I kept telling myself that I needed to write a chapter for Random Happenstances, but I was just staring at the document wondering why wasn't it writing itself, so I gave it up as a bad job and wrote this instead. Three chapters to go, and then the epilogue. Woo!
Becky speaks to her. Audrey hasn't talked to her mother, not in the way Becky does, since she was ten. But Becky talks to her about everything, about boys and school and work, and how her cousin is having a baby, how she's thinking about colleges and the future. Maybe a doctor, so she can help people like their families. Help them understand what's going on, what's going to happen, the likely outcomes. The best thing to do. She's still got another year to think about it, to make up her mind properly, but that's her goal. Audrey feels sick when she thinks about it. When she thinks about Becky leaving, when she thinks about how she's no longer going to be there during the day, to talk to at lunchtime, to visit when she's had a horrible day and she can't talk to her father or her brother, or even her sister, so she talks to Becky. Who is she going to talk to once she's gone? Who is going to be there to understand when her father had too much to drink and she can't get him into bed at night? And who's going to talk to her mother when no one else dares to? Becky still has some insane hope that she'll wake up, that's why she talks to her. Reminds her that there are people here, waiting and hoping and praying that she'll wake up.
Audrey doesn't want her to wake up. She thinks that's selfish of her, maybe. Denying her brother a mother. Denying her mother a life. But she's been "asleep" for seven years now. Seven years, same bed, un-moving. Even if she does wake up, her muscles will be all but useless, her joints all but painful. She's skin and bones. Her skin is paper thin, too frail. If she did wake up, she'll be a shadow of her former self. She doesn't want her mother to wake up and find herself like that. Not when she used to be so strong and amazing and powerful. Imagine waking up and finding out that everything you had, everything you were… has wasted away into nothingness. Weeks and months of physical therapy, weeks and months of getting over the fact she's missed so much of life. She's missed her children growing up. She'll wake up and the man who used to be her husband, who used to be wonderful and full of life and happiness and was ever the optimist, has turned into the complete opposite. She doesn't want that for her mother. Her mother doesn't deserve the pain. She deserves to be at peace, to rest. And if Audrey had the choice, that is what she would do. She'd tell the doctors to end it, to turn the machines off. To let her go.
She doesn't even care about the fallout. Once she's eighteen, if needed, she can tell them. She can say she wants the life support turned off, and she can go to college and just escape it all. Do what she wants to in life without having to worry about her father and her brother mourning a person who has been gone for ten years. Well, her father. Her brother doesn't understand it yet. Not fully. She thinks he should, surely Healy should have some inkling of understanding about why he's parentless, but it seems her father wants him to remain as innocent as possible until he has no other choice. Audrey tries to argue with him about it, but he says he's happy. He's happy, and he doesn't want him to be sad. There's too much sadness in the house as it is.