Content Warning: Mention of Suicide
**This is a reprint. Originally published in Concurrent Earths (2021) and in Mirror Worlds (2019).
Dinah struggled out of the chair. Another disappointing doctor visit. No answers. No treatment. Walking would soon be a thing of the past. A past she wanted to remember as vividly as if it were today.
She hobbled down the hallway. Aunt Jaden waited for her in the waiting room. Aunt Jaden. Jaded was a good name for her. Dinah took a deep breath. The results of this last test would mean more resentment, more anger, more fear, and a deeper rip in the family fabric. Aunt Jaden was the one that pulled the family apart. Constantly blaming people for failures they had not created. For things done to them, without remorse from the doer. While Dinah herself had always fought to keep the family together. It had been a battle of wits.
She took a deep breath and pushed the door to the waiting room open.
Aunt Jaden was in earnest conversation with someone she didn’t know. Her arms and hands flared as they made points to the discussion. Her aunt turned to the door and saw Dinah. Her words stopped. Her hands dropped. She stood up. “Dinah. Good. I have two more appointments. Let’s go.”
Not even a, “How did it go?” Dinah struggled out to her aunt.
“Here. Let me help you with your coat.” Aunt Jaden held out the coat and helped her into it as if she were three again.
Dinah blinked back tears as a similar memory from three decades ago swept across her mind and body. Much as then, she struggled to hold in her thoughts and feelings. Showing them in front of Aunt Jaden would get a knock across the bottom. Or her face, if she was particularly assertive.
Out in the hallway of the large medical building, Dinah slowed and placed her hand on Aunt Jaden’s arm. “We need.”
Aunt Jaden stumbled to a stop and looked back at her with eyebrows raised. “Yes?”
Dinah blinked. She couldn’t do it. Not while watching. “My doctor wants me to get a wheelchair. He says I won’t be walking long.”
Aunt Jaden stared at her and then grabbed her arm to hurry her down the long hallway to the elevator. “As I was telling that poor guy, when people give up too soon, they end on up disability forever, when they could have done so much. They are just too lazy to try. He still had one leg. What more does he want?”
Dinah stopped and pulled her arm away. “Do you feel that way about me?”
Aunt Jaden stared at her. “Of course not. I didn’t mean you. I know you tried everything you could. Now let’s go. Don’t make a scene.” She grabbed Dinah’s arm to propel her along.
Dinah pulled back. “I think it’s time to make a scene. You don’t know what that person went through. It may have been as bad, or worse than my diagnosis.”
Aunt Jaden struggled to pull her forward. “No need to talk about it here. Let’s go.”
“If not here, then where? Will you be saying the same thing about me behind my back tonight?”
Aunt Jaden stared.
Some people at the other end of the hallway had stopped walking and watched them.
“I didn’t mean it that way. I only want to encourage them.”
“Shaming isn’t encouraging. If you don’t know their past, you don’t know if they can push forward and do more. What I can do one day, I can’t do the next. I may seem fine one minute and collapse from exhaustion the next. I never know when it will happen.” She pulled herself away from her aunt to sit on the rock wall of an indoor flower garden. “Don’t shame other people. If you do, you are shaming me.” She covered her eye. A hot tear slipped out and slid down her cheek.
Aunt Jaden pulled her close and held her. As if she were three again and had just been whipped for being naughty. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better. I don’t want people to give in to disease before they have to.”
Dinah wiped her nose and sniffed. “I know you mean well. I just don’t want to read about that man, or anyone, on the suicide news because they were shamed into ending their lives. You never know what comfort they bring others.” Her words bubbled out. The words she had held in so long. The words she wished she had said before her own mother’s name had appeared on the suicide list. Soon followed by her brother.
“Aunt Jaden. Promise me. Never again.”
Aunt Jaden pulled away and grabbed her face in both hands. Thick tears streamed down her face. “I’ll try. I never meant for them to.”
Together, they sat there and cried.
Finally, Dinah wiped her eyes and stood up. “Come on. Let’s go get that wheelchair.”
“I’m not ready. To see you in one.” Aunt Jaden clasped her hands. “You’ll always be my niece. That little girl in braids. I don’t want to see you older than me.”
“I’m not. It’s the disease. I’ll only use it when needed. It’ll actually help me get out and about more. I won’t have to sit and worry if I have enough energy to go shopping, or go somewhere fun.”
Aunt Jaden nodded. “Wait. Sit here. I have something I need to do first.” She struggled to rise.
Dinah sat down.
Her aunt teetered down the hall, back the way they had come from. In that struggle, Dinah noticed a limp she hadn’t recognized before.
Yet. She had had a limp every single family gathering as far back as Dinah could remember. Aunt Jaden always claimed she had twisted her ankle.
A few minutes later, she returned. The limp slowed her down.
Dinah stood up. Her aunt wasn’t only pushing others. She pushed herself to hide an injury. Somehow, she’d discover what it was. Without breaking the spirit of her aunt.
“I had an apology to make.” Aunt Jaden took Dinah’s arm, and they hurried on to the elevator.
Gail Brown’s (she/her) paired stories mirror daily life as it could be. Perhaps should be, in some ways. Her novels are on her website, and her short stories have appeared in Alien Dimensions, Bards and Sages, Earth 2100 (Other Worlds Ink), Kaleidoscope, Lorelei Signal, and The Neurodiversiverse Anthology, among others.
Website: uncoveredmyths.wixsite.com/uncoveredmyths
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