Chapter 19- Buried
Delphine stared down at the deceased clone on her table. She breathed against the lump in her throat.
"You don't have to do this, you know? I can take care of this" Scott told her, muffled by his surgical mask.
Delphine looked up to him, eyes shielded by plastic. Why wasn't the smell she knew was present getting to her? She ignored him. Of course she needed to do this; this was for Cosima.
The blonde reached for the sheet, pulling it back to reveal what was once Mika's chest.
"Delphine, come on. I mean it, you don't have to be here" Scott urged.
There was still no response from the french woman. Instead, the air filled with the sound of the bonesaw whirring as Delphine turned it on. As she made the first cut and was met with the haunting sound of Mika's chest being sawed open, she was glad that she had taken the day off to do this and that Charlotte was at school. No doubt this could be heard upstairs. She wondered if Cosima could hear it from behind the door just across the room.
With the dissection complete, Delphine put the saw away and reached for the 15 blade.
"Pull out the Kidneys?" she asked of Scott, not looking up.
"No, Delphine, you shouldn't be doing this. Please, just let me take care of this" Scott urged.
Delphine closed her eyes and took a deep breath to prevent an outburst. "Scott, pull out her kidneys" she insisted.
"Delphine, stop it" Scott gently pried.
"No Scott, you stop it! I need to do this, d'accord? I need to know that I did everything I could" she yelled at him louder than she would have liked. Her nostrils flared as she felt her anger rise "If I don't do something, I am going to watch all of these women die. I am going to watch my family die. I am going to watch my wife and my children die! And in the end you and I will be standing all alone, next to each other, watching our entire worlds be put in the fucking ground. So yes, I have to do this. Now pull out her kidneys!"
Scott gulped and nodded "Okay, Delphine. Two kidneys, coming right up" he whispered.
The dissection of Mika's body was long and grueling, the scientists searching diligently for every single growth and polyp, setting them aside for preservation and further study. Every bit of bone marrow they could extract from the clone, they did. Anything they felt could be of use was taken from one sister to help the others.
Delphine's legs were sore and her eyes could barely stay open as they started the process of closing up the body. She knew she needed a shower and a nap.
"Scott, can you finish here?" she asked, her eyes already closed.
"Yeah, I've got this. Go. I'll call the funeral home to come get her afterwards. Go take a nap. You look like you're going to zonk out at any minute" he urged.
Delphine nodded and put a hand on his arm "Thank you, you are a good friend. I am sorry I yelled earlier."
"It's been a tough time for all of us Delphine. I understand" he voiced.
"I still want to hear all about your date with Krystal. Will you stay for dinner? It's taco night...it's Cosima's favourite" she explained.
"Sure. I love tacos" he smiled back.
Delphine nodded and headed to the basement bathroom.
Charlotte and Kira stared blankly at their lunches. It had been a rough day for the cousins. Oscar and Gemma had not shown up to school today.
"So she's at your house?" Kira asked, still not looking up.
Charlotte nodded "Maman and Uncle Scott are going to try to study what they can to help the rest of us."
"How's Auntie Cosima?"
"The same"
"Do you think she is going to die?"
"Yes. And then I will" came Charlotte's answer.
The smallest of the clones picked up her sandwich and took a bite.
Delphine held Cosima's hand to her tummy as she sobbed into her wife's neck. She'd carefully crawled in to the hospital bed next to Cosima, needing to be near the love of her life more than ever before. Mika was gone. She'd failed her.
"I don't know how much longer I can do this. I need you, Cosima. I need you to wake up. I need you to remind me to take my vitamins in the morning and I need you to hold my hair while our baby makes me sick" she cried. "Je t'ai besoin, mon amour. Je suis si perdu sans ma lune et mes étoiles. I need you, my love. I am so lost without my moon and my stars."
It was slow, the sinking into the deep sleep that Delphine's body so desperately needed. Half of her wanted to stay awake and listen to Cosima breathe, to her heart beat. But the half that made her body heavy with fatigue won and carried her away.
She woke up to the phone ringing. The blonde groaned as she felt the fog of sleep try and pull her back in. The ringing stopped and she sighed in relief, settling back down next to her wife with a resolve to fall back to sleep.
There was a knock on the door and she groaned "What?"
Scott popped the wooden slab open "Umm...the school's on the phone" he explained.
Delphine let out a series of whines and kissed Cosima's cheek before dragging herself out of bed to meet Scott halfway and take the phone.
"Hello?" she asked.
"Hi, Delphine? This is Sonia" the school secretary informed her new friend "I think you should come get Charlotte. She is not coping too well with the recent loss. She is telling everyone that she is going to die."
"I'll be right there" Delphine said sadly, hanging up the phone.
The blonde turned the device in her hands, her mind turning over and over. Scott watched, worried. Eventually she looked up.
"Charlotte's next, isn't she?" she asked.
Scott hesitated "Her numbers are plummeting" he told her.
"Did you leave them on the table last night?" Delphine inquired.
"Yeah. But she can't possibly know what they mean" he reasoned.
Delphine closed her eyes and gently shook her head "She understands more than people could ever imagine" she tried to explain.
The blonde let out all the air in her cheeks and flipped her hair back with a hand "I'll be back. I have to go pick her up."
_
Charlotte sat in the office. The same chair she had sat in when she had gotten suspended. She smiled, remembering that day. Maman had been so pissed, but she could see the pride in Mummy's eyes. She missed mummy's eyes. Although she knew the evidence was inconclusive, she hoped that there was something or somewhere after you died. At least then she could see mummy again, see Auntie Mika and all the other Aunties she never got to meet. She wouldn't be alone.
But Maman, maman would be alone. She would be all alone with a new baby. Sure she would have Opa and Mamie, but they were old and would die soon too. And one by one her Aunties would join her until only Auntie Sarah and Helena were left.
She heard Maman's heels before she saw her, not wanting to look up. She smelled Maman before the long arms wrapped around her in a tight hug. She made no move to return the hug, letting how small she felt in her mother's arms comfort her for the moment.
"Ma petite…" Delphine whispered.
"Maman" Charlotte returned.
Delphine picked her up and carried her on her hip as the young girl wrapped her arms around Maman's neck and pushed her face into her sweater.
The blonde walked up to Sonia and smiled "Thank you for calling. Apologize to Mrs. Leevy for me. I should have kept her home today. Is Kira….?"
"Ms. Manning already picked her up" Sonia explained. "I am very sorry for your loss."
Delphine nodded "Thank you" she replied, not quite knowing what to say. "I will see you Monday. The funeral is tomorrow so I will not be in."
Sonia nodded "Take care of yourself, Delphine."
"I will" came the reply.
Delphine turned and carried her daughter out of the school.
Scott had just finished cleaning up not long ago and was starting to test the samples when he heard people walking down the stairs.
"But why not?" Charlotte asked defiantly. She'd been trying to get Maman to let her help with the science. "I know how to use a microscope and how to pipette and prepare slides. Mummy taught me how to do a lot" she explained.
"Because Charlotte, this is important. We don't have much tissue in the first place" Delphine explained as they finished walking down the stairs.
"Please Maman. I can't just watch TV when everyone is going to die. I need to help" Charlotte reasoned.
"Sounds familiar" Scott whispered to himself.
"What was that, Scott?" Delphine asked.
"I just said that it sounds familiar; like mother, like daughter" the geek spoke up, pushing his glasses up his face.
Delphine took a deep breath and turned back to Charlotte. The girl was exceptionally smart. They had some skin, hair, and nail samples that were plentiful and more for thorough collection than for anything important. She chewed the inside of her cheek.
"Fine. But you need to follow in lab procedure, okay?" Delphine told her.
"Mummy made me a chart" she indicated, pointing to a sign in Cosima's distinctive writing, hung on the wall above the lower workstation that had been set aside for Charlotte. "I even have a notebook for lab notes. I'll write down everything I find" she promised.
"Okay. Scott, where are the hair, nail, and skin samples?" she asked.
Scott pushed off the lab top with a hand and rolled his chair over to the fridge. He opened it and pulled out the samples, rolling back to Delphine and handing the three containers to Delphine.
Charlotte hurried over to the sink to wash her hands thoroughly as she felt her excitement brew. She was going to get a chance to work on helping Mummy and her Aunties.
"Be very careful with the solutions, ma grande and call me over if you spill anything" Delphine instructed, placing three tubes on Charlotte's work space.
The small girl walked over and pulled on some gloves "I will. Je te promets. I promise."
_
"So yeah, it was a good night. Krystal is...wow. Like at first she seems pretty flighty, but as soon as she gets into a conversation you notice that she's actually kinda smart" Scott told them, taking another bite of his taco.
Delphine chuckled "Smart?" she asked. "Are you sure that we are talking about the same Krystal?"
"Hey, you laugh, but she's great. We are going out again next week" he explained.
"It is hard for me to imagine you with Auntie Krystal. You are very different people" Charlotte told her uncle, taking a sip of her apple juice as her legs swung beneath her, too short to reach the ground yet.
"Yeah well so are your moms" Scott reasoned.
Charlotte giggled "Good point Uncle Scotty."
Delphine smiled and sighed, sitting back in her chair "So, Charlotte, what did you find today?"
"There's something weird about the samples you gave me. I think it might be a buildup of something. They all had it. It was this really weird, thin substance that was barely noticeable" she explained. "I'll do more research on it after dinner."
"Non, Charlotte after dinner you need to study. Your exam is Monday. Just because they bumped it a few days for you does not mean you get those days off. You need to focus on your schooling" Delphine explained.
"What's the point?" Charlotte asked pushing the lettuce that had fallen out of her last taco around on her plate with her fork.
"Hey, kiddo, your education is important" Scott told the girl. "You need a degree if you want to work in a lab and do cool science for the rest of your life."
"There's not much left to my life, so what does it matter?" she asked.
Scott's eyes went wide and Delphine swallowed hard "Charlotte, ma belle, listen to me: we are going to beat this, okay? You, me, and Scott, we are going to figure out how to wake Mummy up and how to fix all of this. I will not let anyone else die."
"You couldn't help MK" Charlotte noted.
There was silence as Delphine felt those words cut deep.
"I'm not hungry anymore" Charlotte said, pushing her plate forward and getting up from the table. "I am going to study with Mummy."
Delphine watched in silence as her daughter grabbed her book bag and walked downstairs. She took a breath and put her head in her hands on the table. The stress was starting to get to her.
"She didn't mean that" Scott tried to console his friend.
"She did" Delphine stated.
Scott watched Delphine, face painted with concern. She slowly turned green and he noticed her swallow desperately for some reason. It looked like she was going to…
Delphine stood up and darted for the kitchen, happy the sink was clear as she lost her dinner in to it.
Scott stood and took a step towards her but stopped, not quite knowing what to do.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
He was answered by the wave of one hand as Delphine put her hair up with the hair tie she'd started permanently wearing around her wrist for situations like these.
The blonde breathed deeply as she shook from the violence of the heaves. She spat out what she could as it stopped and slowly subsided. "It's okay, it's just the baby" she explained to Scott.
"Delphine…" he said with a worried tone, eyebrows stitched together. Cosima should really be here. She'd know just what to do.
"No, I am okay" she assured, turning on the tap to wash away what she could of the vomit in the sink.
The blonde dipped her head under it to take in a mouthful and move it around in her mouth before spitting it out. With another deep breath she turned off the tap and reached back, opening the fridge and pulling out a ginger ale.
"I'll be fine."
"Mika was a part of all of us" Sarah started. She looked down to the words she'd scrawled on the paper as she fought her tears. "Fuck it, just fuck this speech" she said, crumpling the paper in her hands. She looked up to see her family; the same group of people who not a week earlier had been drunk and celebrating Cosima's wedding.
"This is fucked up. This is hard and it is fucked up and I don't think any of us knows what the fuck to do or say. Mika's gone and it hurts like hell. She was our friend, she was our family, and I already miss her like hell. There are...there are faces missing here today; too many to name, some we don't even know. So I think that all we can do right now is appreciate our time with each other. I love you all...so much. Just a few years ago I didn't have a family, I never thought I would ever have a family, but you all pulled me in. I know Mika felt the same."
"We were a lot alike her and I. Both living on the outskirts of society, no one really fully able to understand us, and unable to understand our own loneliness…"
Charlotte barely heard her Aunt talking. Maman's hands were on her shoulders and she'd never quite felt the absence of Mummy as strongly as she did today. Mummy would know how to cheer everyone up. She would know how to bring the sun to eradicate this cloud of darkness that seemed to hover over her family wherever they went. She would know what to say, what to do.
But Mummy was gone. That's what she knew.
She stared at the dark wood and shiny chrome of the coffin, perched and ready to be put into the ground and she knew that it might as well have been Mummy's.
Charlotte wondered what her own coffin would look like. She made a mental note to write up a letter to Maman, letting her know that she wanted a purple one. No, she wanted to be made into a diamond. She had heard that some places were starting to do that. It was fitting, a geologist turned into a precious stone. Maman could have half and her baby sister could have the other, the stone to be made whole again once the baby eventually died.
Maman kept saying that everything would be okay, that they would find the miracle cure that would save them all.
But as she watched them lower Auntie Mika's coffin into the ground and them start to shovel dirt on top of it, any ounce of hope she'd had left her.
Her hope was now buried with her aunt.