A Year At The Opera

Chapter 12: There's Something About Investigations, Adultery & Funerals, Part 1

A/N: this was basically supposed to be a chapter for everyone to return to 'normal' while Joe does his investigation but! as you have probably guessed so far, nothing is ever 'normal' in Athea!  and if it was, this would be excruciatingly boring to read. So, here's some of the drama I promised you. 

Also, as you can see by the ballooning length of the chapter, I was forced to split it into 2 and move some events around. The time skip is actually in chapter 14/15 now. Anyway, enough chit chat, let's do this.

Word Count: 4.4K words

Joe

"Oh." The disappointment in her voice was like a knife to the heart.

"Yeah." Joe said awkwardly, walking over to her bed. She lay comfortably wrapped in blankets. Blood pooled under her pale cheeks even though the room was fairly warm. The heart rate monitor was background noise. All he could hear were here labored breaths as she sat up.

"Remind me to fire Justine." She joked, coughing.

"No." Joe said seriously and took a seat on the chair next to the bed. The seat was still warm. "How are you, Mom?"

"What does it look like?" She coughs.

"What did the doctors say?"

"A couple of months. They're not sure."

Some snot ran down her nose and she reached for a tissue from the box on her nightstand. Joe couldn't draw his eyes away from the way her hands trembled as she reached out and struggled to grab onto a tissue. He reached out to grab the tissue for her.

"No!" She said sternly. "You keep your filthy hands to yourself!"

He drew his hand back. She finally grabbed the tissue and wiped her nose.

He sighed, "You should be in a hospital."

"I'll tell you the same thing I told you the last time you said that: I'm perfectly fine right here, thank you very much. Hospitals disgust me."

"But you'd have doctors and people keeping an eye on you at all times!" Joe leapt out of his seat.

"I have Justine. That's all I need." She replied calmly.

Joe sat back down. He couldn't stomach seeing her like this. The doctors had warned her that her chances of recovery went down significantly if she left their controlled environment but she'd refused to stay and now here she was, deteriorating every day. At this point, Joe was convinced she wanted to die. There was no other reason for her to torture herself like this despite what everyone said.

"I just think it'd be better—" Joe began.

"Do you have anything else to say or do you want to repeat the same fight we had last time?"

"I'm just looking out for you."

"I don't need you to. I've survived 61 years on this earth by myself and I'll continue to do it without an ounce of help from you!" She huffed. Once Martha Walor had made up her mind, it was difficult to convince her otherwise.

Joe stood up and grit his teeth. His nostrils flared as he walked away, trying to calm himself. He turned around and paced in place, trying not to fly off the handle. With everyone else, Joe had a lot of patience, you needed to have patience in his line of work. But with her? Every time she spoke, it seemed like she just did it to get under his nerves, no matter how hard he tried to get close or help her. And tonight, Joe had had it. He was done with this. If she wanted to be this way, there was nothing he could do to stop her.