There’s a pause before Doreen lays down her gauntlet.
‘I saw you the other day. Watching from your car.’
Heather is mute on the other end of the line, her words solidified along with her thoughts, but Doreen is clearly not allowing family feuds to interfere with her planning. ‘She’s at the Western General Hospital. Accident and Emergency. Unless ofcourse they’ve admitted her. It’s impossible to find out anything from that place once they’ve got their talons into you.’
Heather finds it interesting to note that Doreen uses birds of prey, with their laser-focused ability to assess vulnerability in their victims, as her metaphor. Doreen interprets Heather’s continued silence as compliance. ‘Good lass,’ she says, ‘I’ll let your father know.’
The line goes silent as Doreen hangs up and ends the call.
Heather stands in the centre of her lounge for several minutes, the phone still to her ear. What should she do? The last thing she feels capable of navigating today is a reunion with her mother who refused point blank to side with her when her father was at his most indefensible. A chronology of her mother's responses to arguments about her dad's behaviour floods her brain:
Cutting up her supposedly too short skirts with kitchen scissors? –Understandable.
Stuffing her childhood pets with no discussion or empathy? –Just his way.
Giving her the silent treatment over her choice of university course? –Unfortunate.
Making her homeless after she fell pregnant with Georgia? –Poor timing.
Refusing to escort her down the aisle? -No comment.
Feeding her allergy prone daughter peanut butter? –A simple mistake.
Telling her to get out of his house once and for all? –A proportionate response.
It was the finality of her dad’s last statement that forced the permanent wedge between them. If her dad truly didn’t want anything to do with her, what could Heather do about it? But her mother never made any steps to rectify things between them either. Aren’t mothers meant to be on their daughter’s side? Isn’t their role to minimise tension and act as mediators? Heather’smother did none of it. She watched as Heather cried, cajoled, rationalised and endured her father’s cold shoulder for months on end and never, ever intervened until Heather finally got the message: she was out.
Of course, Heather loves her mother dearly, but to get a call to arms in the early evening after all these years feels incredibly unjust. Her mother has not reached out to her in fifteen years. Not once.
Heather removes the phone from her ear and studies the blank screen. Debating her choices and going over the past hurts is irrelevant, she knows. She’s going to go. There’s nothing else for it.
Ignoring an incoming call – Scott this time – she grabs her coat, throws a water bottle and a banana into a small bag, picks up the appropriate keys, and leaves the house.
***
‘Heather!’
Her name is a waft of gentle air on her mother’s lips. She seems as surprised to find herself in the hospital as Heather is to be there. The last time Heather walked through these Edinburgh hospital corridors was a frantic rush to get to her small daughter after a full-blown anaphylactic shock.
Her mum is hooked to an array of medical machines monitoring heart rate, blood oxygen, blood pressure and the like. A cannula in her left hand connects her to a bag of fluids which to Heather’s unpracticed eye has only a few minutes left to run through.
‘Hi mum. Fraser’s away. He gave Doreen my number.’
Heather’s mum nods.Trust Doreen.
‘I’m sorry they bothered you, love. I’m perfectly fine.’ Heather’s mum attempts to sit more upright on the hospital bedand wobbles slightly with the effort. She doesn’t look fine. Her crepey skin has the colour and appearance of wax paper.
Heather’s skin prickles as she tries to establish how to play this. Her mother has frozen her out for years, yet now lies vulnerable and alone. She pulls a plastic chair, dark grey, to her mother’s bedside. ‘What happened?’ she asks, as though the past fifteen years have not happened.
‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s silly, really. Your father wanted a cup of tea, and I turned too quickly and well …it seems I spilt it.’ She pulls the right-hand sleeve of her hospital gown upwards to reveal her elbow. The skin beneath is wrinkled and visibly reddened. ‘Then it seems I took a little tumble. But I’m alright, dear. I am.’ Her mum reaches over and pats Heather ineffectually on the hand.
A student nurse comes over, her brown hair tied into a no-nonsense bun and enclosed in a hair net. She identifies Heather as next of kin and gives her a summary of her mother’s treatment.
‘We just wanted to check there wasn’t anything behind the fall,’ she explains, ‘but it seems it was just a wee bit of a faint after the spill.’
‘That’s right. That’s right,’ Heather’s mum says. ‘A wee faint. Nothing else.’
The nurse turns her attention back to Heather.
