Chapter 38 – When it Rains, it PoursHave you ever had one of those years where, the second the clock struck midnight on New Year's Day, you breathed a sigh of relief that it was finally over?
This was one of those years.
It certainly didn't start out on a bad note. Elysia and Judd had been hard at work in their careers and both of them received promotions on the same day.
Elly's position as a fertilizer analyst pays decently well, but she does come home smelling of, well,
fertilizer. Most of us are used to it by now, but Devon, well...
In all fairness it is rather...off-putting. When I was a child I distinctly remember Mom coming home from work with a similar scent about her, which is probably why Dad installed a full shower in the downstairs bathroom, now that I think about it.
It's funny how scent can trigger old memories.
Little Zoey had her third birthday and is just as adorable as ever. She chatters almost as much as her mother did at that age.
I am very proud of my son-in-law. Judd is an amazing father to Zoey and spends every moment that he can with her. When I suggested that he take her to the library for story time his face just lit up.
He started noticing, though, that Zoey was holding the books very close to her face in order to read them. I conducted a couple of quick tests, and it turns out that she is slightly near-sighted and will probably need glasses when she starts school.
By the end of Spring Holly was painting full time. She even managed to get a seller's account at the Consignment store. Now she is making almost as much painting as she did in law enforcement, and it's doing something that she loves.
And then...the storms began.
Not even a month later we received devastating news from Malcolm's family. Nancy had passed away peacefully in her sleep a few days shy of her eighty-fifth birthday. Apparently she had been feeling perfectly fine the night before, but when Geoffrey awakened that next morning she was gone.
We saw very little of my brother-in-law over the next several days. When Malcolm wasn't with Geoffrey he was holed up in his bedroom, avoiding everyone except for Darlene and the kids. I don't know what hurt him more, losing his mother or seeing the grief that his father was now forced to endure.
No sooner had things gotten back to normal (or what qualifies for normal with nine of us living under the same roof) we were hit with another blow, only this one was even closer to home. I was working on the computer one Saturday morning when suddenly the lights began to flicker. For a brief moment I thought that we were just having a power surge.
That was when I heard Iris screaming from the kitchen.
“
Mom!”
I practically leaped from my chair and raced down the hallway. The sight that awaited me made me gasp in absolute horror.
“Iris, stand back!” I shouted. “The wire may still be live. Call an ambulance, now!”
Thinking quickly I grabbed the broom from the pantry and used it to move the exposed wire away from Darlene's hands. As soon as it was relatively safe I pulled my sister away from the dishwasher and began to assess her injuries.
She wasn't breathing and she had no pulse.
Everything was a blur from there. I went into autopilot, alternating chest compressions with mouth-to-mouth. Somewhere in the middle of it all I remember Malcolm running into the room, but my focus was entirely on Darlene. Fifteen compressions. Two breaths. I was
not about to let my sister die.
I don't know how long I was kneeling there. Five minutes? Ten? Finally, amazingly, I began registering a pulse, weak and thready, but distinct. I halted the chest compressions, made another breath, and hoped to whatever higher power is out there that she would start breathing again.
“Come on, honey...
breathe...” Malcolm pleaded with his wife. He bent down and kissed her. Suddenly, a sharp gasp issued from her throat, followed by a series of raspy coughs. Darlene was back.
“Sis, can you hear me?” I called out.
Slowly she began drifting back into consciousness and her eyes fluttered open.
“Ouch.”
Malcolm chuckled slightly as he stroked her cheek. “Don't try to move, love. The ambulance is here. We're taking you to the hospital.”
“Sounds...good to me,” came her languid reply.
In all Darlene spent three nights in the hospital just to make sure that there would be no lingering effects from her brush with death. Her hands were severely burned, but those would heal over time. Morgana said that she was exceptionally lucky to have survived. The only thing that she suggested was for Darlene to avoid electrical repairs from now on. (Needless to say we all agreed with that assessment.)
As if that wasn't enough, Iris wound up in the emergency room a few weeks later with a concussion. Her training dummy decided to fight back.
She was fine, but wound up having to miss a few days of school. Fortunately, Timothy seemed more than willing to share his notes and help her with the missed homework.
Fall began to fade into Winter, and I thought that the worst was behind us. Geoffrey was almost back to his old self and Darlene was well on the path to recovery. No one ever expected to get that frantic phone call from my youngest brother late one Tuesday afternoon. Jamie Jolina-Bunch, my long time coworker-turned-sister, was dead.
Earlier in the year Jamie had surprised everyone at the hospital by opting for an early retirement. No one really thought anything of it, and neither she nor Ian had indicated that anything was wrong. We just assumed that she retired so that they could spend more time traveling. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that my sister-in-law was dying.
My brother was a widower at thirty-five.
We did what we could to comfort him...but how DO you comfort a man who loses his love in such a way? Ian had lost so much in his young life, both of his parents by his eighteenth birthday, and now his wife? It just didn't seem fair.
Much to our collective relief the final month of the year came and went without incident. The entire family was still more or less shell-shocked from everything that had happened. As the clock struck midnight on New Year's Day we all just kind of looked at each other. This had been a brutal year, and now it was time to start anew.
Thankfully, I have it on good authority that this next year will be much better.
My grand
son will make his debut sometime this summer.
(A/N: Argh! I think Jamie was somehow glitched. She was the first of the original YA population to die, and it was way before the end of the elder lifespan.
The first screencap of fried Darlene was from the actual incident (which scared the heck out of me until I remembered that her Unlucky trait would save her). The rest came courtesy of pose player...gosh I love that thing!
Thank you all for reading and commenting. 7000+ views...and I am speechless. You folks are awesome.
)
