New Story: Another Time: Someone to call Mommy

Veonica Jane Williams
xkhoi@iafrica.com

The fifth story in my Reincanation Series: Another Time.

1. Another Time: The Roman Centurion
2. Another Time: The Ivy Leaf
3. Another Time: The Gift
4. Another Time: The Red Carnation
5. Another Time: Someone to call Mommy*

Disclaimer: Paramount owns Voyager, and the characters. I own the 
story.

Rating: G

ANOTHER TIME: SOMEONE TO CALL MOMMY.

Eleanna Torrence groaned as a wave of pain hit her, her whole body
aflame. She tried to open her eyes, only to close them again, in
merciful release from the light in the hospital room. She was the
only occupant in this two bed ward. As another wave of pain
overpowered her, she gave in to the darkness, floating quietly
down to where she was safe from any pain.

The two old people who stood by her bedside wringed their hands,
looking at their critically injured daughter. She had been lying
in this state for seven days, and was still unconscious.

"Hush, my Corinna," the older man said to his wife, "it won't
be long now, before she regains consciousness. Look, I can see
her eyelids moving."

Then the older woman would touch her daughter's forehead lightly,
resting her hand there, and offer a prayer for Eleanna's recovery,
wondering.

"She looks so weak, Frank. Like she's hardly breathing," she
whispered to her husband. Then Frank would hold his wife's hand
and stroke it in a soothing gesture.

Eleanna groaned again, stirring this time just as the doctor entered
the room. He assessed immediately that his patient was going to
wake up soon. He looked at her, monitored her heart rate. She
had sustained mainly internal injuries, including a ruptured liver,
which necessitated emergency surgery. He felt sorry, excessively
so, for this patient of his, and her parents, two kindly people
who were distraught at hearing of their daughter's accident.

Eleanna opened her eyes with difficulty, everything was out of
focus. Her head swam alarmingly, the room spinning, until the
dizziness passed, and slowly the things around her took on
definite form. She could see the walls painted white. Hospital?
She couldn't decide that. She looked at three pairs of eyes,
and saw...compassion?

"I see our model patient has decided to join us," Dr. Thomas Walton
said quietly.

She looked at the face of the doctor, then turned slowly to the two 
other persons standing on the other side of the bed.

"Mama?"

"Yes, dearest. We are here," and her mother placed her hand on
her husband's arm. He could feel how her fingers clamped around his
arm in nervous tension. 

"Papa?"

"Yes, Eleanna... we are here..." he said, feeling for the first time
in days again like wanting to burst into tears. If it weren't
for his dear Corinna's support and strength, he would be crying
unabated. 

Eleanna looked at her parents, her eyes cloudy, yet holding a 
question in them. Her throat worked, pain painful movemment she 
asked:

"Mama...where's Jimmy? And...the children? Are they okay...?"

Frank and Corinna Torrence looked first at the doctor, who nodded
sombrely to them. Heaven knew, it was as difficult for him as it
was for then. Then Frank Torrence placed his hand on his daughter's
cheek, and said, and in a voice heavy with grief, said:

"Eleanna, sweetheart, I'm so sorry. Jimmy and the children were
buried three days ago.

****************************


Dear Santa

My name is Elizabeth Kathryn Walton. I am six
years old. My Daddy says it's still early to write,
but I want you to get my letter before all the
other children.

See Santa, I don't have a mommy. I do so want
a mommy for Christmas. All the children in
my class have mommies. Then me and my Daddy
won't be so sad anymore.

                Yours
                Elizabeth Katie Walton

**************

"I see Elizabeth, sweetheart, I'm to post a letter for you again 
today," Dr Thomas Walton said to his six year old daughter at the 
breakfast table one morning.

Elizabeth looked at her Daddy, whose clear, very blue eyes she
inherited, and smiled, two front baby teeth missing and waiting
for their big brothers to make their appearance. Then she nodded
her head, almost upsetting her glass of milk she held in her hand.

Tom looked at his daughter, and felt his heart contract again. How
like her mother she looked in these moments, her rich brown hair
combed back in a pony tail. He sighed. Her hair was growing
uncommonly long, and he, single Dad in the 1990's was still learning
to cope with an ever growing daughter, whose needs right now...

"I can walk with Daddy to the post box and drop in the letter,"
she said excitedly, her eyes shining.

"Sure, sweetheart." He took the letter that had been placed next
to her setting at the table, and read, in an important voice:

"To Santa."

"Yes!"

"Well, it is a bit early for Santa isn't it?" he asked her.

"Uh-uh... but I want him to open my letter first, Daddy."

"What did you ask Santa this year?"

"Daddy! It's supposed to be a secret!" And she laughed out loud.

"I can keep a secret," he said, bringing his head closer to hers,
his eyes just begging her to part with the contents of her letter.

"No way, Daddy!"

And Daddy just smiled, before he prepared to leave for the hospital,
glad for once that he hadn't been called out for emergency ops during
the night. He was becoming increasingly dissatisfied at depending
all the time on his good neighbour, Mrs Hemmings, a kindly soul
who looked after Elizabeth after school. Now, it's summer vacation,
Elizabeth's first major school holidays after her kindergarten year. 
She had to go to that lady everyday. But Mrs Hemminngs always assured 
him Elizabeth is fine with her.

After mailing her letter, he walked with her to Mrs Hemmings' house.

"Daddy?"

"Hmmm...?"

"All my friends in class have mommies." A statement. From a six year 
old child.

"Yes, I know, sweetheart."

"I'd like a mommy."

Tom knew what was in Elizabeth's letter.

************************

Tom pondered on Elizabeth's words and wishes all the way to hospital,
situated at the foot of picturesque Devil's Peak. She misses not
Kathryn, but a mother. She was only a year old when Kathryn died.
She had no memory of her. But a mother. He sighed. He had been
devasted at the time when Kathryn died, quite suddenly of an 
aneurism. Leaving him bereft, to cope with not only her loss, but a
year old baby, who in the first month after her mother's death,
could not stop crying. That bond had been severed tragically between 
mother and daughter.

Now she wants a mother. He was almost inclined to tell her mommies
didn't grow on trees, or were picked up in a supermarkets.

"Daady, can't you make me a French braid, like Danielle's and
Tracy's hair? Their mommies braid their hair."

"Sweatheart, I don't know how to do it. Did you ask Mrs Hemmings?"

"She can't either, Daddy. She's oooolllldd! I've got to have my hair 
in a braid, Daddy," and she started crying. He was at a loss. That 
was a month ago, the woes with Elizabeth was just surfacing now.


***********************


She was kneeling at the grave. The headstone bore the names of her
husband and two children.  After a year, she still felt dead inside.
Her heart cold, unable to feel anything. She put our her hand,
and touched the cold gravestone, her fingers tracing the outlines
of the engraved letters.

James Edward Torrence.

No more tears.

My eyes are dry, she wailed silently. My happy, always optimistic
Jimmy.

"When I die, Eleanna, I'd die a happy man. Happy for having known
you."

So why, Jimmy, does it hurt so? Still?

Her fingers went over the other names. Erin - aged three and James
junior - aged five. She closed her eyes, willing their images to come
to her, laughing, hugging, playing. Jimmy piggybacking Jimmy junior,
Erin, happy to play with her teddy bear, smiling at her mommy.

No more tears.

She bent her head, as if in prayer, a hopeless yearning to have
back what she lost.

No more tears.

**********************

"My Mommy looks just like you, Miss Torrence," Elizabeth said as
her class was dismissed for the day, and she left the room last.

"Really?"

"Oh yes, just like you. I only got my Daddy's eyes." And she smiled,
her gapped tooth mouth opening engagingly wide. "But her hair and her
eyes are the same colour. Like mine!"

"Well, Elizabeth, I'm sure your Mommy is waiting for you at the 
gates, so run along now," Eleanna Torrence said to her little 
talkative charge.

She sagged back in her chair behind her desk and wondered for the
umpteenth time whether returning to her teaching job was the right 
thing to do. She knew what she was letting herself in for, and 
perhaps it was just another form of punishment. Like visiting their 
grave every week. Yet, she couldn't let her personal problems stand 
in the way of working with her small pupils. Her pain and mourning, 
remained her personal thing. To be hidden very deeply when a cute and 
exuberant six year old told her she resembled her mommy. 


She smiled ruefully. She always did like the grade ones. There was
something immensely satisfying in seeing a child at the beginning
of the school year, unable to read, and in not more than four or five
months, going through their elementary readers. Already she could
see young Elizabeth running away from the rest of her group. 

I probably look like every child's mother, she smiled.

*********************

Eleanna read and reread the letter little Elizabeth had given her
tht morning.

"It's from my Daddy," the little girl breathed, her eyes held an
expectant air.

But she waited till the interval to read it. She felt a great sense 
of outrage, and bristled with indignation. How dare he? He doesn't 
know me. How dare he make these wild assumptions?

She read the letter again:

Dear Miss Torrence

(I'm Mrs, not Miss, but children generally called everyone
"miss" - so in that he can be forgiven).

Please do not encourage my daughter from having
notions about a mother. She does not have a
mother. My wife died when Elizabeth was a year
old. What gives you the right to suggest that
you can fill that role? I should like you to
refrain from engaging in such talks with my
daughter again.

                                 Yours
                                 T.O.Walton


"Elizabeth, could you wait a minute? I'd like to talk to you," she
said to Elizabeth that afternoon.

"Elizabeth, honey, your Daddy wrote me letter."

"I know Miss. I gave it to you this morning!"

"Yes...so you did."

Eleanna looked at the little girl where she made her sit in the front
desk, and pulled up her chair. The child's eyes were on her, blue as
sapphires. Dark brown eyes looked into hers. She took the little
girl's hand in hers and for an awful moment she thought of her own
little girl. She braced herself:

"Elizabeth,  sweetheart, your Mommy...she died a long time ago.
But you know that, don't you? That was what your Daddy's letter
said."  She didn't say anything about the other accusations.

"That's not true!"

"Elizabeth, look at me. What did you tell your Daddy? Hmmm?"

"I - " then she paused. "I s-said he must marry you and then -
then you can be my Mommy..."

Elizabeth gave one last stricken look at Eleanna, rose from her
chair and fled the room.

What now, Eleanna thought. The little girl is quite obviously
obsessed about having a mother. She felt sorry that Elizabeth
was growing up without one. It was clear Elizabeth decided she needed 
one. With or without Daddy's permission, and bringing her teacher in 
a great deal of trouble. Now there's one irate parent out there who 
could place his child at another school, or cause her to lose her job. 
She sighed.

Trust Elizabeth to give a completely different perspective on
their conversation. She honestly thought the little girl's mother was 
somewhere within the child's sphere. Poor little scrap, she thought. 
She just knew this was not going to be the end of it.

*********************

It wasn't.

She was met at the school by Elizabeth's irate father. She had just
entered her classroom, half an hour before the bell, when he strode
in. Without knocking. He approached her desk.

"Miss Torrence, I presume?"

"Mrs Torrence, you should presume. Mr...?

"Dr Thomas Walton. I'm Elizabeth's f - "

Thomas Walton looked at the woman in front of him and recognised her 
in the instant he said his his name. And he felt like kicking himself 
in the jack a hundred times over. She paled when she heard him say 
his name, alarmingly so. He almost stuttered:

"I - I'm very sorry, Mrs Torrence. My assumptions were unforgivable.
Forgive me."

She looked at the doctor who treated her the two weeks she spent in
hospital after the accident. Whose kind regard she always remembered.
He was Elizabeth's father? She looked into his blue eyes, a pleading
look in them.

"It's - it's okay, Dr Walton. Children often refer to their teachers
as Miss even if those teachers are married. You had no idea of
knowing, did you?"

"Er..no. Elizabeth you must know by now, has a fertile imagination."

With that Eleanna Torrence heartily agreed.

"You...don't need to apologise, Dr. Walton. Elizabeth sees the other
children. They talk, you know. About their moms. She misses that."

Thomas Walton sighed. How aware he was of that fact. His little
girl needs a woman in her life. And she wasn't going to get one
sometime soon. He excused himself as graciously as he could.

Eleanna stared for long moments after him. He had a look of 
compassion in his eyes when he spoke with her.

She thought of that time, lying in her hospital bed, with her
parents present, she was informed that her husband and children had
already been buried. She went into deep depression after that,
and only his constant presence whenever he was off duty, his
encouragement, words of comfort throughout that harrowing period, 
kept her alive. Alive. For the moment she heard her Jimmy and the 
children were dead, she had given up fighting. She wanted to die. 
Yet in those few days, he was constantly there, with her parents.

She was too weak from her own injuries to even cry, or howl her
intense despair. All her reasons that she was alive, were gone. Gone. 
They would never return. The only tangible evidence that she had once 
been heavenly happy, a lonely gravestone in a cemetary. And her 
memories. Which piled, wave upon wave upon her brain, her heart, 
images which haunted her waking and sleeping moments day after day.

Yet he was there. Holding her hand. Consoling her. A month after
she was discharged, she wrote him a long letter of thanks, for
saving her life, twice. She saw in his blue eyes as he looked at
her just now, that he remembered, too.

She sighed. She was going to have to have a loving talk with his
lost little daughter. So she could understand that she can't
just order mommies, the way she would buy her a doll, or candy.

The bell rang. Mrs Eleanna Torrence braced herself for the barrage
of little bodies that would, in a few minutes burst through her
door.

***********************

The whole day at the hospital Dr. Thomas Walton was preoccupied.
He could not get out of his mind a pair of dark brown fiery eyes,
and shoulder length brown hair that shone as the natural light
coming through the windows fell on it. A pair of full red lips.

He managed that morning not to show a major surprise or shock at
seeing her standing there, in her classroom, ready to do battle
with him. He should have known Elizabeth, with her fertile
imagination and unceasing talk about having a mother would see in
Eleanna Torrence that which she was always looking for.

Seeing Eleanna rocked him back to that period a year ago, when
she had lain critically ill, her husband and two children, dead
in the same accident. He spent more time than was required
with his patient, because of her plight. Hadn't he lost his dear
Kathryn just as suddenly? But Kathryn had been dead some four years
then, and he became a lonely widower raising a very active
five year old. But in retrospect he had to admit that it was
because he was drawn to this young woman, newly widowed. Too
much, he thought. Why, she had just lost her husband and two
children. How much more traumatic could her life have been then?
She was not ready for anything, but was willing to let him, as
a doctor, and in that capacity console her. When Eleanna left
the hospital he accepted with some resignation he'd probably
never see her again. Her letter a month later, seemed to confirm
that, when she thanked him for all he had done for her. He
thought idly, that he would have liked to mean more to her.

He saw her then as the only person who could, unknowingly, melt the 
ice that had formed around his heart. And dear Elizabeth. Like him, 
she had fallen for her Miss Torrence immediately, like he had a year 
ago.

By the end of the day, Dr. Thomas Walton had come to a decision.

*******************

Elizabeth stood in front of Miss Torrence and held out a letter
to her.

"From my Daddy," she whispered importantly. "He's not mad at me
anymore, Miss Torrence."

Eleanna took the letter, and promised Elizabeth she'd read it
later. Which she did. And then wondered if she should answer it
at all. It weighed on her mind that she could be accused of
fraternising. Yet, seeing him yesterday morning, standing there
with those very blue eyes, so like his daughter's, her heart
had given an unaccustomed lurch, she felt a warmth she thought she
had left at the grave of her husband and children. She was disturbed
that she could feel like that, a year after she lost her family.
She didn't want to feel like that, and preferred almost to feed
on her own grief. To remember that they died and she was left alone.
But in the past twenty four hours, it changed. That ice that had
been around her heart, the cold as cold as the headstone on a grave,
becoming suddenly warm, so that she was beginning at last, to have
the fond memories surface. That was when she cried almost all of
last night. When she finally let go of all her anger, that they
had died, leaving her alone. When the crying stopped, she felt at
last ready to move forward. Already, with hindsight, she thought,
coming back to teaching, had been a step in the direction of her
healing.

So it was with some excitement that she accepted Thomas Walton's
invitation to accompany him to the theatre, to see a new play.

************************

"Tom," she told him one evening, after taking her to an exclusive
restaurant, "does Elizabeth know you're dating her teacher?"

"I'm keeping it quiet, Eleanna. I know how she can talk, and I
wouldn't want the children to see her as teacher's pet."

She already is, Eleanna thought. She already is. In my heart. You
don't know how much, Tom.

Tom thought: my daughter loves you already, Eleanna. To distraction.
I'm ready to commit myself, are you? He knew she hadn't talked
yet of her husband and children. He wondered if he could take the
plunge.

"I think she suspects. She gives me such knowing looks."

They were sitting in her lounge, drinking coffee. He had surgery in 
the early morning.

"Eleanna," Tom ventured, taking her hand in his, "I know what you
went through a year ago. Believe me when I say I understand. I -
you know how much Elizabeth desperately wants a mother. And - and
she likes you. She needs a mother."

He paused, Eleanna looked at him and waited.

"Would you agree to marry me, Eleanna? And let my daughter have
the mommy she wants for Christmas?"

"And what does Elizabeth's Daddy want?" she asked very softly, her
heart thumping. She waited. Tom looked at her, his eyes very blue
and earnest.

"Elizabeth's Daddy would like it very much, because Elizabeth's
Daddy is in love with her teacher. He needs her. He very much wants
a wife - "

"I love you, Tom Walton," she said as she closed in on him and kissed 
him. His arms went around her, hugging her convulsively, then he 
whispered, raggedly: 

"I love you, Eleanna Torrence. I've loved you for a long time."

*******

On Christmas morning, Tom brought Elizabeth to her house, for the
first time, and said to her:

"There, Elizabeth, the Mommy you wished for for Christmas. At which 
the child looked round-eyed at her, then at her Daddy who nodded to 
her. She ran into the arms of Eleanna Torrence, who hugged her 
closely, kissing the top of her head. Elizabeth looked at her, with 
eyes shining and said:

"I love you, Mommy."

***********************

THE END