Chapter Text
Life was unfair. You could do everything right and still nothing would be owed to you. Because everyday, good people can lose everything in an instant for no reason at all, while those who rot everything they touch seem to gain it all.
You sat still in your chair, uninterested in the conversations around you, focusing instead on picking the raised skin of your nail beds. The burning pain you were all too familiar with was gone, replaced even by the ache plaguing your head. Your hands now moved autonomously, picking and picking your nails raw while you stared at the ugly gray carpet on the ground.
You had seen the unfairness of it dealt to your mother. A deadbeat father who cared more for gambling and women gave you a taste of it at five years old. However, mom was more than enough and as your grandmother reassured you were better off. Multiple jobs held by your tired mother to pay their debts had you raising yourself til the age of twelve. You had always been self-sufficient and knew how to care for a home. Laundry, cooking, and cleaning were skills you picked up quickly out of sheer necessity. This small sacrifice was the least you could do for your mother. The cancer diagnosis of your mother at eighteen sobered any wishful thinking and letting you know how much life really cared.
Despite the situation, you made an effort to hide any true feelings. As your mother received treatment, you attempted to keep their morale high. Picking up a job, you worked weekends and after school to help cover the bills. Thankfully, you had worked hard through grade school allowing you to study health sciences on a scholarship at the local university.With encouragement from your mother, you continued to earn top marks. All while ensuring your mother lived a “normal” life as she underwent her draining chemotherapy treatments. The day she rang the bell in the cancer ward of the hospital was a joyous day. Together you both celebrated new beginnings with your grandmother and a hearty dinner.
Soon after, you graduated university and began your studies working towards becoming a physician. The loans were unsavory but manageable and worth the future they promised.
As you sat reminiscing, warm hands brought you back, prying your hands apart from one another. Looking up you met the worried eyes of your grandmother. The lively woman usually put together was missing, replaced even with the shell-shocked stranger gazing down at you. Sitting down, she pulled a tissue from her pocket and turned her attention to the set of mangled hands in front of her.
“I had always hoped you would grow out of this. But you are your mother’s daughter after all,” she whispered her attempt at a jest betrayed by the cracks in her voice.
“So stubborn.”
Silently you watched as she wrapped your bloody fingers in the tissue in an attempt to clean them. Her hands trembled as she dabbed off the scarlet droplets circling your nails and raw skin. Her frail body shook as another tear fell from her puffy eyes. She attempted to clean the blood off, but paused her vision undoubtedly blurred by the hot tears streaming steadily down her cheeks.
You moved to catch her grandmother's tears with your shoulders, locking your arms around her unsteady frame. Sobs racked her frail body as she melted into the embrace finally dropping her unconvincing facade.
The casket of your mother stared at you, as a reminder of the cruelty of fate. Mom would never join you for a meal again. Nor would she attend your graduation.
She was dead.