Sixteen Days

Chapter Eight: A Mother's Hell

Taco Bellevue Hospital, room 413
4:37 pm
Day 8

Fry gently ran his fingers through Leela's hair, smoothing it away from her face. He had always liked her hair. Soft and bouncy and always smelling like lavender. He could always tell when she entered the room because of that soft scent, but after eight days without a shower the aroma had worn off and he desperately missed it. Come to think of it, he desperately missed everything about her. Her eye color, her voice, her smile, the looks she would give him when he annoyed or surprised her. He would have happily given his right leg to even have her yell at him at that moment.

A strand from her bangs fell in front of her eye and he gently swept it aside. If she would just let him do this kind of thing to her when she was awake… he'd probably never take his hands off her. An idea he couldn't help but smile at. He wished she would let him express his love for her physically. Not in a sexual way, (although he wouldn't complain if the opportunity came up) but with little touches and gestures. A hand on her shoulder, snuggling up to watch a movie or something, any kind of loving physical comfort. She had hinted before that she had never really had that in her life, at least not by anyone who was sincere, and he yearned to be the one to give her that. He knew how much she longed for a loving, lasting relationship and it pained him to see her again and again go out with jerks that didn't treat her right. He was sure having every relationship she tried to have blow up in her face hurt her more than she let on, and even though he was always not-so-secretly relieved when she did break up with the jerk-of-the-moment, he never liked to see her unhappy no matter the circumstance. Admittedly he might not be the smartest or the strongest, but he knew he would never treat her badly or take her for granted. But until she gave him the chance, he had no way of proving that to her.

"One of these days I'm gonna figure it out." He promised her. "I'm gonna prove once and for all exactly what you mean to me."

Fry looked up warily as the door opened. The last thing he wanted was to be kicked out again. But to his relief it was only Bender.

"Hey buddy, whatcha been up to?" He pulled up a chair, leaned back, and propped his feet up on Leela's bed.

"Bender! Feet down!"

"Why?" Bender asked as he lit his cigar. "It's not like it's bothering her."

Horrified Fry leapt up snatched the cigar out of Bender's mouth, tossed it in the trash can and overturned a glass of water on it. Bender protested, "Hey! What's the big idea?!"

"Are you insane?! You can't smoke in here! She's on a respirator, you could blow the place up!"

"Ohh right, I forgot, reason number forty-seven humans are inferior to robots: mammals are made of flammable materials." Bender grabbed a beer from his chest compartment still fully neglecting to remove his feet from the bed. "So, her manufacturers decide what to do with her yet?"

Fry looked bewildered. "Her manu-oh! You mean her parents." He sighed. "They don't know yet. They aren't real comfortable making that kinda decision when they can't see her condition for themselves."

Now it was Bender's turn to look bewildered. "Why can't they see her?"

"Cause of the mutant law."

Bender rolled his eyes, "There is more than one way for them to see her y'know."

"I'm not following..."

Bender sat up finally putting his feet back on the ground. "They gotta video phone right?"

"Yeah…"

Bender made a noise of disgust. "Do I hafta explain everything? You can get a video cell-phone, call 'em and let 'em see her that way."

"I don't have a video cell."

Bender once again opened his compartment and handed Fry a cell phone. "Here. Take Amy's."

"You took Amy's phone? Don't you think she'll notice it's gone?"

"It's not like it's the only one she's got."

Fry examined the small phone. "Good point, but when I'm done I'm giving it back to her, not you."

"And I'll steal it from her again, thus the cycle of thievery continues!"

Fry raised an eyebrow at him, which he ignored.

"Well, I reckon you're gonna call 'em now, and get all emotional and all, so if it's all the same to you I'm gonna go pilfer from the worm candy in the morgue."

Fry shuddered at the thought as Bender walked out. Then he turned his attention to the cell-phone and tried to figure out exactly how to work it.

"Once they see you, there's no way they'll be able to let your doctor do that to you. I just know it."

Morris answered on the third ring. He tried to keep his expression neutral, but Fry could plainly see the fear in the older man's eye.

"Did something happen?"

"Nothing bad. Amy just 'loaned' me her cell phone so that I could let you guys see Leela for yourselves before you make your decision."

Morris turned away from the screen, looking somewhere over his right shoulder. "Munda get in here!"

Alarmed by the urgency in his voice Munda wasted no time joining her husband in front of the phone. "What is it, what happened?"

"He's gonna let us see her!"

Munda gasped, turning to Fry, "Really? We get to see her?"

"Yeah," Fry replied, "I'm right here with her. I hope this helps make your decision easier."

He angled the phone's screen in Leela's direction allowing the couple their first look. There was a long moment of silence from their end of the phone. Unnerved, Fry leaned in so that he could see them on the screen without blocking their view.

Munda was the first to break the silence. "Th-they think she's gonna spend the whole rest of her life like that?" She whimpered softly.

"They're wrong." Fry insisted vehemently. "She's gonna wake up. She just needs some more time is all."

Munda looked up at Morris who had yet to take his eye off of his baby girl. For the first time since hearing of the accident he was on the verge of tears.

"I know it's hard to see her this way," Fry said desperately. "Believe me I know. But as long as she's alive then there's a chance."

"But at what price?" Munda asked numbly, "What are we putting her through?"

"Nothing!" Fry insisted alarmed with the direction this conversation was taking. "We aren't putting her through anything, she's asleep, when she wakes up she shouldn't remember any of it."

Munda once again looked to Morris for support. He reluctantly tore his eye away from Leela to meet her gaze.

"I don't know what to do." She whispered. "I don't know what's right."

Morris looked at Fry. "We still need to think about this." His voice broke and he had to walk out of frame to regain his composure.

"Okay," Fry agreed, relieved that the downright scary direction the conversation had started to go in had been derailed. "Amy'll let me hang onto her phone, I bet, so you can call me if you need to see Leela again."

The call ended then. Fry folded the phone back up and slid it into his pocket. With a deep sigh he took Leela's hand and gave it a squeeze.

"I know they'll come around. They just weren't ready to see you like this. But once they think about it, they'll see. I'm sure of it."


Residence of Turanga Morris & Munda
10:45 pm
Day 8

Alone in the darkened living room, under the glow of a single lamp, Munda sat in silence. Her three-year-old mutant cat, Muffin, was asleep peacefully curled by her side. With a soft sigh Munda caressed the cover of the large leather photo album that housed the majority of the pictures of her daughter. Once she had had them displayed on the wall in the form of a timeline, but soon after being reunited with her, Leela had insisted that the pictures come down. Munda had been reluctant but Leela had been adamant declaring that a wall gallery was creepy and that normal families used photo albums. She had finally relented when Leela presented her with a gorgeous family photo album. It had been brand new but treated to look antique, black with a silver braided border. Munda had spent the following weekend filling it to capacity. It had become one of her most treasured possessions.

Opening the front cover Munda paused to read the inscription.

I know it's not the same as a wall gallery, but it's portable so you can look at it wherever you want.

Love,
Leela

Munda smiled softly at the words. This album had been Leela's first gift to her parents and desperate for their approval she had been very nervous and shy about giving it to them. She had looked so relieved when she had seen the joy on her mother's face when she had first opened the gift.

Munda turned to the first picture in the album. It had been taken moments after Leela's birth by the midwife and showed Morris and Munda (both several pounds lighter and in Morris' case with more hair) gazing down at their baby in awed wonder. Their baby, in turn, was gazing up at them with a look of complete bewilderment. Which was understandable, given the fact that she was only about ten minutes old. It was amazing to Munda how normal the picture looked. It was impossible to tell by looking at it how traumatic her labor with Leela had been. Her pregnancy had gone smoothly enough. Smoothly enough it seemed, to lure her into a false sense of security. She had expected a quick and easy birth and had been completely unprepared for all of the complications that had arisen. For one, Leela had been breech. And because of her position had become stuck in the birth canal. Which by itself would not have been too major of a deal had it not been for the fact that the umbilical cord had wrapped itself around Leela's throat and had begun to strangle her. Being stuck in the breech position had kept the midwife from being able to access her neck to free her, leaving Munda no choice but to try to deliver her as fast as possible. It had taken several long agonizing minutes for the birth to be completed. And once it was, it appeared to be too late. The one glimpse of their daughter the couple had seen before the midwife had raced off to work on her was that of a lifeless body. She had been blue, limp, and silent. Munda shuddered at the memory. That moment in time, were it seemed she had lost her very-much-wanted daughter before she had even had her had been the absolute worst moment of her life. That mental image, of a stillborn Leela, still gave her nightmares so many years later. But Leela, showing her fighting spirit, had come around fairly quickly. By the time parents and daughter were reunited Leela was alert and smiling and attempting to hold an in-depth conversation with Morris' fingers.

Munda wondered sullenly whether losing Leela this time would hurt worse than when she had thought she had lost her back then. Would the fact that she had actually gotten to know her daughter on a personal level make losing her even harder, or was the bond they had shared at the moment of her birth just as strong then as it was now? Somehow Munda couldn't imagine the pain being any worse, at least she hoped it wouldn't be. It had been hell the first time and would no doubt be hell this time.

Soon after getting their daughter back, they had made the decision to give her up. Something neither parent had wanted but felt necessary in order to give Leela a quality of life she never would have had if kept. But seeing as how she had been born in January, during a blizzard even, there was no way they were going to leave their daughter in a basket outside with snow on the ground. It just wasn't an option. So they had kept her, for two months, finally leaving her during the March thaw. Which gave them plenty of time for Munda to search out an orphanarium, a task hampered by the lack of a map or phone book and for Morris to make a bracelet at his jewelry store to leave with her so that Leela would at the very least feel that she had meant something to her family and hadn't simply been thrown out like an unwanted X-mas gift.

Knowing their time with her was limited the couple had gone completely camera crazy, filling dozens of SD cards of every move their child made. The best out of those photos had made it into the album. Munda would have loved nothing more than to have been able to include all of them, but if she had she would have had no room left over for pictures of Leela's later life. So she had picked her top favorites to fill the next several pages. Like the one of Morris lying flat on his back on a blanket on the floor, fast asleep with one arm wrapped protectively around Leela who was curled up, also asleep, on his chest. Or the one of herself and Leela sitting together on the floor amid a variety of educational baby toys all of which Leela was completely ignoring, finding the hem of Munda's dress far more interesting. She had the fabric grasped tightly in her little fists and was examining it as if it were the most amazing substance on the planet while Munda laughed joyfully.

Munda gazed longingly at each photograph. Although spending those few short months with her daughter had made abandoning her all the more difficult, she wouldn't have traded that time spent for anything in the world. Especially now that it seemed time had all but run out. Flipping through a couple more pages Munda paused on one of Leela's school pictures. A five-year-old Leela smiled cautiously, yet adorably, up at her from the page. With pigtails, glasses, and gapped teeth Munda found her absolutely irresistible. On the next page was a picture of her at age seven. She looked almost like a different child. The glasses were gone, the hair was down, and the smile was fake and forced, but what was most startling was the absolutely haunted look in her eye. There was a sadness there unlike anything Munda had ever seen before. She desperately wished she knew what had put it there but every time she tried to question Leela about her childhood Leela would grow evasive and try to change the subject. But whatever it was that she had gone through, it had evidently kept getting worse. With each consecutive photo Leela's smile looked more and more forced and the look in her eye seemed more and more desperate. Until her teen years where she just looked dead. In none of her high school photos did she even attempt a smile. She just stared blankly at the camera, almost as if she were looking right through it. It was clear that she had given up.

Munda bit her lip to hold back the tears. It had been her original idea to abandon Leela to the surface. She had hoped that by doing so Leela's life would be a happy and secure one, but if the pictures were anything to go by, it had been quite the opposite. In not one of her post-abandonment/pre-Planet Express pictures did Leela show any indications of being happy. And the fact that Leela absolutely refused to divulge anything about her past other than vague references of being teased lead Munda to believe that her childhood had been nothing more than a living hell. And she wondered for the millionth time whether or not she had made the right decision. Even though it had been obvious that their daughter was hurting, Morris and Munda had stood by their decision to leave her hoping that her adulthood would be happier. If they had gone back and retrieved her it would have made the suffering she had already gone through meaningless and in vain, but if she stuck it out and lead a fulfilling and happy adult life than the sacrifices they had all made would have been worth it. But exactly how happy was her adult life? Sure she smiled more and seemed more content, but was it because she was sincerely happy or was she just relieved to be out of the hell her childhood had been? When she had been accidentally doused in youthacizing mud and reverted to her fourteen-year-old body Leela had been fully ready to abandon her life to rejoin her family. She had even refused treatment to regain her normal form. She hadn't even taken a moment to think about it, her decision had been automatic. If she was truly happy with her life, wouldn't she have needed time to really consider all she was giving up? Her work? Which was dangerous, paid poorly, with no opportunities for advancement. Her friends? None of whom she seemed especially close to with the one possible exception of Philip. Munda flipped towards the end of the album, to the section with pictures of Leela after she had joined Planet Express and scrutinized Leela's expression in each one. She looked happy. Her smile was wide, her face lit up, her eye bright, often with Philip's arm around her. Yes, Munda decided, she was fairly happy. But even then, she had only been with Planet Express for four years. So did that mean the first twenty-four years of Leela's life had been unfulfilling and miserable? Munda didn't have many pictures between when Leela had graduated high school at eighteen and when she had gotten her Cryonics job at twenty-three, which left her emotional state during her college years in question. Munda desperately wanted to believe that Leela had found some degree of happiness after leaving the orphanarium but unless Leela woke up and told her one way or the other than she had no way of finding out for sure.

But was having her life support pulled what Leela really wanted though? Were things really so bad that she was only willing to give herself a three-day shot at survival should anything happen to her? Maybe it was what she had wanted back then, but now? If they decided to pull her life-support would they be putting her out of her misery, or cutting her life short right when things were starting to look up? If they decided not to pull her life-support would they be saving her life? Or confining her to a lifetime of imprisonment? Munda knew her daughter well enough to know Leela would rather die than spend her life in a coma. But after only a week Munda didn't want to give up hope of a recovery. But as Morris had pointed out, they had to make the decision, not for themselves, but for Leela. So the question remained: What would Leela really want? Munda leaned back against the couch cushions and stared up at the cracks in the ceiling. Reluctantly shoving her own emotional attachments aside for the first time she took a moment to fully consider things from Leela's perspective. When she put her own feelings away and allowed herself to just be in tune with Leela for a moment it became obvious what their decision should be. She knew what her daughter wanted.


Sitting his half empty beer on the bedside table Morris laid back, with his arms placed behind his head. He wondered what Munda was doing. She had gone downstairs about an hour earlier after having mumbled something about 'having to think'. He was fairly certain she had gone off to cry. Normally he would have gone to her, but he knew she needed to be alone, so he didn't push it. But he kind of wished she would come back. Being forced to make this final decision may have made Munda want to be alone, but it made him want to have what was left of his family close by.

He felt the edge of the bed dent and glanced down. Nibbler had jumped up and was walking towards the headboard.

"Hey there buddy." Morris acknowledged him.

Nibbler made a noncommittal noise before settling down on the pillow on Munda's side of the bed.

"I never thought something like this could happen." Morris continued. "But I guess no one ever does."

Nibbler lifted his head from the pillow to listen.

"I mean, I knew she had a dangerous job. Something like this was probably bound to happen sooner or later. I shouldn't have been so surprised." He took a shuddering breath. "After that bee stung her, I wonder if she knew what was happening, if she was afraid."

A sound on the stairs shook him from his thoughts. Munda was coming back upstairs. Morris pushed himself up on his arms so he could greet her. She stepped into the doorway with her blanket drawn tight around her. She looked exhausted and resigned.

"I know what I want to do." She said emotionlessly.

"Are you sure?" Morris asked, knowing full well what decision she had come to.

"Yes. It's what she would have wanted."

Unsurprised, Morris sighed. "Alright. I'll call Fry in the morning."

As her face crumpled and her eye filled with tears Morris sat up and reached for her. She came willingly and curled up in his arms.