A Thin Line

The Death

Mark Peterson sat down with his father-in-law, Hank Turner, to have a beer and enjoy a game of America's favorite sport, but mostly this was their way of letting each other know that they liked and respected each other very much. As always Mark's eyes would wander along the walls of the livingroom, taking in all the pictures of his wife, Jessica, and her twin sister, Jess. He had always found the latter name weird, considering that it was just the shorter version of his own wife's name, but then again, they were twins, so no one could blame their parents for trying to have some "fun" with the names and ultimately having the same faces and names could turn out to be a lot of fun for two little girls. 

While he did this, his Father would always look at him and smile, because he knew that the young man was troubled by those pictures and the knwoledge he had about them....

They had spoken so many times about this topic, but Mark never fully understood any of it. After every conversation he always had more questions than answers. Howeve,r he could never push for answers, because Jess had passed away just a few months after the two teenagers had celebrated their twentieth birthday and healing process was very slow. The details of her death were never fully disclosed to him. All he knew at this point was, that both sisters had gotten sick somehow, but only one of them managed to pull through. Her parents and doctors had, and still did, declared it a miracle that at least one of them made it through.

Mark was a very curious person, in the sense, that he always craved answers. His mind was like a sponge, just waiting to absorb new information, because he believed that those who possessed information, held most of the "cards", so the odds of losing/ failing would be that much smaller, but in this case, he was losing; he had none of the cards and his opponents were not easy to read. His many attempts to get more information on the subject via his wife had been fruitless and even her doctor's never seemed to want to go into great detail about what happened and how. The only window he had into the mind of his wife came from her psycholigist, Natasha Staebler, but she only talked to him about her mindset and how her sessions were going, due to the "client-patient privacy" rules.

In the beginning when they had first met and started to fall in love gradually this wasn't an issue, but as the months and the relationship progressed, they had started to share more and more about their lives to each other, but Jessica had never spoken about Jess, until that one faithful day that she brought him home to meet the parents. The pictures of the girls were all over the house, but no one seemed to be telling him anything about those pictures. Eventually, before the evening of his first encounter with her parents had concluded, Mark decided to bring up the topic and ask where her sister was. The question had turned what was a pleasant and talkative afternoon, into an unpleasant and considerably less "chatty" evening, but that is where he learned the bits and parts he knew about Jess.

.... Mark nearly jumped off the sofa when he felt a hand on his shoulder, but relaxed when he realized that it was only Hank. He looked over and apoligized for once again getting lost inside his own head, when trying to understand what this family had to go through. Hank as always smiled and told him not to worry about it; when the time was right, all would reveal itself.