Cassandra

Muchas gracias por Jester-Jami, Saige, ikkichi, and rhea\'s kochanie. :)



ps - I don\'t know much about Huntington\'s disease, which is the disease that Cassandra has. The information I\'ve received about the illness comes from a class I\'d taken from school (which gave a brief explanation of it) and, hopefully, reliable websites. If any information is incorrect, please let me know and I\'ll change it. :)



Thank you! Enjoy!



-----



"It will change me completely. The nerve cells in my brain will deteriorate. I\'ll lose memory, have sporadic and uncontrollable movements, possibly have dementia and hallucinate." Pause. "I\'ll be horrible to take care of. I\'ll dependent on everyone else. I won\'t be able to do a damn thing myself."



Huntington\'s disease she called it. It sounded terrifying. Surreal.



Cassandra and I were standing next to the same easel with the same charcoal/oil pastel painting that Cassandra had created to reflect on her said-illness -- how that tree would be her one day. Her eyes continued to avert to the picture and then to me and repeat over and over. Each time she looked at me, her eyes were a little harder. Angrier.



"It\'s hereditary," she continued, watching the damaged tree as she spoke. "My father carried the disease without knowing it until he was 33. He died five years later after he killed himself with a pistol."



I gasped softly. "I\'m sorry."



She swallowed, unable to look at me. "I was only seven. The faintest memories I have of him are in his favorite recliner, his arms and head jerking as though he was having a seizure. I often asked my mother what was wrong with him and she didn\'t know. She didn\'t tell me until later after she\'d taken me to the hospital to see if I\'d carried the same illness. After she stopped crying.



"I never blamed my parents," she kept saying, finally taking the chance to look at me instead of her art. Her eyes were breakable crystals. "They had no idea it would happen. My father was an orphan, so he never knew his parents or knew that it would be passed on to him. It was a 50-50 shot, and"-- she laughed briefly, humorlessly --"I was unlucky."



Not to sound too much like Bella Swan, but I\'d never given much thought to how I would die either. Frankly, I didn\'t want to know how or when or if it had any extra meaning or whatever. I didn\'t want to think about that. I had so much more life to live, or so I thought. Why give myself a countdown on my days alive? Cassandra, however, knew that her life would be cut short eventually. How do you go about life knowing your days are numbered?



"Does, um..." I cleared my throat. "Does Dave know?"



She bit her lip and shook her head. "I had to plead with my mother to not let him know. If he found out, he would get rid of me. I\'d be alone on the street."



"But won\'t he notice?" I asked, my eyebrows so tight together that I felt a headache coming on.



"The symptoms don\'t show up, usually, until the age of 30 or 40. I still have a few more years of life left. After the disease \'sets in,\' so to speak, only 15 years are expected for the victim to live through. I\'ll have time to worry about Dave then."



I nodded slightly. "So what does this have to do with the lying about the baby?"



Sighing, Cassandra explained, "David wants children." It was the first time I\'d heard either one call Dave by his formal name. He seemed so much more important suddenly. "I used to think that he just wanted a lot of sex"-- I blushed heavily --"but, no, he wants a family." Her eyes scanned the painting again. "I\'ve taken birth control pills ever since our wedding day. Every day. Dave has no idea."



"Yet you keep trying," I pointed out.



"Dave thinks that I\'m sterile or that he\'s sterile. I bet that\'s not the case for either of us. It used to make me unhappy by knowing that I was lying to him and cheating him out at having that family he\'s always wanted, but... there\'s no way that I will let my child obtain such a burden as this disease. I\'ve seen what it can do. Will do. I won\'t allow it."



Cowering a little, I murmured, "But there is that chance that there won\'t be something wrong..."



She looked at me. "I won\'t take that risk."



I turned away and stared at the splatters of paint on the floor. If I was in Cassandra\'s shoes, I probably would have made the same decision according to Cassandra\'s explanation of how horrible Huntington\'s disease is. But to lie to my husband about it? And lie to him about a fake-pregnancy? It didn\'t seem right. If Dave truly loved her, he wouldn\'t turn Cassandra away due to something she can\'t control, and he could find substitutions for the family he wanted by getting a dog or-or, um... adopting?



I would do that for Cassandra in a heartbeat.



"So you told him you were pregnant to make him happy," I said aloud as I focused on a splotch of dark-red on the floor.



A moment went by where she didn\'t respond. "Yes," she replied finally. "Is he happy?"



I shrugged as I faced her. "I think he\'s more concerned. Probably because this is the first time it\'s happened in however-many years."



"Five," she said quietly. "Five years we\'ve been married."



I looked down and blushed, thinking how that had accumulated a lot of nights of conception-attempts. The slush in my stomach was returning.



"What are you going to do when you have to start showing? Or in, what, seven months?" Depending on how old the "baby" was, she may have been scheduled to already start to show.



I watched Cassandra\'s throat constrict and relax as she swallowed. Tears built up in her eyes as she looked down at me. Like the truth of all her lies was catching up to her and strangling her. "I don\'t know," she whispered, her voice breaking. "I don\'t know what I\'ll do."



I gasped at the sight. Oh, what had I done? Pushing all of those questions at her and shoving them into her head. What the outcomes could have been and how she was going to handle it when the towers came crashing down. "Oh, Cassandra, I\'m so sorry," I told her, biting my lip to keep my own emotions from overflowing. "I didn\'t mean to upset you. I--"



"No," she whimpered, sniffling. A tear fell down her cheek. "You\'re right. I don\'t know what I\'ll do. It was just a solution... in the beginning."



"A solution?" I echoed.



She shook her head, running her fingers through her hair. "No, never mind." She sniffled some more, wiping under her eyes with her long fingers. "I\'m just not thinking clearly right now..."



Still heavy with guilt, I whispered, "I\'ll just go. You need time alone. I\'m sorry for what I did."



"What?" Cassandra asked, her voice quivering. Her eyes were growing red with irritation. "No, just... Come here."



Cautiously, I took a few steps forward. She held out her arms to welcome me into an embrace. She was seeking comfort. I walked into them, wrapping my arms around her middle and holding her upper back. Her arms trailed down my shoulders. She was warm and her breath was on my neck, heavier than normal. Mine was, too, but for other reasons. She was soft under my fingertips. I longed to caress her through the thin, gray shirt she wore, but that would have pushed the boundaries too far. I was lucky to be this close to Cassandra.



"I\'m sorry," I murmured again into the skin concealing her collarbone, closing my eyes as they were so close to intimate contact.



She inhaled as she pulled back from me, eyes softer. She had only moved her face just inches and her chest was still pressed to mine. "No," she whispered. "Thank you."



I felt this erratic pulse in my chest when I swore I saw her incline her head just a millimeter. She was going to kiss me. I knew she was.



Please, just kiss me.



Downstairs, the front door slammed. We both jumped and Cassandra tore herself away from me.



Dave was home.