Doubt
#35 of Writing Prompts
Another writing prompt for the 2020, this is quite a bit late, but it was for the prompt "When a difficult decision became almost impossible"
Ana had imagined many things when she thought of her thirties. She had conjured images of herself as a hotshot executive or an cutting edge researcher. When the mood struck her she had thought of meeting the love of her life and marrying him in his state, her hair fluttering in the wind. The most grounded of her thought had her traveling around the world to escape her job for a few precious weeks. Nothing could have prepared her for the reality she was facing now: Watching over her sister's kid. It sounded so simple and easy, yet Ana knew there was a lot of responsability hiding behind those simple words. Her sisters sickness had come to a shock to Ana, a simple cough grew to shortness of breath and, before Ana knew it, her sister had ended up in ER, fighting for her life. That night was still fresh in her mind; the frantic calls, the trail of tears, the pungent and impersonal smell of the hospital. But, above all, there was the shaking of her niece in her arms, her broken voice asking Ana when her mom was going to be okay. Hours passed without notice, her mind exploring every dark and horrible possibility it could come up, her face a mask of fragile calm that soothed her niece. By the time the doctors had come out, her nerves where frayed and her phone was full of messages and lost calls.
The news had been hard to take in, her sister was stable, the doctors said, but her condition was grave. More tests would be required, more time. Nothing else could be done except to soothe her pain. Ana's world was set on its head that day. The stream of calls she had to do later didn't help with her nerves any, it only made everything more real, more painful. The whole family got together the next day. Her parents were the first to arrive, her papa was pale and woobly, almost beside himself in worry. Her dad on the other hand, was deadly silent, his hand grasping his husband's firmly, a desperate glimmer in his eyes. They brought Ana and her niece into a hug, the warmth of their touch bringing both girls back to life, a new set of tears falling from their eyes.
Her aunts and uncles, arrived only moments later, a swarm of her cousins following hot on their tails. It soon devolved into chaos. Ana couldn't remember what happened after, she could only remember the twenty three pair of eyes that have been set on her, begging for it all to be a lie, a mistake, a simple nightmare. But, even if she couldn't remember what she had say or how the others reacted, there was one thing she did remember: the long minutes she spent crying her eyes out on her papa's shoulders, soft sobs coming from them both while they clung to each other for much needed support.
The next couple of weeks were almost as hard as that first night, with every test and every doctor coming up with more questions than answers. More than once she had cursed their luck, blamed herself for not noticing and the Gods for not caring. Still, live moved one and with her sister's sickness keeping her in the hospital, it was no longer possible to keep the poor girl moving from bed to bed in a twisted version of the chair game. A more permanent solution had to be taken, yet no one seemed up to the task.
It had all been chosen like a lottery, her sister's duties split equally and then assigned randomly among the family. Ana still couldn't fathom how, among all of the uncles, aunts and cousins many of who had children of their own, the task of taking her of her niece had fallen on her. The one who had never played sitter for anyone. The one who barely could keep up with her life. The one who had never considered having a child. The one who felt the most lost among them all.
"Why can't they see this is a mistake? Why did they choose me? What if I fail?" she thought, worry clenching her heart
It could all go wrong so easily, just one single misstep, one single distraction and her niece's fate could be twisted beyond redemption. That's why she couldn't sleep at night since they told her, the pure weight of what could be, of what should be, was crushing her. And this was all before her niece had ever moved in, Ana wasn't sure if she could hold it together once it happened. At times, she thought about asking her parents to switch their duties with her, to give her a reprieve of the odyssey that her niece entailed.
That's why she had gone to the hospital that day, hoping to catch them in her sister's room. Cold sweat ran down her back, her nerves increasing with each person she passed. She felt like every pair of eyes was focused on her, judging her, hating her for her weakness, but not as much as she hated herself. She was failing before she had even started. Walking away when her niece and her sister needed her most.
The moment she walked into the room, a surprise greeted her. Her parents weren't there, their bags were nowhere to be seen in the sterile room. Instead, her sister lay one her bed, eyes half opened. Tiredness was clear on them. She shot me a smile, small and fragile, her hands lifting only just enough to give me a subdued wave. Cables sneaked into her robes, feeding information to the many machines that surrounded her. She looked so small and pale, almost like a ghost. The life had been robbed out of her and only a husk remained.
Ana walked in with trembling steps, a part of her worried that my presence alone would send her sister to her death. Her sister started to talk, her voice raspy and low, her words barely understandable. Ana only stood there, listening to her voice, her sister asking and answering questions on her own, caught in a monologue that lasted for minutes on end.
It was mostly ramblings, the drugs affecting her sister's mind more than she would like. But there was one thing that she always came to, one sentence that cleared the mist from her sister's eyes.
"I can always count on you Sis"
With that, Ana's doubts were forever silenced.