Chapter Text
“It’s finally over” Carla thought to herself, as she held on tightly to her girlfriend, her mind racing at a million miles an hour, trying to process everything that had just happened. I’m safe, Lisa is safe, my family is safe.
As she heard Rob being arrested, again, the guilt started to set in. “He wouldn’t have even been out of prison if it wasn’t for me” she whispered to herself as she tried to hold back the tears. Lisa could feel her girlfriend shaking as she blamed herself. Lisa pulled back slightly and cupped Carla’s face with her hands as she spoke; “No darling, this is not your fault. Please do not blame yourself. I would much rather you be alive and have gone through all of this, than you be dead because you didn’t take his kidney”. She gently kissed Carla’s cheek and wiped away the tears she saw falling as held on tight to her girlfriend.
Then, just as Carla was beginning to calm herself down and her breathing had started returning to normal, they suddenly heard an officer shout “female, mid teens, got a gunshot wound”, and it was like the air had been sucked out of her lungs. She couldn’t breathe.
“No.” She gasped, as Lisa let go of her and rushed outside with Carla following behind. The sight before her made her sick to her stomach, and she could already taste the alphabet spaghetti that Rob had made her eat, coming back up. In front of her, lay a bleeding Betsy, crying out for her mother.
All Carla could do was stand and watch as the blame started to settle in her mind. This was her fault, she knew that, and she knew that Lisa would think so too. Beautiful Betsy, the feisty teenager that she had begun to love as her own, the teenager who had let Carla in, and showed her how to love again, was lying on the floor covered in blood, because of her. Carla felt her heart beating out of her chest, her head spinning, throat closing as she felt like she couldn’t breathe. How could I let this happen?
As the paramedics took care of Betsy, Carla ran over to the other side of the building, where Rob was being lifted into the ambulance. She felt a concoction of emotions; shame, guilt, betrayal and relief. She blamed herself for everything that had happened, and she felt betrayed by her brother. The brother whom she had raised from young. The brother who she had scrambled through rubbish bins to find food, protected from their mother’s various drug addicted boyfriends, who she had tried to protect time and time again. And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to solely blame him for the events that had just occurred. Because he was also the brother she had failed. So, as he was being lifted into the ambulance, she approached him, and gave him a final goodbye. She hugged her arms around Rob and whispered that she loved him, but when he uttered the words “you should’ve let them kill me” she couldn’t help but feel her heart break. Is that what he thought of her?
“No,” she muttered through her tears. “Get some help”, and with that, she kissed his cheek and left him. For as much as she loved her brother, she had to let him go. She had caused him enough pain, and she could see that now. But not only did she have to let Rob go for his sake, she had to let him go, to save herself. She had to escape her past if she had any hope of a future with Lisa and Betsy.
As she turned around and ran from her past to her future, she saw Betsy being loaded into an ambulance, and could still hear her crying, begging her mother not to let her die. She saw the look of complete anguish on Lisa’s face and knew in that moment, that her life was about to be turned upside down.
The next few hours were a blur. Flashes of lights, sirens, tears and screams. An overwhelming whirlwind of emotions and feelings. One moment Carla was hugging Lisa, thinking they would finally be safe, finally be completely happy, and then next; they were sat on opposite ends of a hospital waiting room, waiting on the surgeons to let them know that Betsy was going to be okay. The distance between them was both physical and emotional. It felt like they were miles apart, when in reality they couldn’t be more than two metres from each other, but that did not matter. Lisa’s walls had gone right back up, Carla could see it, and she could feel the blame Lisa was putting on her, even if her mouth remained shut. The silent judgement and blame was a form of torture for Carla, one which she convinced herself she deserved, but that did not make it any easier.
Carla sat hunched over in the hard plastic chair, staring at the white tiles beneath her feet as if they held the answers she so desperately needed. Every noise in the waiting room seemed deafening. The clicking of a pen, the shuffling of feet, the receptionist’s phone ringing, and worst of all, the constant cries of family members finding out bad news. In every passing moment that went by, Carla felt more and more like they would be the ones to next hear that very same news, and the very thought filled Carla with a dread she could not escape. She felt as though she was drowning in guilt, a guilt which had felt before, when she had lost her daughter.
Eleven years ago…
Carla lay in the hospital bed feeling empty, like her whole heart had been ripped from her chest. “I’m so sorry Mrs Connor, but there is no heartbeat”. The words raced in her head in an endless loop, like she was in a nightmare and in any minute she would wake up. Except she wouldn’t. Because this was not a nightmare, this was reality. Her reality. Her baby girl was gone, and it was entirely her fault.
Carla thought back to when she first found out she was pregnant, how scared she had been. The thought of raising a child had absolutely petrified her. How could she raise a family, when the one she came from had done nothing but harm and traumatise her from the moment she was born? So Carla did what she knew best, she tried to rationalise the situation. She told herself she was happy as she was, that a child would only complicate things, that a child would ruin her marriage. She had made the decision to terminate the pregnancy and gone all the way to the clinic. It was only when she held those two tiny pills in her hand, that she realised this was not a situation she could rationalise. No matter how much she tried to use logic to find a way out, she could not let go of the fantasy that was locked away in a tiny part of her head. What if she could be a mother? What if she could raise this child and shower it with all the kindness and love that she wished she had as a child? And that was when she made the decision. She wanted her baby.
The next few months had been filled with enough trauma for a lifetime; Peter drinking again, finding out that he had been having an affair with Tina, Tina’s death, being accused of murdering her. Carla’s life as she knew it was being ripped away from her piece by piece and all she could do was watch, like she was a spectator in her own movie. But the one thing that had kept Carla going throughout that torment, was the baby girl growing inside of her. Her baby was her salvation in a world that had left her dying of pain.
And then that salvation was ripped away from her too.
She lay in that hospital bed as the world passed her by. Friends had come to visit, Roy and Michelle being lifeboats in the storm that was her life. Peter had also come to visit, but she had stayed there, silent. She couldn't speak, because if she spoke, she would crumble, and she couldn’t. She did not deserve to break down, because it was her fault. Her baby had chosen to leave, because Carla had not been able to keep her safe. So instead, she lay in that room, locking her feelings away in a dark corner of her mind.
Hours had passed and Betsy was finally out of surgery, and safely in her room, asleep. Carla and Lisa sat just outside as the doctors finished tending to the girl. Each sound of the hospital scraped against her nerves, dragging her deeper and deeper into that familiar pit of endless self-hatred and blame. Lisa sat across from her; silent, arms folded, her expression unreadable, and that silence hurt more than any words could. It was the silence of disappointment, of walls being rebuilt brick by brick, and Carla could feel herself starting to suffocate behind them. She wanted to explain, to scream that she never meant for any of this to happen, but the words stayed trapped in her throat.
Carla finally lifted her eyes, her voice breaking as she whispered, “Lisa, please… I never meant for any of this to happen. I never wanted Betsy to get hurt. I’d give anything to take her place—”
Lisa’s chair scraped sharply against the floor as she stood, her arms trembling with the weight of everything that had just happened. “You think I don’t know that?” she snapped, her voice louder than she intended. “I knew something was wrong, I knew Rob was a danger, and I let myself believe we were safe. My daughter got shot, Carla. SHOT! Because I didn’t listen to myself, because I trusted you. But, I should’ve trusted my instincts”.
Carla shook her head desperately, tears streaming. “No, Lisa, it’s not your fault—” But Lisa cut her off, her tone cold. “I know it’s not my fault. It is yours”.
As soon as those words came out of Lisa’s mouth, Carla felt like she was the one who had been shot. “Right now, my focus needs to be on her, not you." Lisa said, turning towards the window looking into her daughter's room. "Betsy is lying in that room fighting, and she needs me to be her mum. That is all that matters.” She paused, knowing what she was about to say was going to hurt Carla more than anything; “You are not her mum, and you never will be. You will never know what it is like to love a child, what it is like to feel the love of your daughter, so you cannot and will not ever understand what I am going through right now, so just … leave us alone”.
And with that, Lisa turned and walked away, pushing open the door to her daughter’s room. For a second, she glanced back through the same glass she had just used to avoid eye contact with the very woman she wanted to run and comfort now, on the other side. Carla was crumbling, shoulders shaking as silent sobs wracked her body. Lisa’s gaze lingered, torn, but then she turned and stepped fully into Betsy’s room, leaving Carla alone in the harsh light of the waiting room, her reflection blurred by tears against the pane of glass.
“I should’ve trusted my instincts.”
Those words kept spinning around in Carla’s head. Did Lisa always believe that Carla was a monster? She always thought Lisa was different, that she understood her. But clearly she was wrong. Yet, Carla couldn’t bring herself to blame Lisa, because at the end of the day, she was right and Carla knew it. She knew that she was a poison, and she knew that her happiness couldn’t last forever, no matter how deeply she wished it could.
Carla Connor would always cause despair, no matter how hard she tried not to.