Disclaimer: I don't own Crossing Jordan and I probably never will.
A/N: The more of this story I write, the more depressing it gets.
She sat at the window, staring blankly down at the street below. There were people passing outside, hurrying home to get out of the cold. Two children ran past, lobbing snowballs at each other and shrieking with gleeful abandon.
It's funny, she thought, watching the snow fall faster, the way the rest of the world just keeps going, even though my world is shattered. I wonder how long they'll remember me after I'm gone.
The thought was a sobering one. She had no husband, no children, and an absentee father. Friends she had, yes, but how long could they really be expected to remember her? They had their own lives, their own cares and concerns, and sooner or later the memory of Jordan Cavanaugh would fade away, replaced by new memories of new friends. And if they didn't forget her, what was she leaving them to remember her by? She didn't want to be recalled as the impetuous troublemaker who ran roughshod over everything and everyone in her path in order to find the truth.
If they were going to remember anything about her, she wanted it to be that, although she'd always held the truth as paramount, she had loved her friends. She loved Nigel's brashness and wry sense of humor, Lily's kindness and Bug's brisk manner that masked his inner generosity. She loved having Garret as a boss and mentor, the love of jazz and the priceless advice he'd shared with her over the years. And Woody – God help her, she loved him. She loved him, period, and knowing that she'd never get the chance to tell him left her raw and bleeding inside. There were so many things she would have to leave unsaid and undone…
"No," she said aloud, shaking her head firmly to dispel the thought. "No. There's still time…"
And so she made a list. Sitting at the coffee table in her cozy one-bedroom apartment, Jordan Cavanaugh listed all of her life's regrets: all of the things she'd never done and wanted to, and some of the things she'd done and later regretted. She'd never stood on home base in Fenway Park. She'd never stayed the night at the Wyndham hotel, the oldest skyscraper in Boston and, to her thinking, the most beautiful building in the city. She'd started but never finished reading Swann's Way, having neglected the literary classics after starting medical school so many years ago.
All of these made the list, and then she added the regrets that hurt the most. She'd never told her friends how much they meant to her. She'd never laid her mother's murder to rest. She'd never made love to Woody.
When she was finished, she had a list with fourteen bullet points. Fourteen things that needed to be done or said or fixed before she would be satisfied with the life she was leaving behind.
"Two a day," she decided, nodding slowly. "One more week. And then…"
And then she would give herself over to the business of dying. Dying of brain cancer, however, was not pleasant. She could expect the onset of seizures, memory loss, and personality changes. If she suffered a stroke, which was fairly likely, she might be paralyzed. Jordan abhored the very thought of it. That wasn't the way she wanted to die.
Fortunately, she had a choice. Jordan was a licensed, board-certified doctor, and although she was a medical examiner by trade, she still had the ability to write prescriptions. It would be easy for her to obtain a sedative, an overdose of which would allow her to go peacefully to sleep and not wake up again. There was no need for her to suffer.
Feeling more in control now that she'd managed to make a plan, she reached for the phone. First she'd call in the prescription and then she'd get started on her list. The sooner she started, the lower the chance that the disease would catch up to her before she finished righting the wrongs in her life.