The anxiousness caused by his fight with Marguerite had drained his face of color and veiled his train of thought, and the harsh fall from the balcony sure hadn’t helped either. He then turned his back to her and strode off to the west. Had he been too harsh to her? He was in a hurry, after all, but he still felt for the lonely auburn-haired child with big green eyes like those of a stray cat. “Oh, my head… I remember it was in this direction.” He rubbed his clouded eyes and sprung up. He believed the mansion’s backdoor was somewhere around the west garden. He had to get to her before her crisis worsened. She must be in her room still, right? At the very least, she would be in the second floor. He looked up towards the balcony but the fog and rain made it hard to make out. By falling for the doctor and then wishing to keep the child that was produced by that sinful bond she proved that hospital was doing her no good at all –on the contrary, Valentin would have to take the matter into his own hands and get her out of there as soon as possible.
Marguerite, of course! They had argued just a moment ago. Which reminded him…Īlthough his starched uniform was damp from the rain, he brushed at his trousers absentmindedly. Maybe she was family to someone admitted into the institution, but she shouldn’t be wandering around there alone. “Who are you? This isn’t a place for children!” Eyes rimmed with sleeplessness stared at her. He wrinkled his brow, waiting for her to speak up, but she didn’t part her lips, the wary little thing. Her hands were clenched into tiny fists around a black umbrella that was far too big for her and she was looking at him with a mixture of surprise and suspicion. A small girl in a green dress that would be beautiful were it not for the mud stains on its hem and apron. As he started regaining a sense of orientation and perception of his rigid body, he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. He brought his hand to his forehead slowly, in a futile attempt to calm a throbbing headache that had suddenly struck him as he rose up. He stared fixedly into the distance with bloodshot eyes, a dark flush slowly suffusing his wan pallor. “Damn it, why am I still here…”, he mumbled to himself. At least now he knew he was in the garden. Sitting up cost him a fair amount of willpower his limbs felt numb and gravity fought stubbornly to pull him down again as if he had been made of the same heavy stone he was resting on. Grey skies, green-colored patches here and there. He tried to make out his surroundings with a blurry vision at first. Footsteps, maybe? The young man’s eyes fluttered open. Small raindrops kept splattering on the ground. Or had he…? It felt like a bad dream, one of those in which you fall endlessly to your death and wake up right before the crash, retaining only a hazy memory of plummeting downwards. Broken and then gone… He couldn’t have seen any of that, though, as he fell from the railing with eyes wide open in shock. The remaining fragments of the vase were slowly being stained red, but it didn’t matter –soon it would all be washed off by the rain, the crimson streams, the spilt soil. The image flashed through his closed eyelids.
A vase of flowers that had already bloomed, smashed against the checkered marble floor of the balcony. “Everything will be fine if we end it early.”Ī sound of shattered glass.
Had it been him pronouncing those words, pleading in a soft voice threatened to break into a cry of helplessness because of the lump in his throat? He remembered a feeling of urgency and need, a growing uneasiness creeping up his back, but it all felt distant, drowned by the feelings of cold stiffness of his drenched clothes and the hard cobblestone on which he lay. “No one will know as long as it’s handled properly.” He felt his uniform soaked and heavy on his skin. The words echoed faintly inside the young man’s mind but they were muzzled by the sound of the falling rain around him, over him.
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