No one besides my brother, his wife and kids, and me visited my mother regularly as she lay dying in the hospital. Her parents had been dead for years, her brother did come once, but was busy with his work in the Senate. Cousins sent flowers and cards. The younger members of the family hadn't even met her. She was a distant idea, an aunt they had probably heard about but had never met. That's the way it always was. She had the name, and the Hunters always took care of their own, but they couldn't be bothered with the shame. She reminded them that despite the wealth going back to the Gold Rush, the positions of power they held in local and national government, the homes and boats and Stanford degrees, that they were not immune to everything.
It was sudden and slow. She had a wound she had been hiding from me. She didn't want to go to the hospital, as her paranoia had hit a new peak. It wasn't until I noticed her face was grey and clammy, and the festering smell in her room, that I finally got it out of her. She cut herself in the barn on a rusted piece of metal, when she was in better spirits weeks before. It had become infected and her mental state plummeted with the infection. She was in bed a lot that week, but that happened so often, her illness getting worse with age, that I didn't notice how sick she was until it was too late.
“We can't go!” she weakly pleaded like a child terrified to go to the dentist.
“Mom, this is enough!” I shouted. “No one is going to hurt you in the hospital! It can't get any worse,” I begged. The wound on her thigh reeked of puss, it was black where the pus wasn't overflowing, and the area surrounding it was swollen and a throbbing red.
I carried her out of the room, unsympathetic to her shouts and cries. My whole life I heeded her warnings, lived in a shadow to appease her, and now this very thing she claimed would protect us was killing her.
I sat in the waiting room as the doctors took her in. My instincts, the ones that I had honed over the years, allowing me to sneak into dozens homes and neighborhoods over the past ten years without being caught, they told me this would not end well. I knew eventually I would live a life without her. But I didn't think it would be this soon. My chest tightened at the thought of a world where I would be truly alone. A prisoner with no warden. A child with no mother. I was still that boy that nobody wanted but her. She wasn't perfect, but she was the only one who truly cared about me. No one else had ever showed me that type of unconditional love.
Finally, the doctor walked out. His face was solemn, and I knew my instincts didn't fail me again.
He spoke to me about sepsis, and how her organs were failing, antibiotics, making her comfortable, cautious hope. About preparing for her passing. That I should call people. Then he left me, sitting there, in shock.
I called Scooter and let him know he needed to come. And then I sat vigil for the next three days. Scooter couldn't do that. He had work and a family, and this wasn't for him. It was only appropriate that it should end with her and me alone, the way it had always been. On the last day she was mostly incoherent, sleeping as monitors beeped and IVs dripped. I could feel the life slipping away from her body.
It was on the third night, just after Scooter had left after a brief visit that she awoke. It was quiet in the wing. Most of the lights were dimmed, but her turquoise eyes shined as she blinked. I took her hand, not expecting her to have the strength to speak. But then she moved her lips, stuck and crusted from the lack of water. I wet them. The fog lifted from her eyes. She was lucid, and she knew.
“Sam,” she rasped.
“Yes?” I replied leaning in to hear her better.
“I know,” she breathed out.
“You know?” I asked.
She took a few heavy breaths, trying to maintain her strength.
“Where you go…at night.”
There was no point in denying. I was with a dead woman, and dead women can't tell your secrets.
“I tried. I tried to protect you.”
“You did, mama,” I assured her.
“You're different. I knew.”
“No one's gonna hurt me, mom. You can rest. I promise I'll take care of myself. You don't need to protect me from then anymore.”
“No…” she stopped, seemingly exhausted from the brief utterances. “Not them. From. You.”
Her words knocked me back like a battering ram. Her precious boy. Her angel. All this time I thought she saw me as special, misunderstood. But she saw the darkness. Taking me away was about protecting me and everyone else…from me.
Tears streamed down my cheeks for the first time in as long as I could remember. She closed her eyes again and didn't utter another word.