In THE LAST GHOST, the Death that comes to end a person's life depends on the nature of the cause of death. There are 16 deaths, called Fatalities, in the book. Over the next 16 days, we will meet one Fatality each day, and discuss which heartbreaking fictional character death belongs with each character.
Meet the Third Fatality, Sudden Sickness, Commonly Referred to as Trista
"A very old death, Trista was primarily involved with sudden sickness, such as when someone is perfectly fine one day, and the next is at death’s door. In earlier times in human history, most of her cases were women who died in childbirth, but she did that less now. Now, she was there when a college student had a sudden case of bacterial meningitis, or in influenza outbreaks, like in 1918. Trista’s main color was copper, but an oxidizing copper with a greenish tinge. At this full height, to Woe, she seemed like a mean Statue of Liberty."--The Last Ghost
Trista, as the death of sudden sickness, primarily takes cases of healthy people who take ill very quickly, as well as the death of maternal mortality (death in childbirth.)
*SPOILER ALERT*
Sudden sickness deaths always come as such a shock! I'm thinking of Ruth May in The Poisonwood Bible, who died after being bitten by a snake, or tragically, Prue Ramsey in To the Lighthouse, who dies in a parentheses, after you just spent the last 100 pages getting to know her.
[Prue Ramsay died that summer in some illness connected with childbirth, which was indeed a tragedy, people said, everything, they said, had promised so well.]--To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
The most heart-breaking fictional character to die in childbirth in recent memory is Lady Sybil, in Downtown Abbey. She died of enclampsia, after her daughter was safely delivered, and it seems like everything is going to be okay. {Narrator: It was not okay.}
What other sudden sickness deaths in fiction broke your heart? What other fictional deaths do you think would have resulted in Trista?
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