It's angst for a reason. Don't say I didn't warn you.
September 12th, 2012
I'll skip the theatrics.
Jo's dead.
Really, honest-to-goodness, undeniably dead.
I really don't want to tell the story in detail, but I guess I kinda have to. So Mikey woke me up this morning. He was all flustered and worried, babbling nonsense about Jo. When he calmed down, he told me that Jo couldn't move at all and the coral on her back had nearly covered her face.
I got up pretty quickly to check on her and Mikey (for once) was right. Everything except her lips and eyes were covered in coral and I could SEE the rock expanding, slowly and ominously, seeking to cover all means of survival. She noticed me, although her eyes were clouded, and through the pain, she smiled. Of course she did. This was Jo.
I rushed to my lab, hurriedly preparing an injection of anti-mutagen. I would've liked to run some more tests, but time was of the essence and Jo's life hung in the balance. I ran back as fast as I could. Everyone was standing over Jo, panicking or crying (in Mikey's case) and shouting at me to do something. I stabbed the needle into her leg, one of the only spots not covered by coral, and made sure she got every drop of the antidote. Gosh, I don't know where I went wrong, but we waited for at least a minute and nothing seemed to be happening! If anything, the coral's growth increased!
Mikey turned on me then, angrily asking if I knew that Jo might've died. In front of everyone else, who already DID know, I couldn't really lie. I didn't say anything, but my silence gave him his answer. He ran to Sensei's arms and started bawling. I knelt next to Jo, knowing I'd need to explain why I didn't tell her, but she quieted me with one raised hand.
"I already knew." She said. Oh, it hurt to listen to her, every breath laboured and raspy. I asked her how she found out. "I'm not stupid. I knew sooner or later the my coral would get out of control."
"But you were always so cheerful," I'd said. She laughed at that.
"When one is dying one makes the most of the days one has left." She replied, sounding very much like Master Splinter. The coral was crawling over her lips and only then did I fully realize that the cure was a failure. Jo was going to die and it was my fault. I couldn't chip it away from her mouth either, because of the fact that it merged with her nerves and it would be like chipping away skin.
Leo quietly murmured her name and the last noise Jo made before the coral grew over her mouth was a shuddering, almost hysterical-sounding chuckle. We all watched as her chest heaved rapidly, trying to get oxygen into her lungs to no avail, and finally falling still when her body finally gave up. And then everyone started crying, even Raph. Even me.
We were all present when Jo died in the worst, slowest way possible. Death by suffocation.
And it's all my fault.
