Day 3: Peace

Aim with this: to experiment with telling a whole story, complete with a conflict and a two page limit. I also want to do my first experiment with a treatment, and see how I need to do it in future! This treatment will probably be a bit more detailed than I'll usually write, but I want to see how well I can do it. Tomorrow's monologue will be less "planned," and I'm going to write about the comparison between the experiences in my blog.

Character bio and background
Annabelle is 32, and has acute megakaryoblastic leukemia--in other words, she has been in hospital for months with very little respite on multidrug chemotherapy, and has had several bone marrow transplants to no effect. Though they originally gave her 2 months to live, she's survived 4, but she feels she's not long for the world of the living.

Over the past 4 months she has foregone all contact with her former friends, and broke up with her partner of the time as soon as she found out she had cancer. The only person she's stayed in contact with is her formerly estranged mother. The day before the scene of the play, she contacted her best friend Suzanne, and told her to come to the hospital. The scene takes place as Annabelle is telling Suzanne about the cancer.

Character motivations
Annabelle's motivation in this scene is to "come clean" to her best friend. She's been ignoring her for the past few months, and feels bad about that, but feels even guiltier for feeling like she's "unloading" on Suzanne. She wants to come to the end of her life with some peace, and she feels Suzanne is the most important person to her besides her mother.

Suzanne, though originally irritated at Annabelle for ignoring her calls soon begins to panic when she sees how bad her friend looks. She's trying to come to terms with Annabelle's death, and not fall to pieces. She wants to try to be Annabelle's support--even though perhaps it is she herself who needs the support. (Of course, this isn't obvious in the actual script, but I wanted to give some depth to the unseen side as well.)

Emotions
Annabelle is at peace with her death; she has regrets, sure--many of them, but she's come to terms with the fact that she's going to die. She feels guilty for leaving Suzanne out of the loop, and feels guilty for telling her. The only thing she really feels bad about is having to leave her friends behind--which is why she's tried to make it "easy" on them by cutting off connections with them.

Suzanne is in panic mode; she's already nervous, expecting something bad, but whatever she had in mind doesn't compare to the reality of the situation. She's shocked, and isn't sure what to say or think... she feels overwhelmed. She feels guilty for not having been there through the whole process at Annabelle's side, and believes she has to make up for that somehow.

The Conflict
The conflict is that Suzanne wants to know why Annabelle has cut her and their other friends out, and that Suzanne is trying to come to terms with Annabelle's illness.

Synopsis
Annabelle begins by explaining what's wrong with her; she apologises for both not telling Suzanne sooner and telling her now. She says it is painful, though a lot of the time she's so stuffed full of drugs she's not sure whether it's day or night. She says she wanted to talk to Suzanne and connect with her before she died.

She goes on to explain why she's ignored Suzanne and her friends, and that she broke up with her partner, Owen, for much the same reason--and though she feels bad about it, but did it because she believed it the right thing to do. She talks about how her father had cancer, and how her mother visits every day.

Annabelle mentions wryly that she feels a lot older than she did six months ago--as though she's had a lifetime to reflect. She was scared at first... but she realised that sometimes you just have to accept the inevitable. Sometimes there's a reason, and she's calm. She can face the next life with a sort of peace, and she muses that perhaps that's all life is about--a preparation, so that when the time comes we can face it at peace with ourselves.

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