Frostbitten: The Complete Series by Bera Ilia

Author:Bera, Ilia [Bera, Ilia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-07-02T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

AN UNEXPECTED TRAGEDY

Olga became unexpectedly pregnant with Hanna immediately after the wedding.

But the pregnancy was complicated.

Because of Olga’s small size and weight, her body wasn’t able to handle the woes of pregnancy. At three months, she became very ill and bed-ridden. Her body began to fail her, and she became increasingly weak.

Doctors kept naively assuring that it was normal for small women like Olga to experience difficult symptoms during pregnancy.

But after Hanna was born, the symptoms persisted. Within days—Olga’s body began to shut down. Francis was an emotional wreck—completely devastated. He spent every dime he had brining in different doctors to try and muster up a solution—but there was none.

It was an inevitability. Olga was dying.

Unable to fathom the painful death of their daughter, Olga’s parents had one final reluctant idea. They explained to Francis that Olga could be saved, but it involved returning to Russia, and never coming back. Francis couldn’t understand why, but the Pytrovichs would say no more.

Francis wanted his wife to survive more than anything—so he reluctantly agreed to let the Pytrovichs take Olga back to Russia, despite knowing that it meant never seeing her again.

In case Francis’ life hadn’t become difficult enough, his parents passed away just a few weeks later from sudden and unexpected natural causes.

Francis was left raising Hanna alone. He had no money and he had no knowledge of how to raise a child. Life had taken a swift turn.

Like her parents, Hanna was extremely quiet and shy. In her first few years of school, she said nothing at all—even when her teachers demanded she speak. Because of chronic silence, she never made any friends. As kids started to form little friend circles, Hanna found herself left out.

During lunch and recess, she would sit under the school stairs, where no one would see her. Kids started to make up stories about her, and called her “The school troll”.

Hanna’s teachers put the blame on Francis, who was struggling to make ends meet. Forced to work double, and even triple shifts at his work to pay the bills, Francis wasn’t able to make it to parent-teacher meetings, school plays or any of the school meet-and-greets. He didn’t help with homework and he never filled out any of the field trip forms.

Desperate for money, Francis took a job at the local high-security prison, as a security guard—a dangerous job for a new father. Unfortunately, it was the only job that was hiring—because no one else wanted to do it. The only reason the job was available was because an inmate stabbed the last guard to death. Because the prison was so understaffed, Francis often worked well over his scheduled hours.

One day, Francis received a call from Hanna’s school. Hanna’s teachers demanded that Hanna see a psychiatrist about her social anxiety—blaming it on her poor performance.

The psychiatrist was expensive, but Francis wanted his daughter to be normal and accepted—and to not have to suffer through the familiar woes of his own lousy childhood. Hanna began seeing a local therapist about her fear of speaking and socializing.

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