I swung the hammer down to set the last nail with the dull thump of metal on wood, sweat dripping between my breasts and down my forehead. Stepping back, I surveyed the work that the other volunteers, my partner, and I had done in this small rural village. A hurricane had blasted through with ever more common 'once in a lifetime' winds, leaving a path of destruction only the empty heart of nature could wreck. Two weeks ago, this town was bustling with families on vacation and the smell of hotdogs and tacos. I let out a deep sigh, feeling sympathy for this community but also satisfaction for a good day's work.

A small smile tugged at my lips as my partner came over to me with a pair of nails in her mouth making walrus tusks. Her eyebrow raised as she bumped her hip with mine and started snickering around the walrus nail-tusks. I rolled my eyes at her.

“Come on, Jeffica, diff is why you ruve me,” Eleanor said around her walrus nail-tusks, grabbing my hand in hers. I looked down and smiled at all the wrinkles those two hands had on them, wrinkles we had gathered as we spent decades together.

“My god, Eleanor, this is why we can’t have nice things!” I made the mistake of letting out a chuckle as she kept bumping into me suggestively and wiggling her 'tusks' in my face. Within seconds the two of us were crying and laughing over a bucket of nails and some boards, the skeleton of a house surrounding us. Enough work for the day. Now time to celebrate our seventy-fifth anniversary at home with pajamas and wine while laughing at an awful, B-rated horror movie, as is tradition.

Eleanor opened the door for me, a gallant gesture that she had picked up twenty years ago over a joke about chivalry being dead and has done ever since. I kissed her hand as she sat down next to me in the front-facing seats of the sedan before saying, “Home,” to the automated vehicle. A few seconds later, the car smoothly pulled out into traffic. I still remember the days where one of us would have had to have driven ourselves home after the full day of work. Thank God for self-driving cars.

Medicine had improved enough for us to still be active even as I passed one hundred years old. Eleanor was a good bit younger than me at ninety-four, and my answer to “How old are you?” has always been “Old enough to remember the first sounds of the internet and the first video games.”

***

We had gone on our first date after a political protest when I was a volunteer medic and Eleanor sauntered into my improvised medbay with a broken arm that had only just been set by the doctor on-site. I sprayed the area with some disinfectant and put a temporary splint on it, joking the whole while about keeping herself safe so she didn’t have to come back into my tent again.

“Well, maybe if you agreed to come to dinner with me, I wouldn’t have to get my arm broken just to see you…”

“You haven’t been hurting yourself just to see me… right? ‘Cause your other arm isn’t hurt, so I can smack that one...” I said, giving her a stern look.

“No, but maybe I’d be more careful if I had you to come home to.” A flirtatious wink from Eleanor. I brushed my long hair back over my shoulder, crossing my arms over my chest and giving her my family-renowned ‘stink-eye’ … which did not seem to be getting me my normal results. A stubborn one, my only weakness! Not that I minded, but she could at least pretend it was effective.

“Come on… eight o’clock tomorrow... Peruvia?” She gave me a side eye, checking to see if I knew the place, which, of course, I did. Everybody knew the most expensive restaurant in town: five hundred dollars for a meal and a month-long reservation wait time … AND it had only been open for four months…

"Wait, how would you get a spot at Peruvia on a single day's notice!" I cocked my head to the side.

Eleanor gave me a big smirk.

“Fine. Tomorrow. Eight. Fancy dresses. NO more injuries!” I gave a small smile and blushed as she tucked my hair behind my ear. Then she hopped off my table and gave a bow, her hair sliding over cute freckles and hiding her vibrant blue eyes.

“As you wish.”

***

I came back to the moment as Eleanor sighed in the car, my head resting in the crook of her chest and shoulder.

A gentle few minutes in the car with Eleanor humming quietly to me and I was about to sink off to sleep. I had been part of the ‘early workforce’ and had done a ten-hour shift, unlike Eleanor, who had drawn the long straw and only been assigned to a four-hour shift. I was almost asleep, Eleanor's hand twirling my hair, making little designs when I heard her swear and felt her tense up.

Too bright lights on the ceiling, the squeal of skidding rubber on the road, a shriek, and a crunch of metal as my world went black and silent as the void.

I opened my blurry eyes to an overly-bright white room, outlines crowding around my bed. I heard a rhythmic beeping. I focused in on the welcome sight of my family surrounding me. A sudden burst of noise, questions, laughing, and sobbing. A therapist and a doctor were standing at the other end of my bed checking on a chart. No Eleanor? Where is she? She’s not in any of the other beds. Is she in another area? Don’t just lie here, ask for information if you want information, woman… jeez. Mentally berating myself, I turned to the doctor.

“Where is Eleanor? Is she okay?” I sat up and did a quick visual inspection of myself. Nothing obviously damaged or broken, so why am I in the hospital?

A nearby nurse leaned over my bed and quietly said, “I’m afraid Eleanor is in the intensive care unit right now. Your family is here to talk with you, but only for a little bit, then we’ll need you to talk to Miss Schlott, our residential therapist.” Wait, what? Eleanor can’t be in the ICU… She has to be okay! What am I supposed to do without her! The nurse stepped away from the bed as one of my sons stepped up to my bed, reaching for my hand. It was a warm, gentle touch of someone worried about my health. Not unusual given my age, but since it came from Kevin, my ‘tough’ son? That was concerning. I had broken my arm sixteen years ago and he had playfully slapped my shoulder saying, “See? you’re fine! Nothing’s gonna take down ‘the momma bear!’”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The fact that he was being this gentle and serious had me more worried than being in the nicest hospital ward I’d ever been in. It was, in fact, almost too nice. I couldn't place it, but something felt … off in a way I couldn't quite place. How bad is Eleanor if Kevin is being this gentle and serious?… I’m just so tired. After such a long shift and I had hoped... a romantic evening watching one of those stupid horror movies she loved so much...

“Kevin… what’s wrong? Why are you acting weird?” Kevin gave a grimace before one of my daughters, the eldest, Elizabeth, came up to me in a rush and gave me a hug, silent tears rolling down her cheeks. Well now I KNOW something is WILDLY wrong… she never cries, and he doesn’t take anything seriously.

I didn’t like being treated as if I was a fragile baby, and I was getting more impatient to find out what happened to me and Eleanor. Why aren’t they just telling me? We’ve never shied away from tough news. I pushed Elizabeth away enough that I could look at all of them. I wanted information. Now. “One of you had better tell me what is going on. And talk straight with me. I took care of you all when you were babies covered in your own mess. Now tell me. What. Is. Happening.” My kids had heard me growl like this only one other time.

“Mom… we’re just not … sure how to tell you. You’ve just gotten out of a three-day coma. The doctors said you weren’t going to recover.” Elizabeth gave a strangled sob before clenching her trembling hands together, taking a shaky breath while keeping back tears, moving emotionally into her stoic nurse persona. Oh my, if Elizabeth can’t keep a straight face in a hospital, this is… really bad. Estella I expect to break down, but not Elizabeth. Maybe she’s just had a long day and is over reacting? Yeah… unlikely. I felt like the floor was about to drop out from under me. I hated that feeling of anticipation, but I also guessed that the news itself was going to be worse.

Elizabeth stepped up to me, her now steady hands in front of her. She spoke in a professional tone, but I could see the ‘mask’ come up like when she has to tell someone really bad news. “You and E-Mom both arrived at the hospital on your anniversary night. Eleanor was immediately rushed to the ICU and has been slowly... improving. Her chances are better than they should be given her advanced age but you’re both the toughest people I know and definitely both fighters... I don’t think even this will win against her." Elizabeth paused to calm herself. "Some… asshole!—” she took a deep breath before the facade shattered, then continued “—Decided to “manually” drive their dumb ass car to show off to their friends. It’s one of the reasons the emergency medical staff showed up so quickly. The car alerted that an accident was occurring AS it was happening… those stupid… selfish... FUCKS!” She yelled, pausing for a few seconds to breathe deep before telling me the rest. “The police are investigating how they overrode the safeties on the car.” She growled out through clenched teeth. “You weren’t hurt as badly, the car collided with E-Mom’s side of the vehicle, so you were mostly shielded. Except you struck your head… real hard, Mom. Do you know where we are?” Elizabeth raised her arms and looked around, like I should know something beyond ‘hospital’.

I grimaced, turning my neck to look around. Just a hospital. Nothing fancy … aside from it looking extremely clean and well-funded. The floors and walls were pristine, like they were brand-new and had never been splattered in any sorts of bodily fluids. All of the equipment was very well organized; I expect things to be put away in a hospital, but not in these genuinely perfect neat stacks. It also should have been bustling. The more I looked at it, the more I got the feeling we were in some sort of show room or something. Convincing … unless you were someone experienced with hospitals who takes care of a family of injury prone individuals because they can’t stand being idle. So I noticed.

I turned to my kids and gave them my no-nonsense “answer me” look. They still haven't given me the full answer I was looking for. “We’re in a hospital I’ve never seen before. Now I am quite… calm right now, and I would like to stay that way. Where is Eleanor?” This wasn't good, I was starting to panic, thinking of all the possible worst case scenarios. I shouldn't be upset with my kids, I was just so anxious by this point.

Elizabeth said. “Like the nurse said, E-Mom is in the ICU and they’re trying to get her stable for now, but she’s… she’s real rough, Mom. Much better than she should be for her age, but still really bad. You were in a coma from the head trauma. At first, they thought it would be about a week of the coma at best, and then hopefully you would come out of it much better from the time of forced healing. But something went wrong on the second night and then into the third morning. You almost died, Mom.”

Estella began sniffling for a brief moment before bursting into body wracking sobs. I am glad to say I had been able to teach her how to deal with her emotions instead of just pushing them away. Estella fully felt everything, which in most cases was more painful in the short-term but ultimately better for her mental health than the avoidance behaviors I had learned.

Elizabeth continued. “You- uhhh- you were having degrading brain patterns and for a minute the doctors thought they were going to lose you. The doctors said they didn’t think your patterns would normalize if you had another trip like the first. The doctors warned us that if they didn’t have stable patterns they wouldn’t be able to upload you, so rather than risk your chosen potential… afterlife for a tiny chance at you recovering enough to talk for… at most a day or two before your organs fully failed and you'd die anyway. That and the amount of pain you would be in during that whole time would have been horrendous or you'd have been drugged to heavens in order to handle it. We didn't want either for you. We decided it was best to enact your will and wishes, Mom. We’re in Elysium right now, or at least some sort of staging ground. We had to upload you to avoid any risk that your failing body might have caused your mind. You… you passed away at 11:42 last night. We’re inside the world now and can visit you, however, it's very early experimental apparently. Fully uploading a still living person is a very new practice and Elysium doesn't do partial uploads for couch-playing. Hopefully it won't be too long before we can see you again.” Elizabeth paused to take a calming breath. “The therapist said it might be easier to hear it coming from family rather than from some stranger.” Elizabeth took a deep shaky breath, a pair of tears slid down. Jacob, my youngest, came up to me and gave me a big hug, crying and telling me he loved me and that he would miss me. He smelled real, his hug felt real.

Why me? I’ve done everything right, I even spent some of my retirement helping others…

My children surrounded me in a big group hug, a tradition since they were little. If one of us was having a really rough time, they would share with the family in a big circle, we would talk it over and afterwards we would have a big group hug. The only difference was, Eleanor wasn't here now to say the family motto… but I was, so I said it in her place feeling the true weight of her not being with me in an emergency for the first time in years.

“We have so much to be thankful for, we have each other. Always.” I choked it out past a constricting throat and the taste of ash in my mouth.