena Pemberton, by the way."

[doeinbloom]

Lily shakes her hand, nodding. Serena seems to hold herself together, much better than Lily could have, were she in her position.

"It's nice to meet you, Serena. I'm Lily Potter."

It still gives her a thrill, to be able to introduce herself as such. Especially after everything that she's been through with her husband.

[intheruins]

As they slide into the cab, Serena can't help but wince. She's well enough to be released but that doesn't mean it's easy to move, her midsection feeling so weak after using so much strength to carry her child for many months. "A pleasure," she says in spite of her pain. "Do you know how far away the building is from here?"