Ada was destined to die.
Her radio alarm was going off. She didn't want to get up. But it was another day. A day is an opportunity. The radio played the news. She took a few minutes to stretch her tendons and listen to what was happening in the world. Then she got her creaky bones out of bed.
Wiley, 19, nonverbal, heard her stirring, and he ran to the bathroom and turned on the water. Ada gathered shampoo and went to care for him. Wiley was burbling and playing in the water. Ada waited for the water to get warm and hummed to herself. Wiley pounded the shower tiles hard.
"You don't want me humming?"
"Ap!"
"Well turn on the shower so I can wash your hair!"
Wiley pounded the tiles harder. Woah, that's getting near breaking strength. She wordlessly turned off the water, took Wiley by his shoulders while he screamed and attempted to put holes in the walls with his head, and directed him into his padded room. He pounded himself and the room, to little effect. He opened the door and came out screaming and flailing, Ada turned him around, pushed him in again, shut the door again, and she counted. He came out again, she pushed him in again, and started over at 0. She counted up to 500 this time without escape attempts.
"OK," she told him, "Try a shower again. No hitting the tiles. If you break those there's no way you could take showers." Ada thought to herself, hum, what WOULD I do if he broke the tiles? She toyed with several hypothetical solutions.
Wiley happily went in the shower, turned on the shower, let her wash his hair. She left him playing in the shower and went elsewhere to shower herself. Finished, she had him finish his shower, fed him breakfast, packed him lunch, drove him to school. Two aides in Special Ed took him, asked how the evening had gone, and verified he'd had enough for breakfast.
Work was a myriad of details. Ada was a lawyer specializing in water quality, working for a special interest group in Pittsburgh. She advised corporations and lobbyists and occasionally Congress on what the laws said, what they actually meant, and what they should be. Today she lunched with a plastic manufacturer. She heard their troubles, made sure they were aware of the finer points of several newer regulations, and passed on one solution she'd learned from other businesses. She noted they were hitting several priority inversions she was aware of in the interactions of the existing laws, where obeying the laws would make both business and water quality worse. She knew who was working on drafts to revise those laws. She spent the rest of the afternoon thinking through use cases for a set of revisions she had drafted that would eliminate one inversion, which would improve both the businesses and the water. Except, there was an hour meeting at the end of the day where they asked about something else entirely, which was also on her plate but she hadn't got to.
At home the nanny was resting, and Wiley was taking an enforced nap. The nanny got up and harassed her. The faucet was dripping! The windows were drafty! Oh, Ada should think of the nanny's health, having such a stressful job watching Wiley. Ada thanked her and paid her. Wiley hovered over the nanny as she left. He slammed the door behind her, then watched out the window to make sure she got in her car and drove off. Finishing tasks was very important to Wiley, and having the nanny go was finishing a task.
Ada fixed Pad Thai for dinner. Wiley hovered and helped, and Ada danced between the various cooking ingredients. The phone rang. Her ex husband Don. It was cordless, so she put it on speaker on the countertop and continued cooking.
"I'm in bad shape," he said, "I've got medical bills piling up and I just don't know how I'll pay them," he said hopefully. "Taxi driving doesn't pay much."
"That's nice, dear," said Ada. "The nanny just left. I'm fixing Wiley Pad Thai for dinner." Wiley sprinkled some fennel seeds into the dish.
"You still have that nanny?" asked Don. "She's just taking you for a ride, she is. Sleeps all day, and you're paying her so much for that!"
"She lets me work," said Ada. "I've had ads out for a replacement for over a year, and I hardly get any nibbles. And the nibbles I do get are from young things who love babies."
Don laughed. "Yeah, they have no clue. Still, she's taking you for a ride. Fire her! You could help me out more, if you weren't paying so much for her."
"Oops sorry Don, gotta go, I've got dinner ready now." She hung up and took the food to the table. Wiley gathered plates and silverware.
Afterward Wiley washed the dishes, not very well, but with lots of water. Ada retreated to her study. Paid the bills. Wrote some checks for tuition, to help her relatives' kids through college. She smiled at that. She was glad she could manage that, that really was doing some good.
About time for bed there was a distinctive knock on the door. Wiley ran over to open the door. Ada's sister Amy came in, still in her police uniform. Wiley yelled and flailed at her.
"Hi Wiley! I missed you too!" Amy hustled Wiley up the duct tape covered stairwell to his padded room. He came out several times yelling and Amy tossed him back in. Meanwhile Ada finished the dishes proper, smiling to herself, listening to the banging upstairs and being happy she didn't have to do anything about it this time. Afterwards Wiley went on a tire swing Ada had installed upstairs, and Amy came down to talk.
"How'd today go?" asked Ada.
"Ah, so so. Lots of walking. Introduced myself to a few people. Talked to some people who were having too good a time. Didn't get any running or excitement."
"Aw, that's too bad," said Ada. "Maybe tomorrow you'll get to tackle somebody. Other than Wiley."
"Here's hoping," said Amy. "Hey, you hear from any group homes?"
"No," sighed Ada. "The state keeps applying, but Wiley's got Challenging Behaviors. The homes can't deal with that. So the state says Oh well, I tried, I guess you have to watch him yourself forever."
"Aren't there laws against that?"
"Sure, but not really, and they're not funded," said Ada.
"Can't you, like, rewrite the laws?" asked Amy. "Isn't that what you do?"
"Yes, sort of," said Ada guiltily, "but this isn't my area." Ada smiled at this puzzle. How it showed all these hints of being solvable, but so far wasn't. "Totally different specialization."
"So how are you doing, Sis?" asked Amy. "You can't ever go on vacation, can't go out to dinner, all on your own here. Even driving's dangerous with Wiley."
"You know," said Ada, "it's really not that bad. There's a lot of stuff I'd like to be doing, but it's not available. But what I can do is still reasonable. Wiley, I don't know if he cares whether he's home or not, but he could be in a lot worse situation. Me, I've got a good job, so I can pay for a nanny that allows me to work, so I can afford to keep my good job. A lot of people in my shoes don't, they can't work at all, they can't take care of their kid OR themselves. And my good job is about doing useful stuff to boot. I might even be getting a little better at cooking Pad Thai. Someday I'll get hurt, then it'll be bad, but right now it's fairly OK."
Ada had to go upstairs and put Wiley to bed. Amy left. Ada read the news then slept herself.
Then the radio alarm said it was time to wake up. Ada didn't want to wake up. The bed felt soooo good. But it was another day, so she forced her creaky body out of bed.
Ada was destined to die. Everyone was, of course. But most people acted like they weren't. She had always been acutely aware of it. Her days were numbered. She most likely had four decades left. Maybe less. So she would keep using each day she was given as well as she could.
This was in response to a prompt on reddit.com r/WritingPrompts, "The Nature of Destiny."