I filled them in with what John told me.
“Oh no, that’s terrible. My aunt has type 2 diabetes though, so it’s not exactly the same thing, but it honestly doesn’t really change her life that much. She just always has to have food with her, and she can’t just like stuff her face with an entire cheesecake anymore, but your mom doesn’t look like she ever did that.”
I laughed a bit, not wanting to wake up my mom.
“No, she never was. She’s the ‘scold her daughter for wanting that extra slice of cake’ type, so somehow it’s probably not going to be that bad for her if it turns out she can’t eat any terrible foods.
Just then my mom began to stir, and the three of us turned towards her.
“Julianne?” she asked weakly, and I immediately got up and went over to her side.
“I’m here mom. I’m here.”
“I’m so glad to see you. Who are the others? Where am I?”
Annie and Tina came up then as well.
“These are my friends Annie and Tina, you remember me telling you about them, right?”
“Of course I do, sweetie. I’m sick, not dead. It’s lovely to meet you girls. Although I would have preferred it to be under nicer circumstances.”
“It’s lovely to meet you as well Ms. Reeves,” Tina answered. “We’ll go out and wait for Annie in the waiting area. I’m sure we’ll see you again sometime soon,” she continued, then her and Annie left as I smiled at them in appreciation.
“I’m still feeling groggy sweetie, but if I remember right, they told me I have diabetes?”
“That’s right, mom.”
“I knew it was something. I knew I wasn’t feeling right, and that quack that I usually go to kept telling me it was nothing, that I needed to sleep more, or that I wasn’t eating right. Look at me, does this look like a body that doesn’t eat right?”
At the moment it was starting to look like a body that didn’t eat at all, but I kept that comment to myself. After all, she’d been sick recently, and going undiagnosed like that couldn’t have been good for her health.
“John said it was the type of diabetes where it didn’t matter what you ate, it was all your immune system’s fault.”
“Ah, well that makes sense. My immune system hasn’t been right my whole life. Sometimes I think it’s a miracle I managed to give birth to you without dying. I think when they told me the first time I got very agitated about the diagnosis.”
“You did, they sedated you to keep you a bit calmer.”
“Well, that’s embarrassing. I’ll have to apologize to the doctors and the nurses. Speaking of John, do you know when he’s coming back?”
“I know he went to work, he’ll probably come back when he’s done. He was here, he stayed with you for as long as he could.”
“Of course he would have. Thanks sweetie. You can go back home now if you’d like, I’ll be fine.”
“I’m not leaving you here alone, mom.”
“Well at least go and say goodbye to your friends, you can’t just leave them out there and we both know they don’t want to hang out in the hospital here with me.”
“OK, thanks mom, I’ll be right back,” I told her, and went out to find Annie and Tina.
After a quick goodbye in which they ordered me to get some rest and wished my mom the best, I was back in the room with my mom.
We chatted for a while, a longer chat than we’d had since moving to England. It was nice. We spoke about the upcoming wedding, now only a few months away, and my life in general. When I went home late that night, around eleven when John came back, I had a smile on my face. I hadn’t felt that close to my mom in years. I knew she’d be ok.
Chapter Sixteen
Luckily for my mental state, my mom’s admission to the hospital was on Friday, so I had the weekend to go and visit her, and to get over the initial shock of it before having to go back to my classes.
It was a shock. A big one. I’d never seen my mom look so weak, so frail. She was released early on Saturday morning and came back home, immediately retiring to her bed to rest as per doctor’s orders.
I went to visit her fairly often, and by the end of the weekend she was already looking more like herself again; she was getting up, wandering around the house, refusing to be seen without her makeup done perfectly, that sort of thing.
When I saw Annie on Tuesday at our Art History class, I told her everything.
“Oh, I’m so glad your mom’s ok!” she told me.
“Me too.”
“What happened?” Oliver asked as he sat on the other side of me.
“Nothing. It’s pretty personal.”
“Well, nothing you can’t let me in on, I’m guessing.”