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The Wasting
Title: The Wasting
Fandom: Original Fiction - Lizards ‘verse
Series: Kat’s Therapy Journal - 28th Brathos, 5440
Prompt: Pandemics/Epidemics
Medium: FIC
Rating: Gen
Word Count: 794
Summary: Ontferia Historical Record: 23rd Brathos, 5440. Captain Ahn Bailey Lowrey succumbed to the remainder plague generally known as The Wasting. Survived by her husband, Finn Lowrey and son, Brenden Lowrey.
Content Notes: Character Death
28th Brathos, 5440
Subject: Grief
I haven’t had the need to write anything in this journal for quite a while. In my mind, it is still my “Ellie Book,” though we only talk now when I feel the need.
I feel the need now. I’m sad, and everyone around me is sad and I can’t burden them with my grief, they have enough on their shoulders and they’re looking to me to be strong and tell them what to do. If I fall apart, I fear they all will to varying degrees.
Ahn is gone. It hurts so much, admitting that. I’ve been drifting around for days trying to pretend that she’s merely away. But she’s dead, and I’ve lost my right hand.
I want to rail and curse and blame someone, but there is no one to blame. She got sick and she died, she died like so many others from this horrible, horrible disease. I know there’s a proper name for it, but the slang term everyone uses, The Wasting, is so much more appropriate. I had to watch her slowly fade away, drying up like a flower blossom cut from the stalk.
She tried to be so brave. She tried to hide it from all of us, especially the children. Chase confessed that he’s known for quite a while, Ahn had gone to him for comfort when she started having the symptoms and went in for the diagnosis. I’m angry with him for keeping that from me. I know she swore him to secrecy, he was doing as she asked, but it still hurts knowing that he knew her time was ending and didn’t let on so that I could prepare.
I hate these remainder diseases, these plagues leftover from the camps. I can’t help but wonder what else is out there among our population, festering unseen, waiting to spring up and steal our loved ones away?
My best friend is dead. I held her hand and she died between one breath and the next, while her husband was downstairs telling their son that it was time to come and say goodbye to his mama. That little boy will never know the woman I knew. Her last words to me were a plea to look after Finn and Brenden, her last thoughts of them.
Epidemics have always been impersonal numbers to me, statistics on a page. So easy to ignore when it doesn’t touch you personally, when the numbers are not people that you know and love.
Brenden cries for her in the night. I hold him and try to calm him, but he cries and cries and it breaks my heart that I can’t do anything for him. As for Finn, he is refusing all attempts at condolences. He avoids the family, taking himself out to the airfield and running tests with the pilots to keep himself occupied. I promised Ahn that I’d look after him, but I don’t know what I should do now. This isn’t something I’ve had to deal with, comforting a grieving spouse. I know what Brenden is feeling, I was only a little older than him when I lost my mother. That doesn’t make it easier, but I at least know some of what he is feeling.
Brenden is too smart for his own good sometimes. At four, he understands the concept of death and that his mother is gone forever, that she isn’t coming back because of The Wasting. I shall personally do great physical harm to any person that tells him when Ahn contracted the sickness. He does not need to know that the pregnancy weakened her immune system and made her susceptible to the sickness. No child needs that kind of burden on their shoulders.
I don’t know what to do now. Work at Headquarters has ground to a halt, everyone touched by grief at the loss of Ahn. Ahn would know what to do. How to go about doing what need to be done. But Ahn is gone.
{Addendum}
Just after I finished writing out the above entry, I happened across a letter, from Ahn. It was stuck in the back pages of this journal and I noticed it when I went to close it.
I’m laughing through my tears because Ahn knew me so well.
And, like the invaluable right hand that she was, she had a plan. She outlined, in clear, concise, easy enough for even me to understand steps how I should proceed following her death and funeral, which she had planned to the last detail with Chase.
I love that woman. I really do. I am going to miss her laughing at me, and if there is an afterlife, I know that redheaded bitch is giggling at me right now.
Fandom: Original Fiction - Lizards ‘verse
Series: Kat’s Therapy Journal - 28th Brathos, 5440
Prompt: Pandemics/Epidemics
Medium: FIC
Rating: Gen
Word Count: 794
Summary: Ontferia Historical Record: 23rd Brathos, 5440. Captain Ahn Bailey Lowrey succumbed to the remainder plague generally known as The Wasting. Survived by her husband, Finn Lowrey and son, Brenden Lowrey.
Content Notes: Character Death
28th Brathos, 5440
Subject: Grief
I haven’t had the need to write anything in this journal for quite a while. In my mind, it is still my “Ellie Book,” though we only talk now when I feel the need.
I feel the need now. I’m sad, and everyone around me is sad and I can’t burden them with my grief, they have enough on their shoulders and they’re looking to me to be strong and tell them what to do. If I fall apart, I fear they all will to varying degrees.
Ahn is gone. It hurts so much, admitting that. I’ve been drifting around for days trying to pretend that she’s merely away. But she’s dead, and I’ve lost my right hand.
I want to rail and curse and blame someone, but there is no one to blame. She got sick and she died, she died like so many others from this horrible, horrible disease. I know there’s a proper name for it, but the slang term everyone uses, The Wasting, is so much more appropriate. I had to watch her slowly fade away, drying up like a flower blossom cut from the stalk.
She tried to be so brave. She tried to hide it from all of us, especially the children. Chase confessed that he’s known for quite a while, Ahn had gone to him for comfort when she started having the symptoms and went in for the diagnosis. I’m angry with him for keeping that from me. I know she swore him to secrecy, he was doing as she asked, but it still hurts knowing that he knew her time was ending and didn’t let on so that I could prepare.
I hate these remainder diseases, these plagues leftover from the camps. I can’t help but wonder what else is out there among our population, festering unseen, waiting to spring up and steal our loved ones away?
My best friend is dead. I held her hand and she died between one breath and the next, while her husband was downstairs telling their son that it was time to come and say goodbye to his mama. That little boy will never know the woman I knew. Her last words to me were a plea to look after Finn and Brenden, her last thoughts of them.
Epidemics have always been impersonal numbers to me, statistics on a page. So easy to ignore when it doesn’t touch you personally, when the numbers are not people that you know and love.
Brenden cries for her in the night. I hold him and try to calm him, but he cries and cries and it breaks my heart that I can’t do anything for him. As for Finn, he is refusing all attempts at condolences. He avoids the family, taking himself out to the airfield and running tests with the pilots to keep himself occupied. I promised Ahn that I’d look after him, but I don’t know what I should do now. This isn’t something I’ve had to deal with, comforting a grieving spouse. I know what Brenden is feeling, I was only a little older than him when I lost my mother. That doesn’t make it easier, but I at least know some of what he is feeling.
Brenden is too smart for his own good sometimes. At four, he understands the concept of death and that his mother is gone forever, that she isn’t coming back because of The Wasting. I shall personally do great physical harm to any person that tells him when Ahn contracted the sickness. He does not need to know that the pregnancy weakened her immune system and made her susceptible to the sickness. No child needs that kind of burden on their shoulders.
I don’t know what to do now. Work at Headquarters has ground to a halt, everyone touched by grief at the loss of Ahn. Ahn would know what to do. How to go about doing what need to be done. But Ahn is gone.
{Addendum}
Just after I finished writing out the above entry, I happened across a letter, from Ahn. It was stuck in the back pages of this journal and I noticed it when I went to close it.
I’m laughing through my tears because Ahn knew me so well.
And, like the invaluable right hand that she was, she had a plan. She outlined, in clear, concise, easy enough for even me to understand steps how I should proceed following her death and funeral, which she had planned to the last detail with Chase.
I love that woman. I really do. I am going to miss her laughing at me, and if there is an afterlife, I know that redheaded bitch is giggling at me right now.