The Best Friends You'll Ever Have | 14: New Parents

[luxken27]

Chapter Title: 14 | New Parents
Prompt: #070 - Parents
Universe: Pre-canon
Genre: Family
Rating: T
Warning: none
Word Count: 1,255
Summary: Richard had a lot to learn about being a father, but he already knew one thing for certain: his daughter was beautiful, because she looked just like his beautiful wife.

Links: FF.net | DW | LJ | AO3

This was my gift to ozqueen for the 2012 fandom_stocking holiday exchange. It was actually the last fic I wrote (and last gift I gave), but it was the first to be acknowledged, so :P

This ficlet was inspired by re-reading Mary Anne's Book. ozqueen mentioned in her lists of likes & wants that she loves Richard/Alma, and wanted to read some (good) MA-centric fic, so I decided to attempt to combine those interests by writing a Spier family story. And what better place to start than with MA's Portrait Series book?

And there it was, right at the beginning:

My father told me that I was a quiet and sweet baby. “When we first brought you home I didn’t want to leave for work in the mornings,” he said. “I just wanted to stay home and look at you.”

“You must have been home a lot when my mother was sick,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, “I was home a great deal then. So it was the three of us, together. Alma, your mother, wanted you near her all the time. Your crib was next to her bed. You were a comfort and a joy to her.”

What better moment to capture, than Richard's reluctance to leave his girls every morning? :) That's what I was going for, and hopefully I met my mark.

Alma, Mary Anne's mother, died young - when MA was only a couple of months old. This tragic fact presents a bit of a problem, because she was so young, and there aren't many things young people suddenly die of :P ozqueen herself, in her epic Richard/Elizabeth series, gave Alma rapid-spreading breast cancer. For some reason, in my mind, I've always thought she died of leukemia. IDK why, honestly - most leukemias are not inherently fatal, especially not in young adults. So, ever the pragmatist, I went searching for possible diseases/illnesses that could strike during pregnancy.

What I found is Graves' Disease, which is an autoimmune disorder that affects the thyroid gland. It's mostly associated with hyperthyroidism (though it can be linked to hypothyroidism as well), which means the body produces too much thyroid hormone and gets all out of whack. Thyroid storm is a rare but real thing, and is absolutely deadly if not caught in time, so the thyroid isn't as innocuous as one might imagine.

Graves' Disease disproportionally effects women (7-10x more than men), and young women. It can develop post-pregnancy, which is the scenario I've envisioned here. All of the symptoms Alma exhibits - excessive sweating, intolerance to cold, fatigue, inability to get restful sleep, fever, rash, tachycardia - are early symptoms of Graves'. Unfortunately, these are also common symptoms of other disorders, and if they only occur a few at a time, they are easy to brush aside. Who doesn't have a cold, or the flu sometimes? Who hasn't felt exhausted, or felt their heart race on occasion?

Graves' is treatable in most cases, if it's caught in time. It's only fatal when its left untreated - and I think a harried young mother in the 1970s/80s would probably not be familiar enough with these symptoms - or the disease's link to pregnancy - to suspect she has it. I see Alma as stubborn, and more concerned about caring for her baby than for herself. Rather like Richard, she wants to prove that she can care for her new baby, even if she feels completely overwhelmed by it all. It wouldn't take long for her to decline into a terminal state. Autoimmune disorders (think: AIDS) rob you of your immune system, which is why they're so difficult to manage. And, again, going back in time 30-40 years....I'm basically handwaving the idea that the fatality rate would be higher, simply because of the advances in medicine at the time, especially in the US.

Richard, I think, is a natural worrier - as evidenced by his complete emotional breakdown following Alma's death, and the strictness with which he raises Mary Anne for the first twelve years of her life. He wants to do his best, show everyone (esp his in-laws) that he can give a daughter a proper childhood all on his own, and I think she truly was the center of his universe. Her resemblance to her mother hurts him, sometimes, and is one of the reasons why he doesn't tell Mary Anne anything about her until she stumbles across the pictures of the grandparents she'd never met before.

I think he'd blame himself for Alma's death, if there was any way he could've prevented it. Hence his reaction here, his worry and doubt that what she's going through is normal. After all, he's a new parent, too, so he's learning as he goes. Who is he to say she's dealing with anything out of the ordinary? But still, he wonders...

This was my first crack at writing Richard & Alma. It's such a short piece, too, that I don't really feel like I have a good grip on Alma's character. I simply adore the way ozqueen has portrayed her in her work, and wasn't sure I could do her much justice here. It's always intimidating to write someone's favorite character that they already write so well themselves, LOL.

That being said, this will probably be the only BSC fic I'm going to put out there for awhile. This muse has not returned to me, and I don't know when (or if) it will. I'm glad I was able to gift ozqueen with something, and she seemed to like it, so win-win for coaxing the muse out of hiding, if only for a day.

Just as I have for the last couple of years, I'm going to space out posting the gifts I gave, so I don't flood everyone's reading lists with my yammering :P I managed to gift five different people this year (which I think is a record!) and I want the recipients to have the chance to enjoy their gifts before sharing them with the rest of the world. Stay tuned!