Adopting Emma

The next Monday, Emma showed up at her appointment with a better mindset. Realizing how much damage her past and recent actions had done to her mental health helped her come to her senses and open up a little bit more about her past to her psychiatrist. She wondered if Audrey sometimes took the time to think about the past and how she had gotten to become Emma's mother.

From what Emma had been told, Audrey and her mother, Linda, had met in middle school. They were both in 8th grade. Audrey had just moved from Taipei to the States and Emma's father had been hired by a tech company in the Silicon Valley. The two girls were the two newcomers and were really having a hard time adjusting to their new surroundings.

From what Audrey recalled, meeting Linda had been the best thing that could have happened to her. When her parents had decided to move back from Taipei to the States, Audrey had felt completely uprooted. She had had to say goodbye to all of her friends, move to a country which culture was completely opposite of the one she had grown up in and worst of all, go to a school where white kids mocked her. The only girl who wasn't mocking her was Linda. Audrey had no idea at the time why she didn't take part in the other students' games. She wondered if it was because she didn't speak good English, or because she was shy, or if because she, too, was mocked for her French accent. But rather than trying to figure out the reason why Linda was different, she decided to use this difference as an asset and befriended her very quickly.

As she got to know Linda, she realized that Linda was completely clueless as to why Audrey was mocked and despised. She didn't understand what was funny in calling Audrey names or asking her 5 times a day if her parents were too cheap to buy her new clothes since they had decided those she wore weren't good enough to their taste. Linda wasn't as mocked as Audrey was because her parents were rich. Or at least, richer than most of the kids in their school's parents.

Linda was a brilliant musician. She played the violin and helped Audrey with her instrument practice. Audrey on the other side, was nothing close to being an artist. But like most Asian kid, her parents had left her no choice but to start learning the violin almost as soon as she could walk when all she really wanted was to play sports with her older brother. So, when Linda had offered her help, Audrey had taken it with joy. Audrey's father was American. Thus, Audrey didn't have much of an accent when she spoke, unlike Linda who could barely speak English on her first day of school. Audrey helped her learning it faster and losing most of her accent, so that by the end of 8th grade, it was impossible to tell where Linda was from.

The two teenagers quickly became very close and attended the same high school where they were inseparable. Until Linda met Josh during band practice. Josh was both in the school's string orchestra as a cellist and also played baseball for the school's team. As they began dating, Audrey feared she would be left aside and, not wanting to be their third wheel, had befriended the other Asian of her class: Laura. But instead of leaving Audrey behind, Linda and Josh remained closed to her and got to befriend Laura too.

Audrey had always thought High School would be a nightmare after what she had been through during Middle School. But High School felt like a nice walk in a park instead. She got to drop the violin and join the swim team where she managed to earn a scholarship for university, be able to be a science nerd and express out loud her wish to become a doctor without fearing what other people thought of her. Of course, she had to face difficulties and obstacles, probably even bigger than other kids mocking her appearance, but having three friends by her side gave her the boost she needed to face those backlash head high.

Josh and Linda's families were both catholic and facing the pressure from their parents, the couple got married soon after graduating High School. Laura and Audrey then headed to Stanford while Linda and Josh chose to go to UCLA since Josh had been recruited as a baseball player on their team. Despite being separated and Audrey trying to earn a double major all the while being on the swim team, they remained closed, Linda and Audrey having developed a sister-like relationship over the years. They would always call each other and talk for hours and hours, help each other with their assignment over on the phone and plan vacations during which they could be reunited.

But in sophomore year, Linda got pregnant. She gave birth to Emma on May 14th 2000. Being Catholics, they organized their daughter's baptism over the summer. Back then, Audrey had met Kashal who grew fond of Emma the minute he first saw her. Without hesitating, Josh and Linda asked the newly formed couple to be the godparents of the child. Neither of them were very religious, nor knew exactly what the engagement implied, or at least, didn't realize it would later have such a great impact on their lives. They both gladly accepted, especially if that meant they would get to see her more often. That didn't happen a lot since Josh and Linda decided to move to France at the end of Junior year. Josh had taken AP classes during High School so that he could graduate just after taking a few extra summer classes. On the other hand, Linda had dropped out of college after giving birth to Emma, realizing she couldn't both take care of a newborn and earn a bachelor in civil engineering.

It pained Audrey a lot to see her best friend moving across the ocean. She still managed to keep in touch with Linda who thrived in France where she was raising what Audrey thought was a perfect child. It became easier to call Linda when Audrey attended med school at Johns Hopkins. Since the school was on the East coast, there was only a 6-hour time difference compared to the 9-hour one that they had to deal with when Audrey attended Stanford.

When Audrey graduated med school and moved back to California for her residency, she and Kashal decided to save money to go visit their friend in France. They had only seen each other a couple of times since Linda and Josh had moved so when the opportunity finally presented itself, they packed and planned a trip where they could picture themselves visiting Paris, eating cheese and other famous French delicacies, visiting the Louvre or climbing up the Eiffel tower. They landed into a chaotic situation instead. Josh and Linda had decided to drive to the airport as a family to greet their friends. They too had planned a lot of things to do with them, from good restaurants to nice places to visit.

On the trip to the airport, a drunk truck driver hit Josh and Linda's car, causing a pile-up on the highway. Josh died right away but Emma and Linda were still conscious after the crash. Emma saw her father nastily bruised and disfigured, no longer breathing, while Linda was beginning to panic realizing her husband was dead and that she couldn't get out of the car to check if her child was okay. She still managed to let Audrey know they had been in a car crash. The paramedics arrived quickly but needed a lot of time getting Linda and Emma out of the car. They were both taken to a nearby hospital for some exams. Meanwhile, Audrey and Kashal tried to find them and as they arrived at the hospital, Linda had been suffering from a TBI and was bleeding internally to a point where the doctors knew she wouldn't survive.

Emma was physically unscathed from the accident. She just had a few stiches on her forehead but didn't suffer any major injury. Audrey got to speak with Linda before she died and Linda made her promise to take care of Emma. Seeing her friend agonizing, her face half paralyzed from the TBI which had caused a stroke and being in so much pain despite the medication she was given, she couldn't refuse her best friend's last wish. Without talking about it with Kashal, or even really trying to ponder the decision, she accepted. And surprisingly, Kashal, who held a lot of things against Audrey when they ended their marriage, never reproached her for taking that decision.

And thus, the first thing Emma and Audrey shared as a mother-daughter relationship was dealing with Linda's death. Audrey stayed with Emma when she had to say goodbye to her mother and then stayed with Linda until she passed away a few minutes later while Kashal had remained with the young girl. Audrey then took the time to sit down and take the child on her laps so that she could hold her in her arms when a doctor broke the news to the little girl, that she was now an orphan and had to be taken care of by the French public assistance.

It was a brutal, agonizing night for a 10-year-old who, despite her intellectual gift, was too young to understand the depth of the meaning of being an orphan. As Emma let the pain of losing both her parents so violently sink in, crying in Audrey's arms, she realized Audrey and her mother smelled the same. To this day, Emma always thought that the only reason why she had been able to accept Audrey as her mother was because of the perfume she wore. Had she not had the familiar smell of Linda, she would have probably never been able to consider her "her mother".

Instead of flying back home a week later, Audrey and Kashal remained a few extra days in France where they gathered some papers and got in touch with a lawyer to get the adoption papers going. They flew back sad, Audrey devastated by the loss of the friend she considered her sister, and with a ten-year-old who they only knew through phone conversations and the two or three times they had seen their friends and who they could barely communicate with as it seemed she had always refused to speak English beyond the few basic words her father had managed to instill in her. But leaving her behind never really occurred to them. Specially Audrey who couldn't possibly leave without the only reminder she had left of Linda. It was almost painful to watch Emma sometimes, as the more she grew up, the more she looked like Linda.