#prus

When Ludwig was diagnosed with Cancer, no one expected him to not make a full recovery. He was young, healthy, and in shape. The diagnosis was not an early one, but it should have been something he could come back from. It had not been too late, but second stage cancer. Even the doctors that they spoke with were sure that Ludwig would easily make a full recovery with very little issue and aggressive treatments. And yet…there Julchen sat at his freshly buried grave, left alone by the person that she cared for most.

She was there when he was diagnosed, when he started and at every treatment for chemo and radiation. She watched her brother as he changed from a strong, healthy young man to a thin, gaunt, shell of who he used to be. The change was gradual too. Coughing, nose bleeds, lack of energy at first, then one day he fully collapsed at work and was put on long term leave from his job. He was always tired, struggled to keep his food down, and he was not the person he once was all that time ago.

A little under three years into treatment and Ludwig had finally had enough of all the poking, prodding, and treatments. He had accepted that there was no saving him, that he was dying and there was nothing they could do but prolong his suffering further. He opted to stop the treatments much to Julchen’s dismay. The woman wanted her brother to continue fighting but was forced to accept that the gaunt individual was tired and he was ready to let go. He lasted another eight months, and she was there when he was put into hospice and finally, there when he took his last breath.

When his heart monitor was flatline, Julchen screamed and cried. She demanded for him to wake up, demanded for them to resuscitate her brother but he had signed a do not resuscitate order so they could not. Eventually the woman had to be pulled from her brother’s still warm body as he was removed so that his body could be properly readied for burial. When everyone left and the equipment was collected, the Prussian sat in her now empty home with a blank stare. She had spent the last three years caring for her brother, hand and foot. There were no friends, no social circle, no lines of support. Their parents died when he was a teen and she was twenty, leaving her to take care of him until he went off to college and started working. She had never truly known a life without the man in it.

Now that Julchen sat at his grave, the woman felt…empty. Her chest ached, but she could not feel the tears burning her cheeks. She could not feel the cold against her skin, the rain soaking her, nor anything else but the pain of his passing. The woman collapsed into the now muddied soil, quietly sobbing into the ground. There was no way Ludwig could be gone. He was so young and healthy. He was too good, why was it not her? It should have been her. He had far too much left to experience and do for him to be gone.

Julchen could not remember what happened to her. She could not remember the wreck that caused her to lose her favorite motorcycle, the airlift to the hospital, why she was missing her leg from below the knee or her arm below the shoulder. The whole ordeal was a blur to the Prussian as she sat in the room in the rehabilitation facility in preparation to go to her next therapy appointment.

When the accident occured, the Prussian did not have any family or friends to speak of really. Her father disowned the woman ages ago and she had not seen or heard from either him or her brother since. This meant the first place to report her missing was her job, followed by her becoming a ward of the state due to the fact that she really had no one. Thankfully for her, a coworker who had watched her dog prior to the accident knew where her spare key was and was kind enough to take and hold her dog for her. The landlord was left a note taped to the front door and her rent came out of her account monthly so that was not an issue.  Some of her other bills and things would be a bigger issue, though she dealt with it one at a time as she could.

For the time being, Jul was stuck in the facility to her dismay. She managed to pay for decent prosthetics between her savings and the kindness of her coworkers. Her arm was an older bionic model which would be helpful as she relearned to write and do other tasks with it. Her leg was a newer, basic model that came with a foot attachment for the time being. The woman would have to relearn to walk before anything else and thankfully, it was going well. She now needed to get the hang of running to really get the ball moving for her chance to go home.

Today was no exception for her practice of walking as well as using her cane for her other, newly gained disability. Julchen was no stranger to struggles with vision. She had pretty much had vision problems since she was a child and though this did not change with the accident, it only got worse. Being albino meant that she was predisposed to having mild eye issues and she was about the same as most people, however the accident caused one of her eyes to struggle to take in more than blurry shapes. With glasses, the other eye could sort of make out some stuff, though it was not great. Since she was legally blind now, it meant that Jul would no longer be able to do the work she loved to do and she would have to find a new lease on life.