Rachel Cain, d9 [cb; fin.]

Rachel Cain / Eighteen / Female / District Nine

I can pinpoint the moment that shaped my life. It was after watching a public whipping in the district square, my mother bent forwards, bleeding onto the snow that covered the ground. You could almost see the steam rise upwards from where the white turned crimson. There was something in the way she cried, the way she pleaded that twisted itself into my chest. By the time they were done with her she had stopped moving and making any sound. By the time I got to her she was almost dead. I remember watching as the healer walked over, this almost terrified expression on her face. Running forwards to my mother's side and watching as the life slipped from her brown eyes- those same eyes we shared. This feeling of utter hopelessness and unknowing stole my breathe, this desperate wanting to know what to do, to make her chest rise, the panic that had ensued as I'd found myself unable to do anything. There had been this sinking feeling as I'd watched the Healer shake her head, watched her do nothing for my mother. I wasn't sure if she simply hadn't known what to do, or simply refused to do it. I cannot stand for people who idly sit by whilst others suffer. There is always a way, always, you just have to try hard enough to find it.

That feeling of helplessness in that moment has spurred me onwards, that wanting to know -needing, has shaped me into who I am now. I hope that there will never be a time in my life where I am in that situation, I want to know everything I can, I wish I could go back to that day and do what the healer could not. I want to save people, I don't want to feel helpless and useless and uncertain.