How to make a mix tape (Completed)

30 Walk Away in Silence

Warning - contains descriptions of Mental Health issues

David and Fiona had stumbled through Christmas and New Year, neither of them full of festive cheer.  On the third of January, they had decided to have the ceremony for Joseph at Brompton Cemetery.

They didn't invite anyone. However, all the doctors and nurse from ITU who could attend did. All of the Grove Road boys and their partners were there. It was a bleak day to mark their bleak mood. The sky was steel grey. Freezing rain splattered on to their faces.

David was a wreck. He looked at the little coffin and he felt that the best part of him had gone for ever. He clasped Fiona to him. She was half the woman she was. He looked at her and she showed not one flicker of emotion.

Fiona couldn't cry. There were no feelings, not one, none. She saw the coffin. She knew it contained her baby. Nothing. She felt David's grief. Nothing. She felt the grief of everyone else. Nothing.

That night they lay next to each other. Words hung unsaid in the air. Since the accident, there hadn't been any physical intimacy between them. David thought about his lovely girl. The one he met in that lecture theatre 18 months ago. The one that walked him home from a party because he was too pissed. The one that spent Christmas with him last year. The one he made that baby with.

The memories of her pulled the desired effect. His arousal began. As quickly as it did, he thought of her lying in that bed a whisper from life. The call he got when she lost the baby. When they gave her last rights and she fought back. He was so angry he wanted to hurt someone very badly.

Fiona lay next to him. She knew him well enough that the sound of his breathing indicated his arousal. Then as soon as she noticed it, it was gone. The great connection between them was physical. She knew he loved her. He had demonstrated that. She also knew that David had the highest sex drive of anyone she had ever met. He hadn't lain a hand on her since she came back. Was this making a bad situation worse?

The next day David knew that something had changed. The atmosphere between them had no emotion. Fiona had been attending her therapist on a daily basis. He thought once she went she would start to heal. She seemed to get worse.

Instead, he slowly saw her become more distant to him.  The previous night she hadn't said more than one unnecessary word to him. This was his Fiona who could talk the hind legs off of a donkey.

He realised that the person he was in love with had gone very far away and the person left behind was a very sad ghost. That made him angry. Angry at who had done this. Angry at the universe for taking away his golden girl and leaving this shell behind.

He heard Fiona's key in the door. She dropped her bag and headed into the living room. She looked like the weight of the world was on her shoulders.

"David," she said softly, "we need to talk." She had been rehearsing the speech all day in her mind.

"I know," he said. He did. He knew that she was sad. He needed to hear her out.

They both sat together on the couch. Fiona took David's hand and looked at him directly.

"I want you to know that I deeply love you and I have never felt the same about anyone in my whole life. You are singly the kindest and most generous man I will ever know."

"OK babe, this is a bit of a worrying start to a conversation. It sounds like 'it's not you, it's me' fuck off thing that you say when you are dumping someone." David searched her face for answers. His stomach knotted when he realised he was right. "I am right aren't I?"

"David, we have been through a lot. More than some couples go through in a lifetime. The last year I have been so happy and so sad. Right now, I am broken. You are damaged by being with me. I am broken and I need to fix myself." Fiona looked at the ground.