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intheheartTitle: Peace
Rating: PG.
Summary: One last fight.
Date: 2039
Notes: Sequel to pretend and Minutes.
It's over now. Everything.
She sits in the lobby, staring at her hands folded in her lap, and waits for her children to arrive. She has to tell them now. Everything, not just that their father is dead. She's sorry for that, for her secrecy that now means they will lose both their parents in one night, but what else can she do? Wait until she dies herself? She won't do that to them.
It seems so incredible to her that she should be alive and he not, when she is the one who received a death sentence not two days ago. It's so incredible that she forgets to breathe until her lungs burn and she draws in air with a gasp. She's sure the nurse on patient intake thinks that she's crying.
She isn't. Not yet. She will in a little while, when her children get here and she has to tell them everything, but not yet.
This doesn't hurt, precisely-- not yet, anyway. Even sitting in the ambulance, holding her husband's cooling hand and knowing he was dead even though the EMTs wouldn't tell her anything, she didn't hurt. What she felt, what she feels now, is loss, the sudden and unimaginable vastness of an emptiness she can't begin to fill. She's calm, but it's an artifical calm. Like she's bleeding from a fatal wound, too in shock to feel the pain, but knowing it's waiting, looming above her like a tidal wave.
She's falling, now. It's when she hits the bottom that it will really start.
She has not spent this calm uselessly, however brief and unreal it is. She's made some choices while she sat on the floor and in the ambulance and listened to the doctors talking on and on while she heard nothing beyond the roaring in her own ears. Her children will be appalled, they will fight her, but on this she will stand firm-- no chemotherapy, no fight. No last-ditch efforts or resuscitation. She has stage-four ovarian cancer, a cancer that has already spread to her liver and is reaching for her lungs, a cancer too well-rooted to be excised now. She will not spend her last months fighting a useless battle-- she will face death on her own terms, as she has everything else.
Her children will hate that, but they will not win this fight. She thinks they will know that, and not fight too hard.
What point would there be, anyway? Her husband is still dead. She is still dying. What more is there to say? What more is there to do?
They will ask her if she made this choice because of him. She did, of course, but not how they think. She doesn't want to die because she's lost him. She's sure people will think that, and perhaps she'll wish she'd died, when pain-to-come becomes pain-that-is. But he is not the only one she loves, not the only one who makes her life worth living. She will not die for him.
It was because of his face, when he stopped breathing. The near-panic suddenly faded, replaced by a calm that stole her breath and a look that was almost, almost joy. His hand tightened on hers, once, and relaxed, and it was over, all at once, the fight finished, all wars ended.
That is what she will tell her children, when they ask, when they fight. I am not afraid anymore, she will say. Your father gave me that.
He gave her so much, in their life together. Flowers, kisses, children; hope, courage, love. And if there is any mercy in the world, any truth to her daughter-in-law's belief in a loving God, she will see him again, and tell him of this last gift.
She will hope for that. She loves him too dearly to want anything else.
Her children are arriving now, both together, Ivy trembling and blinking back tears, Aaron crying openly. Gina and Clara are with them, and their children. Summer will be up later with her boys. She will tell them then, she decides, when they are all together.
One last fight, she thinks, one more grief, and rises to meet them.
Rating: PG.
Summary: One last fight.
Date: 2039
Notes: Sequel to pretend and Minutes.
It's over now. Everything.
She sits in the lobby, staring at her hands folded in her lap, and waits for her children to arrive. She has to tell them now. Everything, not just that their father is dead. She's sorry for that, for her secrecy that now means they will lose both their parents in one night, but what else can she do? Wait until she dies herself? She won't do that to them.
It seems so incredible to her that she should be alive and he not, when she is the one who received a death sentence not two days ago. It's so incredible that she forgets to breathe until her lungs burn and she draws in air with a gasp. She's sure the nurse on patient intake thinks that she's crying.
She isn't. Not yet. She will in a little while, when her children get here and she has to tell them everything, but not yet.
This doesn't hurt, precisely-- not yet, anyway. Even sitting in the ambulance, holding her husband's cooling hand and knowing he was dead even though the EMTs wouldn't tell her anything, she didn't hurt. What she felt, what she feels now, is loss, the sudden and unimaginable vastness of an emptiness she can't begin to fill. She's calm, but it's an artifical calm. Like she's bleeding from a fatal wound, too in shock to feel the pain, but knowing it's waiting, looming above her like a tidal wave.
She's falling, now. It's when she hits the bottom that it will really start.
She has not spent this calm uselessly, however brief and unreal it is. She's made some choices while she sat on the floor and in the ambulance and listened to the doctors talking on and on while she heard nothing beyond the roaring in her own ears. Her children will be appalled, they will fight her, but on this she will stand firm-- no chemotherapy, no fight. No last-ditch efforts or resuscitation. She has stage-four ovarian cancer, a cancer that has already spread to her liver and is reaching for her lungs, a cancer too well-rooted to be excised now. She will not spend her last months fighting a useless battle-- she will face death on her own terms, as she has everything else.
Her children will hate that, but they will not win this fight. She thinks they will know that, and not fight too hard.
What point would there be, anyway? Her husband is still dead. She is still dying. What more is there to say? What more is there to do?
They will ask her if she made this choice because of him. She did, of course, but not how they think. She doesn't want to die because she's lost him. She's sure people will think that, and perhaps she'll wish she'd died, when pain-to-come becomes pain-that-is. But he is not the only one she loves, not the only one who makes her life worth living. She will not die for him.
It was because of his face, when he stopped breathing. The near-panic suddenly faded, replaced by a calm that stole her breath and a look that was almost, almost joy. His hand tightened on hers, once, and relaxed, and it was over, all at once, the fight finished, all wars ended.
That is what she will tell her children, when they ask, when they fight. I am not afraid anymore, she will say. Your father gave me that.
He gave her so much, in their life together. Flowers, kisses, children; hope, courage, love. And if there is any mercy in the world, any truth to her daughter-in-law's belief in a loving God, she will see him again, and tell him of this last gift.
She will hope for that. She loves him too dearly to want anything else.
Her children are arriving now, both together, Ivy trembling and blinking back tears, Aaron crying openly. Gina and Clara are with them, and their children. Summer will be up later with her boys. She will tell them then, she decides, when they are all together.
One last fight, she thinks, one more grief, and rises to meet them.
