The Winebearer [FF] | Mary-Kate Olsen & Ashley Olsen

Chapter 23 - Mommy Dearest

The machine whirred as the x-ray film was produced revealing an in-depth look at the interior of the heart of a patient. The doctor furrowed his eyebrows, judging by his whitened hair, he could barely see the result without adjusting his eyeglasses.

"I see it." The doctor said, squinting his eyes. The doctor pointed his pen at what appeared to be a narrowing part of a vein leading to the heart itself.

"You see it right there?" - The doctor said. Dorian looked at where he was pointing.

"Yes," Dorian answered.

"That's gonna be fatal." The doctor said bluntly as if he'd seen these kinds of cases numerous times and had become impassive of his patients' dilemmas.

He took off his eyeglasses. Dorian frowns at the x-ray result.

"Is there a way to fix it?" Dorian asks.

"By surgery? Yes. But Ms. Amsel?" The doctor said.

Dorian looks at the doctor.

"Your chances, even, of surviving the surgery..."

Dorian knows what the doctor is trying to imply. The sommelier looks down at the floor.

"This is an inborn condition, Ms. Amsel-"

"How long do I have?" Dorian said, cutting off the doctor.

"About a month, even less..." The doctor said.

Dorian leaves the hospital and walks as fast as she can, away from the sight of people. She immediately went to the lot where she parked her scooter.

The sommelier speeds the scooter, she doesn't even care where she would go.

Once the first tear broke free, the rest followed in an unbroken stream. She cries with the force that has been repressed for so long it just bursts out. There is only one relative left in her life, very risky but it's worth a try.

Dorian parks her scooter and enters the mental institution, Nurse Judith greeted her warmly - she's her mother's caretaker.

"Is it a good time?" Dorian asks the caretaker.

"It is, she's calmer... You know, counting her numbers." Nurse Judith replied.

Gisela Amsel (Dorian's Mother) is known in the sanatorium as having psychotic rages to the point that she needs to be injected with a sedative while being restrained by at least 4 people, in her tranquil days - she would either draw random things or count numbers.

Dorian enters her mother's cell while Nurse Judith looked on, the sommelier saw the nurse uncaps a syringe filled with a clear liquid (Dorian, imagined would be a tranquillizer) she kept it in her hand just in case.

Dorian walks towards Gisela who's sitting at the edge of her bed, gleefully computing and pretending to solve imaginary math problems in the air.

"One...Five.....Six...Eight...Ten...Twelve...Thirteen...twenty-four..." Dorian said as she continued counting in the air.

Dorian hesitantly looks back at Nurse Judith, who's coaxing her to go on.