Seventeen was grim.

There would be weeks when the scramble looked to be paying off. She could breathe easier. Her limbs felt like they belonged to her again. She would get chipper and feel confident that she had some control over her life and her health. She’d look ahead, she’d think ahead and plan ahead and she was sure she could see a horizon out there and it was waiting for her. She’d probe herself. She wanted to know how she got to feeling good again. She’d ask doctors and nurses, and the nurses would sit with her and answer every question and would celebrate her feeling better.

Then there would be the weeks of illness. During those times she wondered if she was capable of resistance. She felt remote. Others looked remote. Her breathing was labored and every bone in her body felt useless and her mind and body were clenched by a tiresome anxiety.

Her recall chronicled the arrival of the disease – how many years ago? – and every day since. Her recalling of the arrival, her recalling every day since, this was intensely personal. But this new battle, this current battle, it felt different. She grew wary again. Days went by faster. She was sleeping more. Listening and responding to doctors, nurses, and her parents was becoming more difficult. And this is creepy; it felt like her assailant, knowing a win was imminent, was toying with her.

These are the things she was thinking, and what do you do with such thoughts? Who do you share those thoughts with? Who wants to hear those things, and who, hearing them, could provide solace? These things? From a seventeen-year-old? Vanessa Hoffman, seventeen, was being battered by a message sent by a fatal disease and it was being delivered regularly and firmly.

When it was clear there would be no more days at school, when the chemicals and radiation were phased out and replaced with pills for this and pills for that, pills morning, noon, and night, when everything passing her lips tasting like nothing, with fatigue clinging to her as if on a mission of mercy, she came up with an idea and chewed on it for days at a time before deciding it was the right idea at the right time.

She didn’t worry about the words needed to express how right this idea was. She wasn’t going to argue about it with anyone. Vanessa Hoffman knew she was in total command of her life now (which was both thrilling and frightening), and she knew the time to announce her decision was now.

It was – this could be terrible and sad, but somehow those things didn’t matter anymore – it was a relief to make the decision. It was planning, really. Planning for her future. Who could argue with that? Her total recall, the senses it employed and the senses it tweaked, her total recall pushed her to make the decision. She was sure of that. Thankful, actually.

She asked her parents – this is what she’d decided – she asked her parents if she couldn’t have a series of one-on-one, private conversations with family. One-on-one, one at a time. The request came laden with insistence. Her wording was a bit clumsy. There was a hint of whine in her request, seasoned with equal parts frustration, persuasion and ingratiation. She was playing the sickness, using it. That would be fair, wouldn’t it? It was her sickness, wasn’t it? She told her parents what she wanted, addressing her parents this way: “Don’t say anything until I’m done, okay? Promise?”

Of course, they promised, so she told them (asked them, actually) about the conversations. She wanted private chats. With family. Private in the sense that these things need to be said.

Her parents acted like they didn’t know what she was requesting and that annoyed her. She repeated herself slowly, naming names: Mom. Dad. Taylor. Ethan. Hannah, too. When her parents acted befuddled, she knew they were acting, she took a moment, closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she had matured. She’d become an adult. She’d willed it. She’d bestowed adulthood on herself.

“I’m dying,” she said. “I know it. And I think you know it, too.” She raised her eyes and raised one hand when her mother looked like she was going to say something, waved that hand at her mother to stop her. She gulped and shook her head. “I want to talk to Taylor, and Ethan, with no one around. Private like. To … I don’t know … say some stuff.” She paused and could feel irritation bubbling under. It wasn’t there very often. It usually showed up when she was alone. Didn’t that mean she’d been adult about all this business? She looked at her father, ignoring her mother. “Here’s what I want,” she said. “I want to talk to everyone, one-on-one. That’s what I’m asking for. I know why I want it, and I don’t want to say it. I don’t want the reason why to even be part of the conversation.” She raised her chin and it was trembling. “That’s not so hard to understand, is it?” She was angry. Doctors had warned her parents she’d get angry, and she never had. At least not in front of them. In front of her parents, her family and friends, she’d been this young lady who took it all. All of it, and didn’t complain.

“Okay,” her father said. That’s all he said. He knew enough not to say more. His daughter thought she was dying? Sometimes he thought that, too. How awful was that? When she announced she was dying she could have reached in and pulled his heart out of his chest. His little girl, thinking that way? What kind of man lets his daughter think such things? His daughter thinking that was terrifying, and her saying it out loud was worse. Wasn’t he supposed to be in charge? Wasn’t he responsible? For years he’d wanted to break something. Trash the place. And he was exhausted from not doing those things. Thinking about doing them and not doing them, that was a curse. Wasn’t his daughter a blessing? Of course she was. A grown man knows the difference between a blessing and a curse.

Vanessa’s mother bit her lip and nodded. What was there to say? She’d been searching for words for years and failing. She’d been saying things that weren’t soothing or reassuring even to herself. She’d grown tired of her voice. She wanted her little girl to be her little girl again. Small. Clingy. Seeking security. A seventeen-year-old? Her daughter was seventeen and secure enough to explain to her parents she was terminally ill? Secure enough to say she wanted a few things before she died … needed help … and was expecting help? How can you receive that request and not think ask for more, Vanessa, we’re begging you, ask for more. Ask for anything there is, and we’ll kill ourselves getting it for you.

That was how the whole family conversations thing came into being.

“When do you want this to happen?” her father asked. It was something he could do. Manage this. Make it happen.

Vanessa shrugged. Suddenly she was irritable and didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Did she even have a say? When did she ever have a say?

“Tomorrow,” her mother said. It was a Sunday. “Tomorrow,” she said, “and I’ll come right after breakfast. We’ll talk.” Whatever was going to be said, Lauren Hoffman wanted to hear it as soon as possible.

About the Author:

Victor Kreuiter’s stories have appeared in EQMM, Halfway Down The Stairs, Bewildering Stories, Tough, Frontier Tales, Del Sol SFF Review, Literally Stories, and other online and print publications.