(We had to write about a loss for today’s assignment. Here: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_assignment/writing-101-day-four/ I’m trying to write the second story in a series of novellas, the first of which is being posted on here in pieces under Amie’s Fiction, so that’s what this conversation is from.)
“How did it happen? You never told me,” he asked.
I rubbed my forehead. Did I really want to go there?
“I was a junior in college. Mom went skiing with friends from work one Saturday. They got a discount through their hospital. She left early, dawn, basically… I remember I was studying, midterms were that week. I was reading for my Legislative Process class. You know, how a bill becomes a law stuff. I got a call from one of Mom’s friends. She said Mom had been in an accident, she was going too fast to turn and hit a tree, and was being life-lighted to the hospital.
The first words out of my mouth were, ‘That’s not funny, Christy.’ She had to convince me she wasn’t joking. I got to the hospital and Mom was being prepped for surgery. They took her back, set her legs and her arm. And she never woke up.
They said swelling or bruising or something in the brain… she wasn’t brain dead, which is why I never pulled the plug. She was borderline. May wake up, may not. For seven years, she didn’t. Somewhere along the line, I think I gave up on her waking up, but I didn’t really because I never pulled the plug.”
“Where was your dad in all this?”
“Oh.” I waved a hand. Yeah, like that would make that question go away. “My parents got divorced when I was ten. He was around the first few years. He got a job in California and moved out there. He got me during the summers and some holidays, but after I turned eighteen, he just kind of drifted away into his new life. So by the time I was twenty, we got together over Thanksgiving and kept in touch. A call here, an email there. I told him about Mom’s accident. He offered to let me stay with him but I had college. I had to finish that. And it wasn’t like he was going to move back and leave his job and his new wife. So…”
“Ah.”
I glared at him. “What, ah?”
“I understand you a little better.”
“No, no, no. Don’t do that. Don’t think you get what my problem is now. I’m not a puzzle that you just figured out. Something you can cure. I’m not that… that simple! Not trusting men because my parents got divorced and my dad moved for a job? Please. That’s so clichéd.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I’m not!”
He raised both of them.
“Oh, screw you.” I walked away.
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