Aurora - Chapter 3 - Parent’s, Family and Friends

“What do you mean, they planned this?” Brian’s Mom, Sarah asked with more than a bit of bite to her voice.

“Not the accident, well not the car accident. The Accident with the costume.” Tracy said as she tried to convey both just how sorry she was, and how important Aurora was to the child that lay in the bed.

Hi All! Here is Chapter 3! Chapter 4 is still a work in progress but I think you will like it. I've been told that Chapter 3 here is best yet, so please let me know your thoughts!

This story will always post FIRST to LG Tales, then to TG Fiction dot NET and then to BigCloset.

-JulieChristine

Aurora

by JulieChristine / Kirstyn Amanda Fox

Chapter Three – Parent’s, Family and Friends

Amanda Tells Her Story

“They tried to make me leave your side” Amanda said softly, to her sleeping friend. “But that just wasn’t going to happen. I don’t think the doctors and nurses like having me here, but there is just no way I am going anywhere.”

I spent most the time crying and apologizing to Aurora and occasionally I would drift off to sleep, and then wake up screaming.

The Hospital insisted on dressing her in one of those ugly blue “boy” gowns, not the Pink one like Aurora deserved, and the name on the charts also read Brian. I was just so pissed. How could they do this to her after everything she did.

She saved me!

My bag had ripped and I had stopped. I stooped down to pick up some of my candy, when I heard Tracy yell my name and looked up. I saw the van headed right for me, and then I felt something soft, hit me, and push me out of the way, about the same time I heard the crunch and her scream.

I can still hear the scream, crunch and thud of her body hitting the van a couple times as she tumbled and then hitting the ground. Even over the sound of the car skidding, and the glass breaking, and the hood being dented, I can remember the sounds Aurora made as she was tossed mercilessly about by the offending vehicle.

I remember throwing up, and seeing the blood, there was just so much. The smell of the brakes, and hot engine mixed with the coppery sweet smell of all the blood probably didn’t help.

I tried to get up but I just couldn’t put any weight on my leg. I wanted to crawl to her, to get to her as fast as I could, but someone stopped me. I must have broken my leg somehow when Aurora pushed me out of the way. The doctors said it wasn’t that bad, but they wanted to keep me over night incase I had a concussion.

They definitely weren’t happy that I wouldn’t stay in my bed, and insisted on being in the chair, and sometimes kneeling on the floor as best I could next to Aurora but I just couldn’t leave her. I just couldn’t leave her alone.

Tracy’s Story

“What do you mean, they planned this?” Brian’s Mom, Sarah asked with more than a bit of bite to her voice. -

“Not the accident, well not the car accident. The Accident with the costume.” Tracy said as she tried to convey both just how sorry she was, and how important Aurora was to the child that lay in the bed.

Tracy sighed with a bit of frustration apparent. She wanted to tell Sarah her story, but it brought forward so many unwelcome memories whenever she did. To Tracy, every time she retold the story, it was like living through it again.

“I was actually their age, when I first noticed that my friend Tommy was different than the other boys” Tracy said timidly. “He was always polite, never rough and tumble, and always seemed to prefer the company of me and my girl friends as opposed to the many boys in our class.”

This was the first time Tracy had ever told this story to anyone other than her parents and later her therapist. Her parents had insisted on the therapy after she had told them.

“When we hit Junior High, Tommy started to get upset very easily. He had a bad temper at times, and when he wasn’t mad and yelling he was just sullen and depressed.”

“Apparently Tommy had been getting teased at school, and especially in the boys locker room, for being a ‘Girly Boy’ as they put it.”

“This had really hit home with Tommy as he soooo wanted to be Tammy. I remember when she confided in me, and told me how much it hurt. How much it truly hurt to watch her body ravage herself as puberty started to happen. She saw it first with the other boys. Their voices started to get deeper, and they started sprouting bits of hair here and there and bragging about it.”

“This above all else scared Tammy. She knew that if she let that happen to herself she would just never be able to be the girl she knew she was inside.” Tracy explained with tears forming. It took all her energy at this point to continue. She needed to tell Tammy’s tale and get the message across to Sara.

“She killed herself,” she said in a barely audible voice just above a whisper. The shock on Sara’s face was obvious.

“Her parents came home, to a note. They found her body, cold and frozen, huddled inside one of the towers of the old steel fort structure. She was in the tallest section, at the look out landing by the long slide at the big park near her house. It was a good place to hide, and she had mentioned she wanted to leave from the last place she had truly been happy.” And at that, Tracy broke down crying. Sara immediately stepped to the young woman before her and embraced  the girl. Doing what she could to console her just seemed to be the right thing to do. She was angry at the deception, but that could wait.

It took several minutes for Tracy to calm down, and when she was able to speak again, she looked cautiously into Sara’s eyes. “I just had to help Aurora. I couldn’t let that happen again, but I also made sure Mom invited you over. I figured at the very least, She would see you not mad, and maybe she would be able to open up to you.”

There was an awkward silence that followed, for  Sara had a lot to think about. The bravery of this Young woman, whom while still just a child herself, had done so much for her youngest.

Sara often wished her eldest child Denny would care about Brian, or was it Aurora now. But at the same time, Sara had her own secret.

Mom’s Got a Secret too

“They tell me you like to be called Aurora” Sara said from her child’s bedside.

For the first time since she had been moved to this room, Sara was alone with her youngest child. Amanda had refused to leave her best friend’s side, Sara wanted so much to talk to her child in private, but just couldn’t bear trying to pry the two apart. It was two days after the accident, and Amanda had to be taken off for some more tests and x-rays as she had complained of more pain in her leg.

Whilst she hoped that nothing was wrong with the girl, the chance to be alone with her child was too good to be true in some ways, and she was slightly relieved when Amanda had agreed to go for some tests.

“They tell me you have been doing this for a while. Tracy tells me that you were afraid to talk to me about this yourself. I don’t know what I did to ever make you think that I wouldn’t be here for you, but I hope you hear me now. I’ll love you as my Daughter or my Son or even if you were an alien from outer space.”

It was hard for Sarah to express such feelings towards her child. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. The once timid boy had, in recent years, brightened up. Sara had known there was something special about the relationship between Amanda and Brian, she had watched her boy open up when around Amanda in a way that he hadn’t opened up to his own Mom. That feeling and knowing hurt her now just as it had then. At least she now knew the reason and was determined to love her child no matter whom he or she was. She just needed the child to wake up and tell her. Tell her with his/her own words.

Sara sat there, lightly squeezing her child’s hands, hoping to feel something, hear something, or gain some kind of response or sign from above. She was lightly weeping, with her eyes closed. With barely a whisper she said something she had held close to her all these years, not wanting her eldest child to find out, and tease her youngest.

“You should have been named Brianna not Brian. That’s the name I chose for you”.

She felt her youngest child’s hand tighten slightly against hers, and immediately ran to get a nurse. Why she didn’t think of using the call button was anyone’s guess.

Denny’s Story

Denny saw his mother run out of the ‘room’ as they called it. It wasn’t really a room, it was more of a glass cubicle. She had run right past him and didn’t even notice him. Just like every other time.

It was always someone else, or even something else. He was supposed to Protect Brian and take care of him, but what about Denny? Who was supposed to take care of Denny? He had needs too.

Sure he was always more rough and tumble than his younger brother, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t sometimes need to cry also.

It was Denny whom was there for mom when Dad left. He knew he had to support her. He also knew in his heart that it wasn’t Brian’s fault that Dad left, but that didn’t make Denny feel any better. Add to that the fact that the little fairy didn’t even remember dad, and you know a bit of Denny’s pain.

He wasn’t even there when the accident happened, and yet he is sure that his mother was going to blame him for what happened. What was he supposed to do for the little fairy? ‘Brian had done this to himself,’ was the main thread in his brain right now. He’s the one that foolishly ran back into the intersection. Sure he didn’t wish any harm upon that Amanda girl, but this was his brother lying there.

Now with all this talk of Brian wanting to be a girl, he was sure that he’d get pushed even further into the background. ‘Just another twist in the maze’ he thought.

He was brooding in the corner, and caught the eye of that cute Nurse. Mandy was her name apparently. Sure she was a bit older than him. Maybe 22 or 23, but she definitely had a ‘sparkle’ to her he thought. His mom was talking animatedly at her when she looked at him, directly at him, and then his Mom came back into the room, and turned around looking out the door she came in through. She looked quite anxious and agitated, he though. ‘Mom always worries about HIM and never me’

Nurse Mandy

Mom was quite agitated in fact. The nurse didn’t seem to think that it was anything worth running to check on, but at the behest of the quite frantic mother, decided to go take the child’s vitals. She had noticed the brother, Denny looking at her, and thought that there might be something going on with him. He was dressed like your standard juvenile delinquent and she could see the nicotine stains on his teeth, but at the same time, it seemed as if he wanted to cry. ‘Perhaps he cares,’ she thought.

Nurse Mandy walked into the room, flashing the older boy, and his Mother a smile. She then turned to the young child still seemingly unconscious in the bed. She checked the machines, to see no significant changes, and then went around checking the leads. She had been taught in cases like this, that it was best to take blood pressure and even pulse manually in order to ease the nerves of the patients family. As he reached down and gently applied pressure with too fingers to the child’s wrist, she herself felt him move. It was almost rhythmical. The child’s head would twitch ever so slightly and then be still again. Mandy took the child’s pule, and verified it against the machine. Everything seemed fine.

Megan Amanda Taylor, (Nurse Mandy to all her pediatric patients) was present when the young boy was brought in, wearing the tattered remains of what appeared to be a Sleeping Beauty dress. She didn’t normally work the ER, and was generally an ICU nurse for the Pediatric ICU ward, but when she saw the child being wheeled in on the gurney, her heart just melted. Having 45 minutes till her shift started, she hung around offering whatever help she could. She thought it quite strange that such a young boy would want to dress as a Disney princess, but ‘To each their own’ she thought, silently vowing to make sure this child got all the care he needed.