My father came home every day at 5:15. If he was a minute late, she got restless. At two minutes, she was pacing. At 5:20 she’d be looking out windows and standing on the porch. The advent of cell phones was God’s great gift, and she embraced them with fervor. To this day, when my cell phone rings and I answer, I expect to hear her voice demanding, “Where are you? Do you know what time it is?”
“Where are you?” I whisper now, sitting by her bedside. “Do you know what time it is?”
Her breathing is loud in the room, loud enough to cover the whirr of the IV pump. It rasps and rattles in her chest.
A nurse comes in, checks the IV, straightens the sheet over my mother’s thin chest. Her eyes pass over me and away, like I’m wearing an invisibility cloak. I can see that she doesn’t want to engage, but I need information.
“Is this normal? Her breathing? And she feels hot to me.”
My questions hit the nurse right between the shoulder blades. Her body turns to face me, stiff, like it’s all one piece and none of the joints move on their own.
“None of this is normal.” Her jaw is as locked as the rest of her, and the eyes suddenly leveled on me are ice-cold.
I stare back at her, bewildered by her clear hostility. “Can we do anything about it? I mean, should she be on oxygen or something? Is she getting antibiotics?”
“She’s dying,” the nurse says. “Do you really want to prolong the process?”
Her words connect squarely with my solar plexus and knock all the breath out of me. She’s right, of course. The doctor I talked to on the phone yesterday was much kinder and did not use blunt words. But the message was the same.
My mother is leaving me.
The room door opens wider and another nurse comes in. This one is older and heavy with her years, her breasts and hips straining the bounds of her scrubs. She lays a hand on the younger woman’s shoulder. “Can you answer the light in 205? I’ve got this.”
Nurse One looks like her face is going to crack under the strain of holding back whatever it is she wants to say, but she pivots and stalks out of the room.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper at her retreating back.
“She’s young,” the new nurse says, as if that explains everything. “She’s offended by death and it makes her angry. You must be Maisey. I’m so glad you’re here.” Her voice is warm and welcoming. She actually sounds glad.
It’s a good thing somebody is. I sure as hell am not.
Nurse Two frowns as she listens to my mother’s breathing. She pulls a thermometer out of her pocket, and her frown deepens as she runs it across my mother’s forehead.
“It’s 102.6. And her oxygen level is dropping.”
“Can’t we do something?”
“We took an X-ray. I’m afraid she’s acquired pneumonia. It’s a common complication in people who are unconscious for any length of time.”
She lowers herself into the folding chair directly beside mine, so close that her shoulder, her thigh, press against me. Normally I would pull away from the contact, but her bulky warmth feels good, comforting. We sit there, side by side, listening to my mother’s terrible breathing.
“Is she suffering?” I whisper the words.
“Oh, honey, no. Very peaceful. She’s deeply asleep.” She pats my hand. “It’s not really my place, but I’m going to bring this up now, since the doctor isn’t here. When the ambulance picked her up, your father told them she wanted to be allowed to die. But he seemed a little confused, so now I’m asking you. If she should . . . stop breathing . . . do you want us to resuscitate her? CPR? A breathing machine?”
Panic. My feet and hands go ice-cold. My feverish heart wants to escape my rib cage and go scuttling out the door and out of the hospital.
“I know it’s difficult,” the nurse says. “What would your mother want?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper, but of course this is a lie.
My mother would want to make her own decisions—to be in control of this situation and tell her body and everyone else in the room what to do. That’s what she would want.
“According to the ambulance team, your father said Leah put together an advance directive in which she specified all of this.”
Warm relief comes flooding in. I don’t have to make decisions, after all. My mother came through, planning it all out in advance. Of course. That’s exactly what she would do.
“Well, good. Then do whatever the directive tells you.”
The nurse sighs. Maybe out of frustration with me, or the whole situation. “They tell me he wasn’t able to find the directive. So we have only his word for it, and he’s apparently in no state to be making decisions.”
“Because he’s a little confused?”
“Mental Health was out to see him yesterday evening, after your mother came here. They didn’t call you?”
“Maybe they missed me. I was traveling.”
I think guiltily of the phone in my purse. When I pulled it out to call the hospital, there were five missed calls. Four from Greg. One from an unknown number. I didn’t listen to any of the messages.
“Mental Health can’t determine competence in the legal sense. Only whether individuals with mental disorders are dangerous to themselves or others. They felt your father was okay to stay home by himself for a few hours until you got here. But no, he didn’t do well on the mental status test.”
The words sink in, slowly, punctuated by Mom’s rasping breaths. Words and breath grate on my skin, threatening to uncover a nerve center I can’t afford to expose.
“You don’t understand. I can’t make decisions like this. I don’t do decisions.”
The nurse pats my hand again. “So hard, so hard. In part because your mother is so young. Let’s hope you have a few hours to think about it. But you should know that with the extent of the bleeding in her brain, she won’t be coming back. If she lives, she won’t be the woman you know her to be.”
With that, she heaves herself up out of the chair with a grunt. “This hip,” she says. “It’s going to be the death of me. You just sit here and think on things. I need to get back to work.”
And she leaves me alone with my mother’s loud breathing and a litany of guilt.
Mom wanted me to be rich and successful, to carve some sort of mark in the world instead of skating over the surface. I should have been a real journalist, preferably the sort of perfectly coiffed woman who could smile at the cameras from behind the desk of a major news corporation and intelligently interview world leaders. Not a fly-by-night lightweight skipping from job to job at small newspapers and supplementing her income taking Santa photos at the mall during Christmas.
I should have visited more often. I should have known my father was declining. I should have been there the minute my mother fell ill.
I have failed her every which way from Sunday, and now maybe I have to decide whether she’s going to live or die.
The very last hope I have of redeeming myself is making the right decision now.
I lean forward and bury my face in the cool sheet, trying to let the tension go out of my spine and shoulders, but they feel about as pliable as a sheet of particleboard. My eyes still refuse to close. I try to focus on the decision I’m supposed to be making, marshaling lists of pros and cons to the idea of life support, but my brain hops around from my father’s bizarre behavior and fainting spell to my mother unconscious here beside me.
My cell phone buzzes, and I check the text messages with dread, but it’s only Elle.
elle: vampires here for grandpa’s blood
maisey: the lab, you mean?
elle: don’t be so boring. this one is totally a bloodsucker. he doesn’t sparkle but I bet he’s a hundred years old anyway
elle: IV started. gpa wants to go home
maisey: tell him to stay put. Do I need to come down there?
elle: he’s sleeping now. i’m bored. cn i come up?
maisey: gma’s also sleeping. I’m also bored. Stay put. Both of you.
A surge of irrational anger hits me. How dare my father disintegrate like this! He is supposed to be taking care of my mother. Why didn’t he call me? Where is the advance directive he was talking about?
Why the hell was he burning papers in the fireplace?