The History of Writing (Part Three) Brittany Suffers A Tragedy

The New Life Center of Brooklyn, New York was a place of deliberately elaborate policy, besides just being a theater of nearly-unbroken routine. On July 4th, 2036, of all days, Brittany was going to learn just how elaborate. 

Her brother, Fred Daniels, had been profoundly injured during a sparring match at the gym he was a member of. He was training to be a boxer. 

Brittany was one of his emergency contacts. The gym called her, delivered the news as gently as possible, and told Brittany which hospital he was staying in, assuming the well-liked athlete's only sibling would at least prefer the option of seeing him to not knowing anything about it at all. 

She'd always known something like this was coming, or at least anticipated it. It is a direly underappreciated quality/condition of the female brain that not only can the most tragic and deplorable outcomes of any bad situation be foreseen well in advance of their actually occurring, but also that (almost) any combination of them might be accounted for and acted upon. 

So, a couple days after the fire-drill and the a little less than a week before god-knows-how-many began to show-up & loiter & sit-around Samantha & Sisyphus's apartment, the not-so-young young Miss Daniels, since she was what was determined as an Emergency Resident--having no other real housing options besides a homeless shelter on account of her former/ongoing narcotic use--had to go and get the equivalent of a permission-slip to see her brother in the hospital, where he lay in critical condition (but seemed to be on the mend). 

Anne Powers was in charge down there. She'd been working for New Life Services since they'd practically opened. A lot of people say, if Anne Powers wasn't so greedy to earn more money in her lifetime than her deceased father had in his (adjusted for inflation, of course) then she probably would've just become a nun in a Catholic Church waiting for Jesus to call her back Home. As it happened, Jesus had other plans, if He had any plans at all. 

Anne Powers was sitting at her desk when Brittany knocked on the open door to her office. Her thin, white face made thinner by her grayish-black hair, said Hello to Brittany's knock and Brittany said, "Is now an okay time to talk, Miss Powers?" 

Miss Powers was writing something with a pen, just finishing it, and saying the first-half of the sentence while looking at her paperwork, "Now's a good time," then looking at Brittany, "as any." 

Brittany felt relieved and entered and closed the door behind her. "I promise I won't be here very long," she said. To herself, "oh my god." 

"Please, sit down," Miss Powers said, just as Brittany was sitting down. 

Brittany was stuffed to the gills with emotion. She was used to being emotional, especially when seven out of every ten things her (so-called) friend Tiffany ever said were complaints of the most ordinary/mundane description that Tiffany insisted could never, ever be solved. Brittany had what is referred to by today's standard as a deeply-embedded strategy of coping skills since about her mid-30s when casual marijuana & alcohol use-consumption had changed to using a little heroin to to ease her nerves, and pretty soon, as most typically happens when people ingest that poison any way poison can be ingested & they don't just quit before risking puking a second time, a little led to way, way more. Besides not letting her have voluntary-status in the nursing/recovery home, it meant she had a faulty wiring/dopamine-system and therefore an especially hard time processing bad news in a healthy way. 

"I should tell you first, I am incredibly nervous right," she told Miss Powers. 

"Well, that's perfectly natural, my dear." 

She was waiting for a little more. When it didn't come for ten seconds, she said, "I mean I'm just sick and stupid and worried about everything..." 

Miss Powers deathly calm visage absorbed all of it like a sponge. 

"...and I know a lot of that's my fault, I know I wouldn't be here unless I was supposed to be." A blind person wouldn't just be more likely to comprehend what she was going through: they could've smelled the unrelenting tragedy peeling off the 53-year-old in waves. "Like you know how they say Tomorrow's Gone and all the rest that goes with that: That's what I'm the most afraid of. It's like you can't keep anything. It's not fair that you can't keep anything. I know, all my hair is going to go gray if I get to keep it at all, and my skin is going to get wrinkled and one day I won't even be able to piss & shit in the toilet..." (She froze, momentarily, when she said the dirty words, expecting to be reprimanded, and when Miss Powers only continued her "subtle" glaring, listening, Brittany continued,) "I know all that. But don't I at least get to feel things the way I'm supposed to feel them?" 

She was close to sobbing; she put her face in her hands and tried to recompose herself through breathing, to little avail. 

"Is there something you want to talk about," said Miss Powers. Then, she didn't say anything else. 

"I am... My brother's in the hospital. I have to see my brother." 

"Well, then you'll need a pass, won't you?" 

Gradually getting things under control, "Yes. I'm an involuntary. I've been through this before. Just tell me what I need to sign it and--" She cut herself off before she cursed again. "There're some forms right?" 

"There're some forms," said Miss Powers, "but it depends on my judgement which ones apply to you." 

"I just need a day-pass to go to the hospital? They let me go for my dumbass cousin's wedding and when Tiffany's older brother got married for the seventh fucking time last year! Why wouldn't they let me go for this?" 

"I'm going to ask you to watch your language, Miss Daniels. I let it go the first two times because you're clearly in a lot of stress. But I think we're at the point of enough is enough." 

"What... I..." 

"How old is he." 

"What?" 

"How old is he. How old is your brother." 

"What's that-- He's four years younger than me, so...he's 49. No, his birthday's after mine, so he's 48." 

"And how was he injured." 

"He's part of a boxing gym for middleaged people. It's supposed to, you know, give him something to do so they don't get bored if they're jobs have mostly been replaced by automation." 

"I see." No one was going to accuse this cold bureaucrat of being loquacious. Indeed, if anything, Anne Powers had, in all likelihood, maintained-her-silence out of marriage, if she ever wanted marriage. As it happened, she despised children (including herself). "Well..." she began, neatly peeling & shuffling through papers on her desk, "I can double-check with my superiors, but I'm fairly certain they're going to say the same thing as me." 

"What?" 

"You're in no condition to leave the premises, Miss Daniels, You're positively overwhelmed. Going outside like this is bound to give you a stroke. I think you need to think about seeing your brother some other time."  

"But...." 

"What room do you stay in?" 

Brittany told her the room number. 

Miss Powers scribbled this on one of the pieces of paper on her desk. She repeated it back to Brittany. "I'll call you if anything changes, but I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you. Good day, miss." 

It left her totally devastated. She didn't move for about ten seconds. Then, sensing Miss Powers was going to reprimand her for listlessness or obviousness, Brittany stood up out of the chair like she'd been in a car-accident. She went back to her room, thinking about shaving her legs, or.... 

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