“It happens often. A man takes his career to the point where his family doesn't matter."
Suddenly, Elena’s gaze darted up right into his eyes. It would come bursting out of her at once. “No, that’s not true,” she gave back stubbornly, her voice sharpening and turning a tad louder. “Work wasn’t everything for him. He didn’t only care for his position, and his duty. He cared for me, too. Deeply.” As she spoke it out loudly, the doubt almost instantly came in.
How naïve was her thinking? She had been told often enough that she was too naïve for the world. So was she just glorifying him right now, talking herself into believing that he had been forced into all his duties and his work, or was it truly the way she described it? Suddenly, with the way how Doc had expressed his thought, she wasn’t all too sure about it anymore. So she grew silent, and her features relaxed again.
It was after his last question that Elena felt like a bullet had been shot right through her body. She clenched both her fists, and convulsed the rest of her body. Indeed, she would have loved to stand up and punch this guy right in the face for asking such a silly question, but she restrained herself, though it took her quite an amount of willpower not to. The question left her speechless for a moment, pressing all the air out of her lungs, leaving her longing for air. An attack of sweating overcame her. Her fingers began to prickle weirdly. “No,” she spat through her clenched teeth in an almost disgusted way, looking down.
Another few seconds of silence, then she went on. In the meantime, memories of times gone ran past her inner eyelid. “I don’t blame myself for having it,” she stuttered. Her heartbeat rose. Memories steadily made tears spring to her eyes. “I blame myself for,” she shook her head, and held her eyes closed with her fingers. The first teardrops already made their way down the cheeks, albeit her attempt to dam them up. Somehow, she managed to spit out the last words in between the upcoming sobs before losing her temper completely. “For killing it.”
