Wishes Are No Horses, part 5 (Anne of Green Gables) Title: Wishes Are No Horses, part 5 Author's Name: Hyel Disclaimer:Anne of Green Gables (c) L.M. Montgomery. Warnings: AU angst. Ratings: general Summary: Diana loses a sister, and makes a resolution. 300 words
They buried Minnie-May on a Thursday, a day that wasn't nearly bleak enough for a child's funeral. Mary-Joe cried copiously throughout. She'd barely managed to stop since the baby had first fallen sick, with no-one around for miles but Matthew Cuthbert, and the doctor, carted in with the utmost haste, hours too late to save her. Diana did not cry, but sat in her neat dress on the pew and listened quietly to the reverend.
Her death had not yet quite registered with Diana – she could not associate the little casket with her sister. She'd never before seen a baby die, though of course she knew it happened. It just had never seemed like it could happen in her family, or that the bright gurgling, screaming girl, her own little girl, could be the one to be put in a box and wasted in the earth.
It would come, though, the understanding. She could only hope that she would know better, then, than to curse God like her mother had (Heaven protect her!), or to lose all trust in His workings, for even in her numb state she could see how easy it would have been to save the baby, if God had only seen fit, if only there had been one person close enough who knew what to do.
Diana knew all about croup now – all that the doctor and the minister's books could tell her. If only she'd known then - but there was no point in thinking of what wasn't. They hadn't known what to do, and Minnie-May was dead.
Diana resolved never to be so remiss again. She would learn every disease and its treatment, and study, study so hard even her thick head would have to learn. This could never happen again.