I forced myself to move, crossing the room in three quick strides and dropping to my knees beside her bed. Her skin was burning with fever, slick with perspiration that soaked through her nightgown and made her hair stick to her forehead in damp tendrils.
"It's okay," I said, the lie automatic and useless. "I'm here. I'm going to help."
Another fit seized her, bending her double with its force. Blood spattered across the white sheets, dark spots that spread like blooming flowers. The sound she made wasn't entirely human. It was a harsh, tearing noise that seemed to come from somewhere deep in her chest, where things were breaking that couldn't be fixed.
I grabbed the extra pillow from the foot of the bed and tried to prop it behind her back, thinking that sitting more upright might help her breathe easier. But she was shaking so violently that it was like trying to help someone in the middle of a seizure. Her whole body was trembling with the effort of trying to draw air into lungs that seemed determined to expel everything instead.
"Water," I said desperately, reaching for the glass on her nightstand. "Here, try to sip some water."
She attempted to take the glass from me, but her hands were shaking too badly to hold it steady. Water sloshed over the rimand onto the already-soaked sheets as I lifted it to her lips, trying to help her drink. She managed one small swallow before another coughing fit seized her, and she pushed the glass away with weak hands.
The medicine. We had to have some medicine left, I’d saved it for an emergency. It might help ease the spasms enough for her to breathe. I lunged toward the small table where we kept her belongings, pawing through clothes and empty pill containers with hands that shook almost as badly as hers.
"Where is it?" I muttered, reading labels by the weak light of her morning sun. Most of the containers were empty, their contents long since used up, but there had to be something left, something that would help.
Behind me, Mom's coughing grew worse, if such a thing were possible. Each spasm seemed to last longer than the one before, leaving her gasping and exhausted in the brief intervals between attacks. The sound of blood hitting the sheets was becoming more frequent, a soft pattering that made my stomach clench with terror.
I found the last bottle of cough suppressant, the strong kind that the doctor had prescribed when her symptoms first became serious. There were maybe three pills left, rattling around in the bottom of the amber plastic container like dice in a cup. I shook two of them into my palm and turned back to her.
"Mom, I need you to take these," I said, kneeling beside the bed again. "They'll help stop the coughing."
She tried to take the pills from my hand, but another fit seized her before she could get them to her mouth. The small white tablets scattered across the sheets, lost in the folds of fabric. I scrambled to find them, my fingers searching desperately through the blood-stained bedding.
"Miss Heather?" A scared voice from the doorway made me look up to find Susie standing there, her wild red hair evenwilder from sleep, her eyes wide with fear as she took in the scene. "What's happening? Is she—"
"Susie," I said, trying to keep my voice steady even though my world was falling apart around me. "I need you to go back to your room and watch the others. Make sure they don't come in here."
"But—"
"Please," I said, more sharply than I intended. "Just do what I ask. Keep them calm and tell them everything's going to be fine."
Another lie, but what else could I say? That their only remaining parental figure was drowning in her own blood? That the woman who had taken them in and loved them was dying in front of my eyes while I stood there helplessly, unable to do anything but watch?
Susie hesitated for a moment, her fourteen-year-old instincts warring between the desire to help and the need to protect the younger children from seeing what I was seeing. Finally, she nodded and backed away from the doorway, but I could hear her bare feet pacing in the hallway outside, unable to go far from the crisis, but trying to follow my instructions.
Mom's breathing was becoming more labored with each passing minute, the spaces between coughing fits growing shorter instead of longer. Blood was no longer just specks on her lips but flowing more freely, staining her nightgown and the pillows behind her head. Her fever seemed to be climbing, making her skin burn under my touch.
I couldn't do this alone. I couldn't watch her die in this bed, in this room, while the children listened from the hallway. Whatever was happening to her lungs, whatever was causing this crisis, it was beyond anything I could handle with home remedies and expired medications.
The hospital. I had to get her to the hospital.
Moving with desperate efficiency, I grabbed the small bag I kept ready for emergencies, the one that contained her identification, her medical information, and the few dollars I always kept set aside for true crises. This qualified. This was as much of an emergency as anything could ever be.
"Mom," I said, reaching for her arm. "We have to go. I'm going to take you to the hospital."
She tried to protest, shaking her head weakly, but she didn't have enough breath left for words. Another coughing fit seized her, worse than any of the previous ones, and when it finally subsided, she slumped against the pillows like someone who had fought a battle and lost.
"I'm going to help you stand," I said, sliding my arm around her shoulders, and feeling just how little she weighed now. How much of her had simply melted away over the past weeks? "Just lean on me. We'll go slow."
Getting her to her feet took everything I had. She was weak as water, her legs barely able to support her even with my help. But somehow we managed it; somehow we got her upright and moving toward the door, step by agonizing step.
Behind us, the bed looked like a crime scene, sheets dark with sweat and blood, pillows askew, the detritus of a body at war with itself scattered across the mattress. I tore my eyes away and didn't look back again. I couldn't afford to look back.
All that mattered now was getting her to people who might be able to help her breathe again.
All that mattered was time, and we were running out of it fast.
As we left the orphanage, the cool morning air hit us like a cold slap as I maneuvered Mom through the front door, her weight leaning heavily against my side. Susie had helped put her coat and boots on and agreed to watch the children. Mom was fragile; her papery thin skin threatening to tear whenever I applied pressure on her. I was terrified holding her and helping her walk, stopping every time she broke down in coughing fits. Her breathing came in shallow, rasping gasps that seemed to echo off the silent buildings around us, each exhale became a visible puff of vapor in the cool air.
