Episode Twenty-Six: Prom: Scene 24

Monica wasn’t in hospital a couple of months later. She was there three days later.

Maybe her willpower had run out.

Maybe it was just time. I was still angry about it. I still hadn’t gained perspective about mortal lives and deaths and I was in no hurry to do so.

Perspective, as if they were just…pawns on our chess board. They were, but I wasn’t in a hurry to start seeing them that way. Wasn’t I here for, in part, a reminder that they were people?

I visited her. “How long do you think she has?”

“Not long. If she had been more compliant with treatment…”

“You might have been able to give her a few more miserable months.” Regardless of how I felt, I could at least respect her choices.

“She refused to rest.”

“Right. She didn’t want to spend the next four months in a chair and then two in bed.”

The doctor looked sheepish. “So, you aren’t a family member, but apparently she wants you to have power of attorney. Her parents are on their way, though.”

And, I knew, Monica’s wishes were about to be ignored. “And they’ll want heroic measures no matter what.”

“I’m sorry. They’re family. You’re, what, a friend?”

“A friend.”

“Not anything more?”

I shook my head. “Monica’s straight and I have a girlfriend.”

“You should have lied.” He glanced at the bed. “I’d warrant you know her wishes better than they do.”

“She said they were estranged.”

“She mentioned something like that to me.”

Maybe I could talk to them. Part of me didn’t want to. Part of me wanted to agree with them.

Part of me knew that Monica dying cell by cell in the hospital, unconscious, was absolutely not what Odin had had in mind.

Well.

The first step was to talk to her parents when they showed up. See what kind of people they were.

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