terminal

Surgery

Living or dying on her terms was never a choice Aviana was allowed to make

and, so, when she went into cardiac arrest, they demanded that the doctors

do life saving measures, and surgery, and Aviana is sure they were desperate;

She tried to think if she was a mom if she would have made the same choices -

but before she can even think about what it would be like to be a mom and find

someone to love her, she passes out; Winter comes, Aviana thinks, but she is

a whisper of a real person, little more than skin pulled tight around knobby bones;

She remembers something like Christmas spent in her hospital bed, a hat and

a stocking; Aviana is pretty sure she had fun socks on her feet, but it is blurry,

The only thing she remembers with any clarity is when the doctors tell her

parents that there is nothing more that they can do and that it is time to look

into hospice options; Aviana tries to listen closely to them but she only hears

them discussing end-of-life care; In the days after, her parents cry all the

time, even in front of Brynn and Lilly; When Aviana is awake enough to speak

she talks about wanting to go home and they promise her that they're going

back soon, they just need to take care of a few last things; Doctors stop

kicking Lilly out of the bed, and Brynn crawls in with them, too; The flashes

that Aviana remembers are probably from pictures, and she wonders what

she looks like in them and if she looks as bad as she feels; When the day

finally comes for her parents to take her home, it is a long ambulance ride;

Aviana learns as she slips in and out of awareness of her surroundings,

she has machines she must stay on to remain comfortable - and she hears

a lot about "comfort care" instead of "treatment," and over the days after

she gets home and comes out of this dying-in-the-hospital smog, she begins

to understand that "comfort care" and hospice as services for people

who are really near to death; a nurse is in the house at all hours of all days,

and doctors come to the house to check on her once every week or two;

Again, hours turn to days and days to months, and before Aviana realizes,

summer is back again; She only knows because Lilly says she has a playdate

at her friend's house and asks Aviana to "please don't die" while she is

gone; Lilly thought nobody heard it, but after she left, Brynn told their mom

what she said to Aviana, and they talked about why Brynn was upset, also

why Lilly would say something like that - and Aviana thought her heart had

been broken before, but she lies in bed, a nurse sitting on a laptop next to her,

listening helplessly as her mother explains to Brynn that Aviana knows

what is coming and that she isn't afraid, and that the last thing she wants is

for the family to stop living their lives; Brynn screams in response that it

doesn't matter because it has already stopped their lives and that it isn't fair

and Brynn doesn't blame Aviana, but she has nobody else to blame, so she

is mad that Aviana would even suggest that they act like nothing is happening,

and she just keeps screaming, "She's going to die," and there's nothing in the

world that could make hearing her sister breakdown less painful, and it

only reinforces that dying is harder for the people who live after because

no matter how much hurt Aviana feels right now, she knows it will end soon;

Brynn, and Lilly, and Mom, and Dad, and everyone that knows her, they will

all hurt until they die too - and she almost feels guilty for wishing they live

for a long, long time because she wants them to have more time; God,

what she would not have been willing to give if only she had more time.