Life and Death-1

Going Up in Flames

Sorry for the long wait. I have been working on how I want this book to go. I hope you all like this chapter.

"I don't understand why you're living with roommates." My monthly call to my mother is normally just to assure her that I'm alive and well but this one is a little more nagging to it. "I mean with the money you get from work and from your father and me, you would think you could find a decent place to live."

"Mom, I like living here with my friends. We go to work together and it just feels right coming home with them."

"It sounds like you're living in a commune."

"I'm not mom. I'm living with friends. Like it did in college."

"You lived in a dorm one month..."

"Because you forced me out and I lived in an apartment of your choice."

"That dorm was unacceptable."

"Mom it's a dorm. It's supposed to be that way."

"Are you getting enough sleep?"

"As a surgical intern, sleep is the last of my priorities. I'm just happy if I get to have two meals."

"Genevieve!" She scolds me like I'm a child. "You know if you don't eat properly or get enough sleep you will age and..."

"Mom, aging is not a bad thing." She scoffs at me. "Sorry look who I'm talking to."

"All I'm saying is your father and I gave your siblings and you great genes and the least you could do is take care of yourself."

"Thanks, mom."

"What, I'm just saying in the recent photos I've seen you may need to visit my plastic surgeon. He's amazing. A little botox early on won't hurt you."

"You're wrong about that mom. The skin is a living breathing thing and it moves. There will be wrinkles and it comes with age."

"I'll set you an appointment the next time you're home. Which will be?" She tries to get an answer out of me but I have none for her.

"I don't know mom. I'm really busy and to ask off of work would really put be behind the rest of my peers."

"You always have been too hard on yourself. I mean you graduated college early to what, spend all of your time studying?"

"I'm studying to save lives mom. It's a very important job."

"But it's no way for your meet a husband or start a family of your own."

"Plenty of doctors have families and lives mom. They make it work."

"But will you? You haven't been in a relationship in so long and...darling you only stay young enough to bear children for so long. Have you frozen your eggs?"

"MOM!"

"It's an honest question a mother should ask of her daughter. I want you to have options and darling you're not getting any younger."

"Children are the last thing on my mind right now mom. I have my residency coming up at the end of the year and then I have to find a specialty. Fellowship..."

"You could just come home."

"This is what I love doing mom. I've always wanted this."

"And I just want my daughter to be present during holiday's and...well..."

"I will make more of an effort to be home mom."

"Or if you lived in your own place we could all visit you."