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“Was she pretty?” he asks me. “The girl?”
I smile and slowly lean back in my chair.
I don’t mind telling Ethan the truth.
“She was a ballet dancer,” I reply. “And she was the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my entire life...”
50
EMMA
“I really didn’t know you were this sick, Mom. You should’ve told me. You should’ve let me help before it came to this.”
My mom looks up at me from the hospital bed. Her face is pale, her eyes sunken in deep dark pockets. It is, undoubtedly, the worst I’ve ever seen her, and she has been very bad these last few years.
I just didn’t know it wasthisbad.
I didn’t know she actually needed to go to hospital.
“Please don’t worry about me, Emma,” she whimpers.
What else can I do?
Her voice is so incredibly weak it makes me want to cry. It makes me want to get up from her bedside and scream down the hospital hallway for help - to scream for anyone to doanything. It makes me want to commit crazy things, as long as she gets the help she truly needs. I would walk to the ends of the earth for her.
Hearing that she’s in hospital was the worst phone call I’ve ever received, and it came immediately right after one of the best phone calls I’ve ever received.
I grip Mom’s clammy hand as I sit beside her in the hospital bed. She’s sweating and her temperature is boiling hot. Her body is fighting hard to survive, even with all the help of the medical machines around her bed.
And it makes me so angry at the world. Mom doesn’t deserve this. She’s worked too hard to crumble from sickness like this. She was so vibrant – such astrongwoman – and so to see her like this, in this bed so sick and vulnerable, is completely and wholly heartbreaking.
“But you don’t have the money or the insurance to pay for all this,” I reply to her, gesturing at all the monitors and the machines in the hospital room. “Of course I’m going to worry about you. I dropped everything to get here as soon as you called. I want to be with you through this.”
I really did drop everything to get here as soon as I heard that phone call. My head spun from the excitement of Kenneth’s news to the news about Mom falling sick in the space of a minute. It was a whirlwind. I felt like I was in some kind of dream state – a livingnightmare– as I took the train across the city here. It was one of the worst journeys of my life.
Even though she lives upstate, Mom has been taken to the same hospital I work at. It’s the only place available to accommodate her. I still don’t know if that is a good or a bad thing that she’s been taken here. It feels weird to be rushing into the place you work to see your sick mom.
“Please don’t worry about me, Emma,” she repeats. “You have a whole life to live. I’m just getting old.”
“I can’t help it,” I murmur back. “You did so much for me, and this is my time to do something for you. I will do whatever it takes.”
As I hold her hand, I think about the audition tomorrow. I think about the ballet shoes I should be buying right now if I’m to have them for tomorrow. I glance up at the clock on the stained hospital wall. There’s not much time if I’m to make it to the specialist ballet shoe store before it shuts.
But Mom is more important than any audition.
“I’m going to make sure you’re better,” I whisper to the woman who gave birth to me. “Even if it takes all my savings. You deserve the very best care, Mom. You looked after me, and now it’s my turn to look after you. I’ll make sure we get through this, no matter what. I promise.”
51
EMMA
My phone rings just as I am disembarking the train at the station near my apartment. The number that appears on the screen makes me want to be sick.
I knew they’d call.
The dance school.
Despite everything in my body telling me not to do so, I answer the phone.
