For the Last Words Contest on Caesar's Palace. The prompt was: Write the death of a character (canon death, OC, or AU death) and highlight their last words in some way.
This is a death that could actually be canon, but is never mentioned in the books.
I decided that Johanna would be elderly during the events of this fic, because I don't see many fics out there about the characters when they've grown old.
This oneshot was not beta-read, so excuse the mistakes.
The worst pain is the pain that is unexpected. Johanna knew this well, but it still didn't prepare her for the heart attack.
"You'll know," her doctor, a kind, honest man named Quintus, would always reassure her. "I've felt it before. The pain was like something crushing my chest. Trust me, you'll know if you're having a heart attack." Quintus had survived his heart attack- barely. "It was pure luck," he always said, "and I'm thankful that I'm still here."
But Johanna didn't know when she was having a heart attack.
When she became suddenly short of breath, she chalked it up to allergies. She had just visited the house of one of her childhood friends, Marie, who had a large dog. Johanna always had allergic reactions to dogs, and she assumed that her unsteady breathing was yet another symptom.
When she began to feel sick, and a cold sweat beaded on her forehead, she assumed that it was something that she ate while she was at Marie's house. After all, she thought, that chicken looked rather uncooked... Sweat trickled down her cheeks like tears. It's a hot day out! Johanna marveled, incredulous at the amount of sweat staining her blouse.
When her heart began to thump at an unnervingly rapid pace, she finally began to worry.
She walked quickly down the sidewalk, damning her uncomfortable shoes as she walked to her house, stumbling over every crack in the sidewalk, every clump of unruly grass. It was becoming even harder to breathe, and the sick feeling in her stomach was worsening. Her wrinkled hands groped for the key under her doormat, and she cursed herself mentally for placing it in a spot that she had to bend down to reach. Johanna's back usually never hurt, but it was aching terribly in that moment.
Have to call Dr. Quintus... have to get to the hospital... please, please, please, let him not be busy... please... Johanna thought in a scattered way. District Seven's hospital was not far away, but the roads around it were finally being redone -they had been relatively untouched since the year of the first Hunger Games- and it would take several extra minutes for Johanna to get around the construction in order to get to the hospital.
Staggering through her door, she didn't even bother to put her key under the mat to hide it. She didn't care if a burglar broke into her house. It was so untidy they'd probably run off.
Her phone was right next to the door. She snatched it from its rest and fruitlessly tried to remember Dr. Quintus's phone number. 492... 492-6 something? Johanna thought. In all her pain, she had forgotten the number. "Dammit!" she could not help but cry out. Talking made it even harder for her to breathe. She ended up choking. 492-6...6... she thought frantically, her pulse racing even faster with nerves. 68 something! she thought, remembering the next number.
Before she could take the time to remember the final numbers, her vision suddenly blurred. She heard a loud crash, and suddenly she found herself staring at a paper. Anna Fabbro re-elected President! It was a newspaper, she realized, one of the many newspapers that she'd strewn around on the floor. Johanna had never been an organized person, and her untidy tendencies had grown even worse with age.
A newspaper? she thought, perplexed. I only throw the newspapers on the floor. How did I get here? She sat up slowly, her back protesting. She still couldn't breathe right. Where is the phone? She rifled around through the newspapers on the floor, hoping that one of them concealed her phone. But no matter how much she searched, she simply couldn't find it. It was only when she looked up that she realized what had happened.
The cord of the phone -she hated herself for keeping her old-fashioned phone, why hadn't she gotten a cordless phone like everyone else had?- had been ripped out of the wall as she fell to the ground. She had still been holding onto the phone, and the weight of her falling body had caused the cord to be torn out of the wall.
With increased panic, Johanna realized that all hope of calling Dr. Quintus was lost. She wouldn't be able to get to the hospital. She wouldn't get anywhere. Her neighbors lived blocks away from her, and she knew she wouldn't be able to walk that much. If she screamed, no one would hear her. If she attempted to leave the house, she would collapse on the sidewalk and never get up. Maybe days later, someone might find her.
"No, no, no," Johanna gasped. "Not after all you've been through..." She broke off her sentence, choking on the air that was rapidly exiting her mouth. No new air came into her lungs, and she used up the rest of her precious air, her life, with her final words: "After all you've been through, you're killed by a goddamn heart attack?"