We go into the nearest room and she pulls a curtain aside.
There is my mother.
But it’s not my mother.
My mother was tiny but she’s never this tiny. Not this old.
This is a small, dying woman, skin greying, almost translucent, painfully thin and hooked up to a million machines. They beep, monitoring her, the only sign that she’s not dead at all. I watch her heart beat on the monitor for a moment, then look back at her, trying to connect the two images, the proof that she’s alive.
“That’s not her,” I whisper, my hands at my mouth, waiting for someone to agree with me, to tell me that this is all a big joke. But no one says anything. The amount of pain between us all is staggering. I can’t even comprehend it and my brain shuts down all over again. Switch by switch.
But still, I pick up her hand, her papery skin so weak and thin, and I hold it, willing strength into her, screaming inside my head for her to please, please pull through.
There’s no response. I don’t know why I thought there would be. They have to wait to bring her out of the coma anyway. But even so, I thought that maybe, maybe just me being there, having all her children around, would let her know that she has a lot left to fight for.
I’m terrified, terrified, that wherever she is, that she can see my father and that he’s reaching out for her and that she’s going to take his hand. She’s going to let him pull her away because that’s all she’s ever wanted since the day he died.
I can’t stop the tears from rolling down my face. Even I can’t shut down completely.
Steph holds me and I’m so glad she’s here and I’m so glad my brothers are here but I know who I really need, whose arms I want to crawl into tonight.
With everything that’s happened, everyone I’m losing, I’m amazed I can still feel my heart in my chest at all. I would have thought there was nothing left.
***
The next few days ghost by. Somehow I go back to work, though after one day of moving through the motions like a robot, Lucy tells me to take more time off. I know it’s also because Candace has effectively taken over my job now but I don’t care one bit. I don’t care about anything at all.
So I’m at the hospital most of the time. I sit by my mother’s side, I hold her hand and I talk. I just talk. About everything. Happy things. Old memories between us, the good old days. Things were so beautiful, so simple then. Everything that seemed to happen before this seems to shine in remembrance. Nothing will ever be the same again. I know this.
Steph comes by when she can. Sometimes with Linden. Sometimes its Nicola and Bram. Usually one of my brothers is there. They all have the same apology to me, that they should have never let me be the one to handle everything to do with my mother, that I needed their support, that they should have been less selfish, that they weren’t raised to be that way.
But it really doesn’t matter what they say. I don’t blame any of them. I just blame myself for not being there. If I had never left for Scotland, maybe this would have never happened. I don’t know what the signs were leading up to it, but I’m sure if I could have got her to a hospital, I know I could have made a difference.
The funny thing is, I’m starting to understand Lachlan more and more. It’s grief and guilt of a different kind, but in the end, the emotion eats at you the same way. When I’m at home, I find myself drinking a few glasses of wine just to take me to a fuzzy place where I don’t have to think, if not to just pass the hell out and find sleep.