Way Down We Go

Chapter Twenty Six

"Do you need any more water?" James asked me as he fussed over me in our bed. CC plumped the pillows and adjusted the blankets relentlessly, fretting and fretting and fretting.

"No, I'm fine." I replied, stroking the fur of the dozen pomeranians in my bed. "I appreciate the concern, but it was just a panic attack. The robbery just scared me and triggered some feelings on dad's death, things that I haven't thought about in a long time. I'm okay." I said, softening my tone.

"The police are on the case, and our investigators're gonna take care of these things." CC said, sitting by my feet and stroking the soft, furry sheets.

"I know, I just had a little freak out."

"Major freak out," Jamie muttered, the more protective of the two. "We nearly had to call an ambulance."

"I'm fine," I insisted. "You've fed me my pills and water, now all I need is rest."

Jamie nodded slowly. "Okay, just call if you need anything. Go to sleep, we'll be back soon."

The door closed. And I was alone.

~~

"So, what're we equaled to?" I asked my maternal half brother as he adjusted the lilac blanket that lay across my legs some hours later.

"About mom." I clarified.

"How do you mean?"

"How sick she is," I slowly explained. "How many things're sickened with cancer?" I asked.

CC sighed. "Stomach, liver, lung and the beginnings in the thyroid and bowel," he said, his big dark eyes sad. I reached for his hand.

"And now her breast." I finished. CC silently nodded. "If she's so sick, not just in her body, but in her mind," I blinked back the horrid memories of abuse and insanity. "Would it just be better to let her go? Stop the treatments? She's never gonna be normal, she's never gonna be healthy. Is it wrong of us to keep the chemo and radio going when theres so much wrong?" I asked. His eyes grew a bright hazel as he stated at me. But CC said nothing. "Would it be better for her if we just let her go?"

"Do we have that right?" CC asked me, toying with my fingers. "The power to end a woman's life, one in which neither of us have ever truly known?"

"I don't know. I feel a sense of responsibility to her, even though the only thing she has ever done for me is birth. I don't wish for her to suffer when there is no end in sight. You know fine well that the cancer is terminal, and her insanity is ruining her. I wish for the pain to stop."

"And her heart?"

"A beating heart doesn't necessarily mean life, CC. We of all people should know that."

"I don't want to."

"Neither do I, but we can't be selfish. This' always been an option," I admitted, looking away from his icy gaze. CC had the eyes of his long dead father, nothing like our mothers, but that gaze unsettled me as hers once did. "maybe we have to look into it."

"Kill her?"

"End her suffering."

"You want to do this?"

"Of course I don't want to, but what choice do we have? Leave her there, fill her with chemo and radio, where the only light at the end of the tunnel she'll have is incurable insanity? We have to think of her."

"We don't know her, how could we know what she wants?" CC got off the bed and started to pace. I tried to get up, but his sharp glare kept me in place. "She abandoned me as a child the moment my dad died, ran off to your own father, made his life hell with all her illnesses, only to abuse you and nearly kill you when your dad was killed. Who is that?"