Title: Not Ready
Fandom: 911
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Abby Clark.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 358
Spoilers: Towards the end of Season 1.
Summary: Abby had known her mother wouldn’t live much longer, but the end comes so suddenly, and she’s not ready.
Content Notes: Character death.
Written For: Challenge 339: Amnesty, using Challenge 89: Family.
Disclaimer: I don’t own 911, or the characters.



Abby had known this day was coming, her mom’s condition had been worsening steadily in recent weeks so she’d done her best to prepare for the inevitable, but even so, it happened so suddenly, and it hurts so much more than she’d ever imagined it would. She’d expected to experience a sense of relief, and she does, but instead of easing her grief it just makes her feel guilty. The terrible strain of caring for her mom has been lifted off her shoulders, but what relief there is can scarcely be felt through the grey cloud of grief and loss that has wrapped itself around her like a suffocating cocoon. Where does she go from here?

She’s been living more for her mom than for herself over the recent months, watching as the heartless cruelty that is Alzheimer’s stripped away inch by inch the woman who’d raised her until all that was left was someone she hardly recognised anymore. A lost and frightened soul, clinging to her increasingly dim and fragmented memories of her only daughter.

More than anything, Abby wants her mom back. Not the mom she’s just lost, the one who slapped her across the face yesterday, but the one she remembers from before, the funny, smiling, caring, intelligent woman who had been the cornerstone of her life.

There’s so much to be done, people to inform, a funeral to plan, but right at this moment Abby can’t make herself move from her mom’s side. It’s like she’s been glued in place. If she can just stay right here, hold on to her mom for a little while longer, maybe the world will start to make sense again and she’ll be able to pick herself up, dry her tears, and move forward with some semblance of purpose. But in this moment she’s the one who’s lost, adrift without an anchor. She doesn’t know who she is anymore, has no idea how to even begin to find herself again, so she clings to the past, to her memories, and longs to hear her mom telling her everything’s going to be alright. Perhaps then she could believe it.

The End