#FreewriteMadness – My Response to the 'Medicine' Prompt

aislingcronin (60)in #freewritemadness • 5 years ago

I'm aiming to continue the great momentum of today (4,334 words so far 😍) by responding to @freewritehouse's latest prompt, medicine, which just so happens to tie in nicely with Joanne's storyline.

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Videoblocks

'For God's sake, Mum,' Emma fumes. They are in the car – they've just had a meeting with Joanne's oncologist – and Emma has once again found herself exasperated by her mother's attitude. 'Will you not just do what the doctors say? They have your best interests at heart.'

'Do they?' Joanne harrumphs as she straps in her seatbelt. 'I don't know. I just think this whole chemo thing isn't for me.'

Emma feels – not for the first time, when around her mother – as though she's going to scream. 'Mum, come on. You need to do absolutely anything that's necessary to beat this. Don't give me that whole "chemo isn't for me" crap.'

'Well, it isn't, Emma!' Joanne cries out indignantly. 'Do I want to have poison pumped into me every other day, making me weaker and weaker? No. No, I do not.'

'Oh, so you would you rather die?' Emma snaps, feeling a lump develop in her throat.

'Ah, don't be so melodramatic,' her mother chides her, waving her hand as though swatting away an annoying fly. 'Modern medicine has better answers than that, I'm sure. I could probably just go for surgery, I'll be fine –'

'But if you just had a few rounds of chemo done, you wouldn't need the surgery, Mum,' Emma says through gritted teeth. 'You heard Dr. Okoye. The cancer is at an early stage right now, so if you went for the chemo, you wouldn't need to go through too many rounds of it to make it go away.'

'Hmm. I'm not sure about that.'

Emma leans her head against the steering wheel and closes her eyes. 'Mum, you're driving me mad. You really are.'

'Well, don't I always drive you mad?' Joanne asks innocently. 'So no change there, then.'

I'm briefly interrupting this post because it's nearly midnight and I need to calculate my total word count for the day and put it into the #FreewriteMadness form. I wrote 306 words just now. When added to the combined word count of my two earlier posts today, this gives me 4,640 words altogether. My highest daily total yet! 😊

All Emma can do is shake her head. She sighs, starts up the car, and begins to move out of the parking space. 'Alright, Mum. You know what? Have it your way.'

A tense silence envelops them as they move out of the clinic carpark and onto the street beyond. Sarah – sitting in the back seat – can hardly stand it. 'Mum?' she says quietly, leaning forward slightly.

'What is it, love?'

'It's just ... I can't imagine what you're going through right now,' Sarah begins softly, then pauses. She wants to consider her words very carefully right now: she doesn't want to say anything that could annoy Joanne, or put her on the defensive front. 'I really can't. I know if I was faced with the thought of having to get chemo, I would be so scared. But please: don't put your health at risk. We need to you to get well. We need you to beat this, Mum, because ... I can't imagine life without you. Neither of us can.'

Emma glances a little sharply at her in the rear-view mirror, but Sarah can see some sadness in her eyes too: an acknowledgement that her younger sister is speaking the truth.

Joanne is silent for a few moments – Sarah has a feeling that her words have made an impact – but it doesn't take long for her to rally. 'Can't imagine life without me?' she sniffs. 'Could have fooled me. How often do either of you call? Or text? Or come to visit me?'

'Mum, don't start all this again –' Emma begins, already sounding annoyed, but Sarah cuts across her. 'I know we haven't stayed in touch as much as we should have, Mum, and I am so sorry about that. The truth is ... sometimes I'm too afraid to call. I know you don't always like some of the decisions I make, and I ... I get afraid of what you might say.' She is somewhat fearful about saying this – it's the kind of thing that seems guaranteed to enrage Joanne – but in this moment, it feels important for her to speak with absolute candour. Hopefully the gentleness of her tone will prevent her mother from flying off the handle: hopefully she'll know that Sarah is doing her very best to speak with love. 'But I do love you. So much. And I need you. Even if I don't always show it, even if I haven't contacted you as much as I should have ... please know that you mean so much to me, and ... and this cancer news has devastated me. It really has.'

Joanne is silent for a few minutes once Sarah has said all this. She swallows and blinks rapidly a couple of times, causing Sarah to wonder whether she's trying to hold back tears. Once again, Emma's eyes flicker to hers in the rear-view mirror, and the two sisters share a look of trepidation, hope, sorrow: so much emotion passes between them in that one small glance.

'Well,' their mother says eventually, 'I don't know. I'll have to talk to the doctor again about this whole chemo thing. I have a whole lot of questions that I want answered before I'll let him inject me with poison!'

'You want to ask him more questions?' Emma asks, though she is now laughing. 'Jesus. The poor man hasn't been bombarded with enough of your questions already, no?'

'Oh no, I don't think so,' Joanne insists. She, too, seems amused. The atmosphere in the car has lightened. Sarah sits back, breathing a sigh of relief. The constant bickering was really putting her on edge.

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My post-midnight word count was 610.

I want to end this post by giving a shout out to everyone else who has signed up to the ~~fit of absolute lunacy~~ invigorating creative challenge that is #FreewriteMadness. 😇 Make sure you go and support their work too! I have limited voting power, but will upvote as many posts as I can per day.

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