BAD DAY


Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine.
Summary: Daria's been having a lot of bad days lately..and Tom just doesn't understand.
Authors Note: This is what happens when you listen to too much music.

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Turning over in his bed, before reaching an arm out to caress Daria's back, Tom sighed as he felt nothing there but empty space.

Opening his eyes, he saw a yellow post-it note lying on her pillow, the third note this week.

Picking it up, he read softly to himself the five words he knew would be there:

Had a bad day again

"Shit." He cursed absentmindedly to himself. Getting up out of his bed, and wondering out of the bedroom that he shared with Daria, Tom couldn't help but use more profanity, this was the third time this week. The third time this week he'd been left lying in his bed, alone, worrying where his wife was.

"Daria?"

Checking the guest room, and the kitchen, then the basement as a last resort, Tom concluded that Daria wasn't in the house, and after thinking about it for a minute, he knew for sure that she wasn't at Jane's, or her parents for that matter, which only made him realize that he didn't have an inkling to where she could be, or what she could be doing.

Usually the disappearance of Daria wouldn't cause him to worry, usually it would just cause him to think that she was overwhelmed with how happy their lives had been so far, but for the last couple of weeks, anything she did caused him to worry, and with her now sudden disappearance, he couldn't even fathom where she was, or what was going on inside of her head.

Walking towards his in-home office, Tom pulled out the poetry/journal book that Daria had bought him two months ago, and after flipping towards a blank page, he wrote down what he was feeling inside, the same feelings that had been burning deeply in him for a while:

She said I would not understand
She left a note and said, "I'm sorry I
had a bad day again"

Thinking of what to write next, Tom flipped a few pages back to what he had written a couple of days earlier when the 'disappearing act' first began:

She spilled her coffee, broke her shoelace
Smeared the lipstick on her face
Slammed the door and said, "I'm sorry I
had a bad day again"

Tom couldn't help but chuckle as he saw those words, those same five words that seemed to be messing up his marriage. ' had a bad day again.'

At first when Daria had said those words to him, he had thought 'okay, she had a bad day, maybe tomorrow will be better.' But now, after two weeks of hearing the same five words, he was beginning to notice little things, and when he noticed things, he confronted her about it, which caused her to always say the same thing, which just happened to be what was written on the next line:

And she swears there's nothing wrong

Tom knew she was lying when she said nothing was wrong, he always knew when, and why she was lying, but at the moment, he was at loss of why she was lying, and why she was hurting him.

Sniffling back the tear that threatened to fall down his face, Tom turned the page, and read another one of his journal entries:

I hear her playing that same old song

Now, sure, to anyone who might stumble on that brief passage in his journal, they'd assume that she was playing a sad song, but really, she was playing their wedding song; repeatedly, and for most people that was sweet, but for most people, their wedding song wasn't the 'death march'.

Turning to the page that he had started writing in today, he began to write down the rest of his emotions.

She puts me on, and puts me off
She had a bad day again
She said I would not understand
Left a note and said, "I'm sorry I
had a bad day again"

"Tom? Tom, are you in here?"

Looking up from his journal, Tom locked eyes with the love of his life, the woman of his dreams, the one he called his wife. "Where were you?"

Daria, stared at him confusingly. Seeing her husband with tears in his eyes, she wondered if she had done this, wondered if she was the one who had made him cry. "I..I was at the hospital."

Tom raised an eyebrow at her in surprise. Out of every place he thought of, he, not once, had thought about her being at the hospital, he hadn't wanted to for that matter. "Why?..What's wrong?"

Looking down at her shoes, so her husband couldn't see the tears that ran down her face, Daria muttered the words Tom didn't want to hear...ever:

"I had a bad day again....I found out I have cancer."

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Well, that's my emotional fic for the day. Email me at AANIKITA@CS.COM with feedback.