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“Hi I’m Jennifer Fitzsimmons, I’m a teacher and swim coach at Sheldon High. So they asked me to keep this video journal because they found polyps on my lungs, I was having trouble breathing and went in for tests and, yeah, unidentified polyps.”
“Is she alright?
“She died. Three days ago.”
In the aftermath of it all, sometimes Cosima forgets that she’s allowed to breathe.
Forgets that she can.
Air has so quickly become a luxury to her, once it had been taken away, and she relishes in the ability to drink it in, now, great big gasps of it, letting the cool crispness settle in her throat with no resistance, none at all.
Sometimes it weighs heavy within her, though.
She’s travelling the world with Delphine, now, following a trail of breadcrumbs that Rachel so neatly laid out for them, picking up the pieces of her sisters and helping them in ways that Cosima couldn’t help herself for so, so long. But now she can, she has a cure, she can save them.
Her mind wanders often to those that couldn’t be saved.
Katja―though she had been more a fatality of Helena’s brainwashing than any sickness―and a clone with shock blue hair named Miriam and so many others, and Jennifer Fitzsimmons , the teacher and swim coach at Sheldon High.
Cosima thinks about Jennifer the most.
Camilla’s hair is wild and curly and for a moment Cosima swears that if she pulled it into a braid she could be someone else. But Camilla is alive and her skin is flushed with color and her eyes sparkle and Cosima remembers how Jennifer looked in the end, as though all the colors had been sucked from her. The image of it haunts her in her sleep, a ghost she can’t shake, a sister she wasn’t able to save.
Delphine tells her it isn’t her fault. How could it be? Cosima didn’t even know Jennifer, how could she save her?
But Cosima still can’t shake the guilt, can’t shake the feeling that she’s somewhat responsible. In her mind she can see the haunted, hollow eyes that could be her own staring back at her, soulless, lifeless, devoid of any hope, eyes that had once been so bright and shining, like little galaxies.
On the nights where the guilt is heavy, Cosima goes back into the archives, because now that DYAD has fallen they have access to everything, and she listens to Jennifer’s video journals, because they have hours . She wants to know more, aches to know more, about this sister she never got to meet, this sister who was snatched from her fingertips a mere three days before Cosima got the chance to help her.
A screen flickers to life, and there is Jennifer, hair dark and luscious and still maintaining a healthy curl and bounce, smiling down at her, laying comfortably on her side. For a moment, Cosima can pretend as though there is nothing wrong.
“ Hi, I’m Jennifer Fitzsimmons, I’m a teacher and a swim coach at Sheldon High. So, uh, they asked me to keep this video journal because they found polyps on my lungs. I was, uh, having trouble breathing, and went in for tests, and―yeah, unidentified polyps. So that kind of sucks.” The understatement of the century, really.
From what Cosima understood of Jennifer, she seemed like the sort of person to try and make the best of any situation thrown at her, even in her sickness. She was pre-olympic, for backstroke, an athlete, and athletes needed to keep a positive mindset for life in order to maintain order.
“What else? The team’s doing great this year. Usually I run laps with them, but it was when I did that that I first started having the problem. My boyfriend forced me to go to the ER, and here we are. Great, right? ” Greg was her monitor, but, like Donnie, it seemed like he was largely unaware of what he was doing, and that he actually cared for Jennifer.
Or at least Cosima likes to hope. Jennifer deserved that, at least.
“I guess that’s what I should be recording here, huh? How it happened? I guess? So, I ran laps with the kids, and Kelsey was keeping up with me like usual and Omar was lagging behind, also like usual―” Jennifer seems, seemed, to have such a close bond with her students, with the kids on her team, and Cosima admires her greatly for it. She’s so kind , so caring , so genuine , and it just makes it all the more unfair that she was taken from the world so soon “―I made the turn and I came up, and―nothing. I just couldn’t catch any air. And it wasn’t like when I swallowed water or anything. God knows, I’ve had that happen plenty of times. No, this was, uh, this was bad. I couldn’t catch my breath at all. ”
Jennifer, on screen, grimaces at the memory, rubbing at her throat as if she can still feel it, that absence of air, the tightness, the panic, and on reflex, Cosima rubs at her own. Sometimes she still forgets, even though they’ve fought for this for so long, even though she and Delphine are making a difference, saving lives. Cosima still forgets.
Jennifer didn’t get the chance to forget.
“ You know what it was like? Okay, back when I was a kid, I used to take karate. I gave it up to join the swim team, but I remember the sensei told this great story. We had to learn words for parts of the body―Japanese words. Sensei told us that the word for solar plexus was suigetsu .”
Jennifer talks with her whole body, like Cosima, but at the same time there’s a fundamental difference to the way she moves.
When Cosima gesticulates, her movements are wild and jerking, perpetuated by excitement and often in the heat of the moment, but Jennifer’s body flows like water, telling a story, always in constant motion. She’s used to it, moving, graceful in motion, and Cosima finds herself entranced.
“ It’s funny, I googled it years later, and that’s not the Japanese word for it, I don’t think. But it doesn’t matter. The story’s what’s good. ”
She’s also a bit of a rambler, like Cosima herself, or maybe even Krystal.
Cosima thinks they might’ve gotten along, if given the chance.
“Suigetsu means ‘the monkey in the water’. Or at least that was what he told us. See, there’s this monkey and he sees the reflection of the moon in the water. He thinks it’s cool and he grabs for it. But his paw disturbs the water and the reflection of the moon goes away. The monkey’s all sad now, because, let’s face it, monkey’s aren’t always the brightest creatures in the world. Although, I’ve taught some kids who probably were just as dumb.” Her expression softens fondly when she says the last part, though, so Cosima knows she doesn’t really mean it. Jennifer Fitzsimmons seems like the sort of person who would never in good conscious be able to speak ill of any of her students, regardless of their intellect or how they behaved.
Cosima supposes she’ll never get the chance to know, though.
“Anyhow, the water calms down and the moon’s reflection comes back. The monkey’s happy, so he grabs for it. And it starts all over again.”
Cosima knows what it feels like to be chasing at an impossible goal, knows that feeling quite intimately.
“ Getting hit in the solar plexus is like the monkey grabbing for the moon. Never been hit in the solar plexus. But that day, at the pool? I was totally grabbing for the moon’s reflection and not getting it. It took a lot of tests, but they finally found polyps. So now it’s time for treatment.”
Jennifer grimaces at the camera for a brief second before she twists her lips into a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
“ Hooray. ”
Cosima spends hours listening to her, watching her, trying to learn as much as she can.
Delphine looks at her with wide, concerned eyes, traces soft fingers along the curve of her jaws and whispers soft reassurances. She’s worried about her, Cosima knows, has picked now to be worried about her, now after everything has quelled, after the storm has ended and Cosima is still picking up the pieces of herself.
“You can not lock yourself away in the memories of someone else, ma chérie,” Delphine whispers, late at night, when melancholy drapes around Cosima like a weighted blanket and sinks into her heavier than the sickness ever did, “it is not healthy.”
She’s worried.
“I wish we could have saved her,” Cosima tells her.
Delphine never watches the tapes with her. She doesn’t know that Jennifer used to take karate, or that she loved sharks almost as much as she loved her students, or that she once dreamed of travelling to the ocean and swimming as far as her arms could carry her. Once, Cosima had made Delphine promise to love all of her sisters, but sometimes she thinks that Delphine worries that if she tries to love all of them she might leave Cosima behind.
Cosima worries about that, too, sometimes. It’s happened before.
She doesn’t tell Delphine about Jennifer’s stories, Jennifer’s laughter, Jennifer’s life. Delphine looks at her as though she’s looking at a ghost, and maybe she is. The use of different muscle groups has changed their facial structures minutely throughout growth, and their hairstyles are different, but their eyes are always the same.
Delphine stares at Cosima and for a moment Jennifer stares back, the ghost of the girl they lost before they could save.
“Think about all the sisters we are saving,” Delphine tries, instead, and Cosima wishes that Delphine would understand that she has , that she is trying, but Jennifer is a weight, a siren, pulling her deeper and deeper into an ocean of despair and she doesn’t know why . There is something about her that refuses to let go.
Cosima closes her eyes and sees Jennifer, broken. Jennifer, smiling. Jennifer, waiting.
It seems crazy.
She doesn’t tell Delphine this.
Instead she nods, tired, and lets Delphine hold her, pull her close, and breathes in the scent of her as she tucks her face in Delphine’s shoulder, and for a moment she can ignore the ghost of the girl who once had galaxies in her eyes tucked away in her heart.
The more Cosima listens to Jennifer, the more she learns, and the more she wishes she knew her.
Jennifer is a swimmer, first and foremost, and a teacher. A nurturer.
Cosima grew up on boats, grew up with the sea at her side and the gulls on the breeze as her lullabies, and she thinks they would have been good friends. Jennifer, she thinks, is the best parts of all of them put in one.
Alison’s steadiness, Sarah’s determination, Helena’s brightness, Rachel’s wit, Cosima’s own optimism.
Maybe that was why she was taken so soon.
Because the world could not handle someone so good, so bright, so wonderful.
There are days Cosima pours over her files and wonders of her end. Guilt trickles down her spine and sticks needles in her skin at the memory of herself, of Delphine, picking apart a body that had once been so full of life.
She hadn’t even gotten a funeral.
Their bodies were property, all of them.
Jennifer Fitzsimmons seemed like the sort of person loved by all.
Cosima wonders what DYAD told the people she left behind, what happened to Greg, the man in the videos, naive to something much bigger than he was. She wonders about the students, thinks to the videos of hospital rooms filled with flowers and balloons and stuffed bears and get well soon cards, she wonders what DYAD told them, wonders if their faces fell, if they cried, if they were even told anything at all, or if they were just left wondering.
Cosima hates that Jennifer didn’t even get a resolution, not even in death.
Against her better judgement, Cosima books a flight in the middle of the night while Delphine sleeps besides her, peacefully. She has no ghosts of lost sisters to haunt her, and she looks serene, blonde hair fanned out on her pillow like a halo. Cosima envies her, on nights like this.
They continue to travel, to disperse cures, Delphine smiling charmingly at copies of Cosima that will never know about any of this, let alone of the girl who taught at Sheldon High and coached for the school’s swim team, but every part of Cosima aches to tell them. She thinks, if anyone’s story deserves to be told, it’s Jennifer’s. Sweet, wonderful, innocent, beautiful Jennifer, who was too good for the world that took her too soon.
Cosima flies alone, leg bouncing nervously, and wonders if she’s doing the right thing.
She gets her hair undone at a little shop on the corner of a street where the woman doing it doesn’t ask her any questions. She doesn’t recognize her.
As she starts to make her way around, though, it starts.
The man behind the desk at the hotel startles upon seeing her, like she’s a ghost, eyes wide, before breaking out into a grin.
“Jennifer!” he greets. “I can’t believe it! After they sold your apartment I thought you’d―” he trails off, as though the very thought is horrible, and Cosima is inclined to agree with him. She’s wearing contacts and her nose ring is out. “Is Greg with you?” She shakes her head, and he just smiles at her, bright and beaming.
“It’s good to have you back, even if you’re just stopping by.”
She stops at a little diner and someone pays for her meal, and everywhere she goes she can feel people staring at her, eyes following her wherever she walks.
Cosima has grown used to being watched, being observed, like a lab rat, but this is different. This is new .
At night she dresses up, puts on a sweater because even though she’s better she can still hear Sarah insisting she cover up to keep out the chill, and she heads out in the direction of the multitude of cars leading to the lone high school in this lake-side town.
She sneaks into the bleachers, among parents craning their necks to see, cameras poised and ready to strike, and breathes in deeply, practiced, because sometimes she forgets that she can, still.
There are children draped in emerald green lined up all around, and the principal calls them down, one by one, and Cosima listens for the names in the stories that Jennifer recalled so fondly, with such softness in her eyes. Kelsey and Omar and James and Lynae and Suzette and Maymuna and all the others.
Cosima claps as hard as all the parents around her, cheers for the students of a woman she never knew, and it almost feels as though the Jennifer of before is there, with her, watching her kids with that fond little glint in her eyes, a proud, satisfied little smile on her face.
After it’s over, Cosima wanders onto the field, looking on.
She can see why Jennifer loved it here, because this place clearly loved Jennifer. It’s in the atmosphere, in the way Cosima can almost feel in her bones the sense of home, of welcome.
“Miss Fitzsimmons?” she turns, and there is a boy standing there, diploma clutched in hand, draped in emerald, staring at her with wide, hopeful eyes. Omar, the one who was always lagging behind, but who never failed to soar when his teammates depended on it.
For a moment, Cosima freezes and guilt wells in her throat, because she isn’t Jennifer, but his eyes are so wide, so big and brown and full of stardust that Cosima can’t bring herself to disagree, not when it was her intent to come and offer resolution.
“Hi, Omar,” she greets instead, and he grins at her, ear-to-ear and boyish despite his tall stature and full face of facial hair, and before she can comprehend what’s happening he’s barrelling into her and Cosima’s being lifted into the air and twirled.
“I heard whispers that you were back but I didn’t think―” he trails off and shakes his head, disbelieving, and grins at her, “we missed you.”
“I missed you, too.” She tells him, and it’s honest, despite the fact that she’s never met this boy in her life. But it’s so clear that he loves her, loved Jennifer , and she’s so caught in this moment that it feels like Jennifer is inhabiting her own skin. She wonders if this is how Sarah felt with Beth.
“We won states for you,” he tells her, after a second, and Cosima smiles softly, in the proud way she’s seen Jennifer smile a hundred times when talking about her kids, “we tried to call you but your number got disconnected.”
“Things got bad for a while,” Cosima explains, “I’m getting better.”
He grins at that, for a moment allowing himself to be a boy though he’s on the cusp of adulthood, and then suddenly it dawns on him.
“I have to take you to see the others! Man, they’ll lose it!”
They greet her similarly, with wide eyes that quickly fill with tears and hugs tighter than any Cosima has ever felt in her entire life, squeezing her so tightly that she forgets to breathe, but this time she doesn’t quite mind. Her lungs occupy the space with love and she exhales it into the air and hopes that Jennifer feels it, sees it, sees her kids and knows that they are okay, that they are happy, and that they miss her.
She was so, so loved.
Cosima smiles back at grinning, teary-eyed faces and poses for pictures and wishes, not for the first time, that she could have known her. Could have known the woman who got people to love her so much that it ached.
She thinks they might have been good friends.
At night, she dreams no longer of a girl who was broken but of Jennifer as she was when she lived, bright and vibrant and beaming, and in her smile is a thank you Cosima will never get to hear out loud.